Explaining the Misguidance of the Quranists and Warning Against Them

The Shaykh: And we will suffice with this amount for now, to remind the brothers present that Islam is nothing but the Qur'an and the Sunnah, and that it was upon this that the righteous Salaf, all the mujtahid imams, and the Muslims have continued to be, and praise be to Allah, until today they do not know Islam except as Book and Sunnah, not Book only, but Book and Sunnah, and what branches from them, such as taking by correct qiyas, for example, and by the maslakh al-mursalah according to those who say in it, and the like of that, so all of it does not go out from the Book and from the Sunnah. When we know this reality, and it is by the grace of Allah clear and manifest, we must beware of what has occurred in the present age from some sects that claim to belong to Islam, and the most dangerous of them and the furthest from Islam is that sect known as the Quranists. They claim that they act by the Qur'an and explicitly state that they do not consider anything other than the Qur'an, and the Prophetic hadith in which the imams of fiqh, the imams of hadith, and the imams of usul labored. These immense efforts undertaken by those imams have absolutely no value in the eyes of these Quranists, they claim, for they do not rely on anything except what is in the Qur'an. In this lies a very great danger, if they were able to mislead the Muslim youth from what the Qur'an itself indicated, namely obedience to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) and following him in what he brought us of Book and Sunnah. These Quranists, with their new call, have cut the connection between the Muslims and the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), besides the fact that they have cut the connection with the righteous Salaf and with all the imams, for there is nothing for them except this Qur'an, so it does not concern them to know what the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) was upon in his morals, his biography, his characteristics, besides the fact that it does not concern them at all to know the explanations of the Messenger (peace be upon him) of the verses of the Qur'an, especially what was of it general, such as His saying (Blessed and Exalted is He): The result of their turning away from taking the second revelation, which is the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), is that they came with a new religion; they came with a prayer that has no pillars, and has no conditions, and has no fard and obligatory acts, because all these matters came only in the Sunnah of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) and did not come in the Noble Qur'an. Take, for example, a hadith from the most authentic hadiths concerning the explanation of something of the establishment of the prayer. That hadith is what al-Bukhari and Muslim narrated in their "Sahihayn" from the hadith of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): that he was sitting in his mosque when a man entered and stood up to pray. When he finished his prayer, he turned to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) saying: "Peace be upon you, O Messenger of Allah." He said (peace and blessings be upon him): . He returned and prayed as he prayed the first time, then he returned to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) greeting him, so he said to him (peace be upon him) again: . He returned again and prayed for the third time, then he returned to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) greeting him, so he said to him again: . He said: "By Allah, O Messenger of Allah, I do not know how to do anything else, so teach me." He said to him (peace be upon him): , and in a narration: . A hadith like this, which came in the most authentic books after the Book of Allah, al-Bukhari and Muslim, as we mentioned, and the entire Ummah received it with acceptance, this hadith has no value in the eyes of those people, because they turned away from adhering to many of the verses previously mentioned, because they interpret them other than their interpretation, so that led them to reject the second of the two foundations of the Shari'ah, the rejection of the pure Sunnah from one side, and it led them, as I mentioned just now, to come with new concepts for the verses that the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) explained by his saying, or his doing, or his approval. So it is obligatory upon us, and we are in an age in which doubts have multiplied and ignorance has overcome most of the Muslims, with great regret, that we know this reality, because knowledge of it is a guarantee for preserving the Muslim's creed, which is holding to the Book and the Sunnah and not being content with the Noble Qur'an without the Sunnah.