email debate with aminz (Muslim)

He wrote:

Hi Jason,

I think there are many open directions to which I have to respond (and probably this email will open some more). So, I would be thankful if you could wait a bit until I respond to all the previous emails before replying back to my email. Thank you.

Here is my position:

I think whatever ability and talent humans are given in this world, through natural evolution or through God, is to let them survive, increase in number, live a better and more peaceful life in a harmonic way with nature but NOT *to discover the secrets and truths of this world in the first place*. These abilities include rational thinking, sprituality, common sense, emotions, etc etc but are by no means restricted to pure rational thinking. Further, rational thinking is one tool but is closely attached to other tools(which I will explain). For these reasons I am going to define what Truth is supposed to mean for a person and how it should be acquired.

But let's go back to the issue of logic, science, etc etc and the issue of subjectivity.

According to Ted Peters, during the last 4 decades we have observed that:

1. "The strict empiricism, positivism, and reductionism that had held sway for the first two thirds of the twentieth century was challenged by a new awareness of historical relativity and the sociology of knowledge. Philosophers such as Michael Polanyi, Norwood Hason, Thomas Kuhn, Stephan Toulmin, and Imre Lakatos placed scientific knowing into historically conditioned communities of knowing. This challenged alleged scientific objectivity. The result was a new picture of scientific knowledge that began to look like humanistic knowledge, and even like theological knowledge."

I have not read the works of these scholars but maybe their point is that: Science restricts its investigations to the collection of data and building of physical models of explanation for natural phenomena. It is never the function of science to say that certain data prove or disprove say the existence of God. However, it is natural for a scientist, once having derived a model such as Darwin's, to speculate its meaning beyond the data itself. While this is normal, the scientist is at that point engaging in philosophy or even theology.

2. "From the new science questions of transcedence arose. The confirmation of Big Bang cosmology in 1965 was perhaps more decisive. Continuing debates over quantun indeterminacy and complementarity began to place physics on the theological agenda. Although the double-helix structure of DNA had been discovered earlier the development of molecular biology in the 1960s, accompanied by startling new propspects in genetic engineering, rasied questions of human nature for philosophers and questions of ethics for religous leaders. Science seemed to be asking for religious involvment and interpretation."

3...

Having heard from Ted Peters, I would like to come back to my own thoughts:

As I said before the main purpose of development of our natural talents and capabilities is to survive, have children, live a better and more peaceful life in a harmonic way with nature. There is no reason whatsoever that these tools are supposed to provide us with the secrets of creation. Please consider a statement like "Does God exists". In fact, how do we know that when we project the evidence related to this question to the space of our 5 senses, what we get is sufficient and decisive? Were these 5 senses developed to let us discover this answer to this question, I would have agreed with you. If these tools are not developed in this way, then not only one might cast some doubt on the legitimicy of using them in places where they are not supposed to be used, but also one can doubt their truthfulness.

If some statement like believing in God is very closely consistent with ourselves and serve us in living a natural and peaceful life, then there must be some truth in it. In fact, all my capabilities are supposed to guide me to the *Truth* of my life, which is to live a harmonic life. Some people say people believe in God because they need someone to pray to, to compensate their weekness, ... This, to me, is a confirmation to the Truth of God, and not some evidence against it. Because one simple concept is doing all these things which I need for leaving a good and meaningful life. My quest for truth is to find principles which are most consistent with my nature and I believe if I can find those statements, I would have found the Truth, because I was created by the nature and whatever is most consistent with me is most consistent with the essense of nature and the essense of the nature is the truth.

I have spoken a lot. Sorry. I need to go and study (I have a midterm). I will reply back to your emails as soon as possible. I apologize for the delay again.

My response:

Dorud bar šomâ,

I'm not sure what you mean. You have sent me many emails, some of them devoid of any material. I am quite aware that you have a life outside the Internet. Not everyone can fit in the series of tubes =). There is no need for you to notify me of "midterms", and other complications which may arise. I am fully understanding of such hindrances.

Now, regarding your details:

Ted Peters, which you have quoted, is a Lutheran theologian. I don't understand why you are quoting him. His attempts to reconcile science with his faith are irrelevant to the discussion. You are a Muslim (lest I be mistaken), not a Lutheran. What may work for a Lutheran may not work for a Muslim. Attempting to use wholly different theological axioms to justify your own beliefs seems quite ad hoc. But nevertheless, the opinions which he holds deserve scrutiny:


1. I believe the mistake that Ted Peters makes here is the obfuscation of the purpose of science. While I agree that current trends are causing people to stop looking to science for all the answers, I see nothing wrong with that. Science was cleaved by humans, for the purposes of our own concoction.

Science is explanation, observation, etc. It does not make moral judgments. One cannot look to science in order to understand why, say, abortion is wrong; that requires a different form of reasoning. The view that science makes moral judgments is mostly the cause of Isaac Newton, who created the "natural laws" (gravity, optics, etc.). John Locke then expanded upon this principle by exclaiming that humans also have natural laws as well; thus, "human rights", "natural rights", etc. were created. (See the United States Declaration of Independence for such a thing in action). But the mistake here is the very famous naturalistic fallacy. That is, "is" does not imply "ought". Just because humans have devised laws since time immemorial, does not imply that there ought to be such laws. This objection to "natural law" only came as a result of 20th century science, when the laws were proven to be erroneous in some cases, as a result of Max Planck's solution to black-body radiation and Albert Einstein's solution to Mercury's orbital trajectory. Because the so called "laws" were thrown out, people began to wonder what went wrong in the scientific method which caused such laws to be put in the first place. Karl Popper, with his concept of falsificationism, has contributed much thought to this subject.

And this is why when you make the statement "It is never the function of science to say that certain data prove or disprove say the existence of God", it is meaningless. Definitions of God vary; some say He is falsifiable, some say He is not. Without proper definitions of the components, beforehand, it makes no sense to make statements.

For instance if I say

Ich liebe dich.

to someone, it is meaningless unless that person has knowledge of German. But let's say that I tell them "Ich" means "I", and "liebe" means "love". Does that give them the necessarily information to evaluate the statement and give it a truth value? No. Definitions of every single word are a necessary condition for evaluating the truth value of a statement. So now I tell them "dich" means "you". Now can they evaluate the truth value? Yes. Now, let's say I made a slight change to the statement and instead told someone:

Ich liebe Gott.

And of course, "Gott" means God in German. Can someone identify the truth value in this statement? No, because "God" has many different meanings. In the first example, "you" is very clearly defined; it is the person with which I am speaking. But when I say "God", it means different things to different people. And this ties in with my critique of your use of a Lutheran theologian. His definition of "God", a Lord who sent His Son to save Mankind, is very different from your definition of God (La illaha il Allah). Compare John 3:16 with Qur'an 39:45. Very different messages.

So when you use the word "God" without any qualifications, it is a very big problem; the statement becomes unfalsifiable.

If you don't understand what "Ich liebe dich" means, there is no way for you to check whether or not it is a true statement. In the same way, if I don't know what you mean by "God", there is no way for me to evaluate any statements which use the term "God" in them.

For instance, my conception of God is a very negative one: God is a tyrant, a cruel Being which punishes people for doing what He forces them to do. This is the type of God which I find in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelations. In the Old Testament we have examples of God killing people left and right; the whole world was flooded, and the vast majority of creatures were wiped out without even being given a chance. In the New Testament we have a continuation of this line of action; Jesus approves of God's flooding of the earth. And then Jesus makes further proclamations, such as saying that he speaks in parables to deliberately confuse people and send them to hell (Mark 4:11-12).

That is the God in which Ted Peters is trying to justify belief, not Ar-Rahman Ar-Rahim. A very different paradigm indeed.

So let us return to the statement which you made:

"It is never the function of science to say that certain data prove or disprove say the existence of God."

Now that I have defined God, I can evaluate the truth value of this statement. Or can I? This statement which you made, is admittedly a lot more complex than "Ich liebe Gott". But it follows the same principle. So long as all the words are properly defined, this sentence too can be evaluated. Now often when people say, in defense of religion, "prove that God doesn't exist", they are really trying to convey the notion that if their respondent doesn't have a valid response, then their religion is true (there is of course the problem of proving a negative, as well as who the onus lies on, but let's ignore those issues for the moment). But let's say that I believe in the existence of God. That's not enough. There is no religion whose only requirement is belief in God. Belief in God is a necessary condition for salvation, not a sufficient one. If I believe in God, and I go around murdering and raping people, obviously you're going to say that I don't deserve heaven. There are other requirements as well. There is the belief that Jesus rose again on the third day; there is the belief that angels exist; there is belief that everyone is born of knowledge of God; there is the belief that Muhammad was a messenger of God, etc. etc. etc. All of these beliefs are based on different premises, yet their commonality is God. And this is why when you ask me to prove or disprove God, I don't see the relevancy. What is important, however, is the proof and disproof of each and every religion.

So now we may ask ourselves, what does it mean to "prove" or "disprove" a religion? It is actually a quite simple principle: reductio ad absurdum. Assume that belief X is true. Show that X → c, where c is a contradiction. Therefore, ~X. Here is a logic table:

X	c	X → c	~X
T	F	F	F
F	F	T	T

Note that X → c (the arrow represents "implies") has the same truth table as ~X, which means that they are logically equivalent. which means that if X implies a contradiction, then ~X must be true.

What does this mean?

Well, quite simply, it means that if we can show a religion to be logically contradictory, then it must be false. The contradiction can be internal (the religion is inconsistent with itself), or external (the religion is inconsistent with something other than itself). In the first case, the only thing which comes into question is the accuracy of our knowledge of the religion. And many apologetics plays on this, saying that "passage A doesn't contradict passage B because you don't fully understand it", "Passage A was superseded by passage B (how could you not know this?)", etc. etc. In the second case, not only is the accuracy of the knowledge of the religion questioned, but the accuracy of the externality is also questioned. Your example of Darwin illustrates this. Darwin's theory implied that species were constantly changing, which contradicted the Biblical assumption that species were static. The way to resolve this is in two ways (My current understanding is that these are the only two ways. If you wish to show me a third way, by all means I encourage you to do so.) The first, is the say that Darwin's theory is wrong; this is the stance that religious fundamentalists take. But the problem with this stance is that it forces the religion to become subject to observation. This is where your stance that "science cannot prove or disprove God" is questioned. Science can very easily determine whether or not Darwin's theory is true. It is simple; observe species, and see if they change. And that's precisely what Darwin proposed. Using his example of the finches as a catalyst for inspiring new biology, other scientists began to look for changes in species. There are many examples of this, with degrees of success, but I think that the most prominent example would have to be the Drosophila experiments. So let's say that species in fact do change; this would contradict the fundamentalist assertion that species do not change, which in turn contradicts the fundamentalist assertion that the Bible is perfect and flawless. So then, the highest order assertion must be rejected; the Bible is not perfect and flawless. Fundamentalists cannot accept such a conclusion, so they must disagree on science's methodology (there are, of course, "creation scientists", but those are beyond the scope of this discussion). For further information on this matter, I encourage you to browse the talkorigins.org archives.



The second option is to say that the Biblical assumption is wrong; this is the stance that religious progressives take. The religious progressives say that the understanding of the Bible was wrong at the time, and while people thought that the Bible said X, it really says Y. But the problem with this line of thinking is that the authoritarian paradigm (which is implicit in the structure of religion) is questioned. Who decides what the Bible really says? God does. (or God's Prophets and messengers do). An example of this would be:

Book 32, Number 4092:

Narrated Aisha, Ummul Mu'minin:

Asma, daughter of AbuBakr, entered upon the Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) wearing thin clothes. The Apostle of Allah (peace_be_upon_him) turned his attention from her. He said: O Asma', when a woman reaches the age of menstruation, it does not suit her that she displays her parts of body except this and this, and he pointed to her face and hands.

This is Muhammad's definition of hijab. Many people who are lulled into progressive religion are often kept ignorant of traditional interpretations of religious books. (I have a Christian example of this, using Martin Luther, Melanchthon, John Calvin etc. arguing that the Bible says the sun revolves around the earth. You can find this in the attached essay, which is of my own authorship). There is also the simple matter of widespread ignorance regarding religion. People who call themselves "Christian", "Muslims", etc. are often very ignorant of the very thing in which they believe! Ask a Christian to quote John 3:16 (the most famous verse in the Bible), and they can very easily say "For God so loved the world, that He sent His only begotten Son, and that whoever believeth in him shall not perish in the hereafter". Or can they? I'll have to investigate this further through surveying local churches and Christian organizations. But in any case, ask a Christian to quote 2 Thessalonians 1:8-9, or Matthew 10:34, or Matthew 5:22, (all of which are important verses), and their voice falls flat. And these are just the New Testament examples. Ask a Christian what the subject of the book "Song of Solomon" is. Not many average Christians will tell you what it's about, since it's not on the curricula of most Sunday Schools. (it is a book about sexual desire in a positive light) Some examples of passages from the book:

1. "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine." A fitting beginning for a pornographic poem. 1:2
2. "He shall lie all night betwixt my breasts." 1:13
3. "I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste." 2:3
4. "His left hand is under my head and his right hand doth embrace me." She asks not to be disturbed "till he please." 2:6-7
5. Our heroine takes her lover into her mother's bedroom and asks not to be disturbed "till he please." 3:4-5
6. "Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins." 4:5
7. "Come ... blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits." 4:16
8. "My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him." 5:4
9. "My hands dropped with myrrh.... I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself." 5:5-6
10. "Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins." 7:1-3
11. "How pleasant art thou, O love, for delights! ... Thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine." 7:6-8
12. "Let us get up early to the vineyards ... there will I give thee my loves." 7:12
13. "His left hand should be under my head, and his right hand should embrace me.... Stir not up, nor awake my love, until he please." 8:3-4
14. "We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts ... But my breasts [are] like towers." 8:8-10

This is the smut which is found in "the good book". Go up to any Christian and show them these quotes, but don't tell them it's in the Bible. Most will immediately call them immoral and sinful. This is the stuff in which Ted Peters is trying to justify belief.

And this is just the beginning. Why do you think that when an evangelist witnesses to someone, he/she never tells the person to read such passages. The Christian always tell them to read the Gospels first, and save the rest for later (read: ignore the rest). If Christians were truthful, they would present the most difficult passages first (Numbers 15:32-36, where a man is killed for picking up sticks on the Sabbath).

But don't think that Christianity is the only one under the spotlight. There's also the Qur'an's punishments; such as cutting off the hands and feet on alternate sides (Qur'an 5:33), and so on. Go to a masjid and ask the Muslims there if they know of Qur'an 5:33, Qur'an 9:5, etc. etc. Most probably aren't aware of such passages.

So whether fundamentalism or progressivism, both are erroneous. The only conclusion is to deny the entire schema of religion.

2. I find this bizarre. There is no explicit relation between theology and quantum indeterminancy. Again, this progressive is preying on the ignorance of his audience. I noticed that you spelled "quantum" as "quantun". I wonder if that is an admission that you are wholly uninformed on quantum mechanics.

And as for raising ethical questions, I do not see how the 20th century's arousal of ethical questions is any different than any other century. When Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovered microorganisms, it also raised many ethical and religious questions ("Is it ok to kill microorganisms?" "Were 2 of every microorganism placed on the ark as well?"). Ted Peters does not explain how the 1960s is any different. (Perhaps he chose that era because it would be more vivid in people's memories).

3. Thank you, as I would very much rather speak with you, than Ted Peters.

Considering "Does God exists", I would respond that such a statement is meaningless because it violates the syntax of the English language =P.

And you also raise the issue of the reliability of the senses. While there can be some ground gained in that argument, it would only be a few feet into no-man's-land, and ultimately the tide will turn. Because you see, the moment you doubt the legitimacy of our senses, then there is no reason to accept God in the first place. Descartes tackled this issue with his famous declaration "Cogito ergo sum" (I think therefore I exist), which he proposed is the only thing of which people can be certain. (But what many people miss is that in order to reach this conclusion, he had to presuppose that God exists. For further reading, David Hume offers some good criticisms of the Cogito.) Believing in God in spite of the unreliability of our senses is in effect putting the cart in front of the horse.

Another issue is degrees of certainty . And this is reminiscent of quantum indeterminacy. While I cannot ever be 100% sure that I'm really typing this (I could be dreaming, or hallucinating, or even a brain in a vat =P), I am fairly confident that I'm actually typing this. Let's say 90%. While 90% belief may work for this, it does not work in the case of religion. Muhammad did not want 90% certainty in Islam, he wanted 100%. You must have absolute and true faith. When you begin to doubt the senses, then you're setting yourself up for a trip to hell. There is no room for doubt in Islam (or in any religion); the Qur'an states numerous times that God has revealed so many "proofs" of the truth of Islam that anyone who even questions it deserves punishment.

Commenting further on degrees of certainty, taking it to the extreme (when applying it to religion) would give an end-result of Pascal's Wager. So by choosing Islam, you're making the wrong choice, since Islam says that members of other faiths may reach heaven. The best bet (according to the Wager) would be to choose the most noninclusive religion, currently fundamentalist Christianity. Because that way, if Islam is right, and you chose Christianity, you still go to heaven. If Christianity is right, and you chose Christianity, you go to heaven. But if Christianity is right, and you chose Islam, you go to hell. (Admittedly, this is a simplification of Pascal's Wager, but this paraphrase is appropriate enough).

And regarding your final paragraph:

I don't wish to be rude, but I have no idea what the fuck you said. What do you mean when you say belief in God is "consistent with ourselves and serve us in living a natural and peaceful life"? Please don't use a whole bunch of words (like "natural", "peaceful", "consistent", and "serve") when they have many different meanings.

Also, you have not spoken a lot. Most of it was from Ted Peters. I hope in your next email I hear more from you. Thank you.

Sincerely,
Jason Macker

Oh my gosh, did I just criticize Islam? There, are you kaffirs happy now? Go away.

Ali Sina is still an idiot

Planet Hell - Nightwish


Ali Sina. That is the pseudonym of the founder of "Faithfreedom International", a website which describes itself as such:

Faith Freedom International is a grassroots movement of ex-Muslims. Its goals are to (a) unmask Islam and show that it is an imperialistic ideology akin to Nazism but disguised as religion and (b) to help Muslims leave it, end this culture of hate caused by their "us" vs. "them" ethos and embrace the human race in amity. We strive for the unity of Mankind through the elimination of Islam, the most insidious doctrine of hate. Islam can't be reformed, but it can be eradicated. It can't be molded, but it can be smashed. It is rigid but brittle. That is why Muslims do not tolerate criticism of it.

Second sentence and we already have a reductio ad Hitlerum. Associating Islam with Nazism is supposed to suddenly make it bad. ("Hitler was a vegetarian, therefore vegetarianism is bad!"). While this is effective for the simple-minded people this website is targeted against, it easily crumbles when used in a seriously philosophical debate(More on this further down). And then it uses bullshit phrases like "embraces the human race in amity". Muslims are a part of the human race. So when you say to eliminate them, you are not embracing the human race.

MIT professor Noam Chomsky says this:

"If you believe in freedom of speech, you believe in freedom of speech for views you don't like. Goebbels was in favor of freedom of speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're in favor of freedom of speech, that means you're in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise."

• Source: In Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, 1992

So criticizing Islam for its lack of freedom of speech and then saying that Islam shouldn't be given the freedom to exercise itself... is there any coherent way to hold such an opinion? Ask Ali Sina.


Moving on: so let's talk about the association with Nazism. Now, this is something which seems fairly obvious. Let's assume that Islam is in fact akin to Nazism. So what? What does that even mean? What is bad about Nazism? Is it because Nazis performed immoral actions? But when someone says that, he/she must define immoral. Thus, to use a comparison of Islam and Nazism as a means to degrade Islam requires a presupposition of a moral system. And in this case, this moral system presupposes that Nazism is bad. But therein lies the problem. How do we know this moral system is true? And this is why so many supporters of Ali Sina are Christians. Just check the demographics of the forums. But even among the atheists there, there is a presupposition of a moral system. A moral system which has not been proven to be true. Using an unproven moral system to disprove a different moral system (in this case Islam/Nazism) is utterly self-defeating. But all hope is not lost. See, a moral system, in order to be true, must necessarily be valid. And by valid, I mean in the sense of being logically consistent. For instance let's say I created a simple moral system with 2 propositions:

1. Eating candy is wrong.
2. Having sex is wrong.

Is this moral system true? I don't know. Is it valid? Yes, because it contains no contradictions. Now, let's look at a different moral system:

1. Eating candy is wrong.
2. Not eating candy is wrong.

Is this moral system valid? No, because it is logically inconsistent. And because it is invalid, it cannot logically be true. So as you can see, if someone can show a moral system is invalid, then the moral system is logically false. That is why one must work within the framework of that moral system in order to prove that it is false. Anyone with a basic grasp of philosophy knows that criticisms, of, say, deontological ethics, usually attempt to find a contradiction within the ethical system itself. For example, Kant's categorical imperative has been put to tough tests through trying to find maxims that can be universalized but still be contradictory. Same goes for the criticisms of utilitarianism. Supererogation and other criticisms of utilitarianisms arise from the ethical theory itself. If you go to a utilitarian and say "utilitarianism is false because you shouldn't treat people as a means to an end", he'll laugh at you. In the same way, if you use a moral system other than Islam to say that Islam's moral system is wrong, such an action is equally ludicrous. This is why I find inter-faith quarrelling to be inane and pointless.

My personal reason for not accepting Islam is that I find the assumption of free will to be contradictory with the assumption that God is omnibenevolent. (And of course, many other things, but this is the most prominent reason).

So when I hear someone like Ali Sina offering $50,000 to Muslims (is this offer open to atheists?) if they can disprove that Muhammad was:

a rapist
a pedophile (had sex with a child)
an assassin
a mass murderer
a ruthless torturer
a terrorist (I have been made victorious through terror)
a lecher
a misogynist
a narcissist
a thief and plunderer
a cult leader
a mentally deranged (was paranoid, heard voices, hallucinated of seeing jinns, Satan and angels, used to think he had sex with his wives when he did not, suffered from depression and had suicidal tendencies).

http://www.faithfreedom.org/challenge.htm

then I laugh. Looking at that list of things, the following are legal terms:

rapist
mass murderer
ruthless torturer
thief and plunderer

Which means that such a claim is ambiguous. What may be considered rape here in the United States, might be considered sexual assault in another country. For instance, exposing breasts in public here in the United States can make someone a "sex offender". But in Sweden, pornography can be displayed in public and nobody cares. Another example is having sex with a minor (the definition of minor varies among states as well). In the United States, a minor is someone under the age of 18. If an adult has sex with a minor, he/she has committed statuatory rape. But in other jurisdictions, the legal age is 16. So someone could be considered a rapist here in the United States, but not a rapist in Canada or something.

Murder is also another legal term. Murder is by definition unlawful killing. So the only way this claim works is if you presuppose a legal system other than Islam. But the moment you do so, the same problem as I illustrated previously arises; you must prove that your legal system is true!

Torture is yet another legal definition. Seeing as how the United States has a different definition of torture than the Geneva conventions, it is obviously to see how this can be obfuscated.

And finally, to call someone a thief means they committed an illegal act of stealing. Again, we get into legality issues once more. In some countries, to trick someone into selling something for a lot less than its worth is considered theft. In some countries, it isn't.

The point is, the reason nobody can disprove these allegations against Muhammad is because Ali Sina has not provided a consistent legal system which defines all of these terms. Because according to the legal system of Islam, Muhammad is not (and necessarily not) any of these.

But of course, anyone who believes in conscience theory, or any inferior "common sense" morality, they probably accept this argument of Ali Sina.

And then of course there is the humanist aspect. I'm against humanism, but I won't discuss it hear here. Maybe later. I think this is enough for now.

Kirbytime 9:5 ...fight and expose the hypocrites and fools wherever ye find them, and admonish them, ridicule them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of logic); but if they repent, and establish naturalism and practice rational thinking, then open the way for them: for Kirby is understanding and compassionate.

Fatwa against "Qur'an only" Muslims

Taken from: Islam Q and A


Question:
assalamu alaykum wa rahmatullah
There is a deviant group of people who claim to follow the Quran only, and not the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet (SAW). Please provide us with scholarly proof that they are on the wrong path, so we can give them da'wah, Insha Allah.
Wassalaam

Answer:

Praise be to Allaah.

Some people have started to claim that the Sunnah is not a source of legislation. They call themselves “al-Qur’aaniyyeen” and say that we have the Qur’aan, so we take as halaal whatever it allows and take as haraam whatever it forbids. The Sunnah, according to their claims, is full of fabricated ahaadeeth falsely attributed to the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him). They are the successors of other people about whom the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) told us. Ahmad, Abu Dawood and al-Haakim reported with a saheeh isnaad from al-Miqdaam that the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) said: “Soon there will be a time when a man will be reclining on his couch, narrating a hadeeth from me, and he will say, ‘Between us and you is the Book of Allaah: what it says is halaal, we take as halaal, and what it says is haraam, we take as haraam.’ But listen! Whatever the Messenger of Allaah forbids is like what Allaah forbids.” (Al-Fath al-Kabeer, 3/438. Al-Tirmidhi reported it with different wording, and said that it is hasan saheeh. Sunan al-Tirmidhi bi Sharh Ibn al-‘Arabi, al-Saawi edn., 10/132). The name al-Qur’aaniyyeen does not befit these people, because the Qur’aan tells us, in almost one hundred aayahs, to obey the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him). Obedience to the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) is considered in the Qur’aan to be a part of obedience to Allaah, may He be glorified. “He who obeys the Messenger, has indeed obeyed Allaah, but he who turns away, then we have not sent you (O Muhammad) as a watcher over them.” [al-Nisa’ 4:80 – interpretation of the meaning]. The Qur’aan, which they claim to follow, denies the faith of the one who refuses to obey the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and does not accept his ruling: “But no, by your Lord, they can have no Faith, until they make you (O Muhammad) judge in all disputes between them, and find in themselves no resistance against your decisions, and accept (them) with full submission.” [al-Nisa’ 4:65 – interpretation of the meaning]

Their suggestion that the Sunnah is “contaminated” with fabricated ahaadeeth is not valid, because the scholars of this ummah took the utmost care to purify the Sunnah from all alien elements. If they had any doubts about the truthfulness of any narrator, or there was the slightest possibility that he could have forgotten something, this would be sufficient grounds for rejecting a hadeeth. Even the enemies of this ummah have stated that no other nation has paid so much attention to examining its reports and their narrators, especially in the case of reports narrated from the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him).

For it to be obligatory to follow a hadeeth, it is sufficient for it to be known that it is a saheeh (authentic, sound) hadeeth narrated from the Messenger of Allaah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him). The Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) was content to convey his message by sending just one of his Companions, which proves that the hadeeth reported by one trustworthy person must be followed.

Moreover, we would ask these people: where are the aayaat which tell us how to pray, or which tell us that the obligatory prayers are five times daily, or which tell us about the nisaab on various kinds of wealth for the purpose of zakaah, or about the details of the rituals of Hajj, and other rulings which we can only know from the Sunnah?

Al-Mawsoo’ah al-Fiqhiyyah, 1/44

For more information on the shar'i evidence that the Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) is a source of evidence, see Question # 604.

Islam Q&A
Sheikh Muhammed Salih Al-Munajjid