Quranism refers to Muslims who reject the Hadiths and consider the Quran to be the sole source of divine authority. What is the best way throughout history to make them a mainstream sect of Islam comprising a majority in certain regions? Would that involve an Islamic Reformation along the lines of the Christian one?
AHC: Make Quranism a mainstream sect of Islam
- Thread starter Hayatgheibi
- Start date
Wahhabis and Salafis are inclusive of the hadiths. Which makes all the difference, as they are extremely conservative while Quranists tend to be progressive and are loathed by fundamentalists.
Progressive only because of the literal cherry-picking that supports western views. If Quranists were to emerge in 9th century then they'd have harsh rules as maintaining a distance between genders( literal interpretation of 'Don't even go near fornication) to the ban of usage of word 'uff' in front of parents( another literal interpretation of verse). In reality they'd be Just another sect crazier than Qaramatians and harsher than Kharijites and Almohads combined. They won't survive for long.
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The way I understand it, Quranism can really only exist in a context where an Islamic community rejects sharia as source of lay law, since the Hadiths are, in effect, the actual laws to the Quran's "constitution", and without it you are left entirely with the Quran's vauguer precepts, assuming no binding imam authority is recognised.
This has the obvious problem that, in effect, in order for Quranism to be mainstream, the Muslim faith needs to be dominant only in select areas... which goes counter to your "majority in certain regions", because then the majority of muslims would be actually be a minority in the territory they inhabit.
ETA: also, realistically, a a "Muslim Reformation" would mean reshuffling the hadiths, not abolish them.
This has the obvious problem that, in effect, in order for Quranism to be mainstream, the Muslim faith needs to be dominant only in select areas... which goes counter to your "majority in certain regions", because then the majority of muslims would be actually be a minority in the territory they inhabit.
ETA: also, realistically, a a "Muslim Reformation" would mean reshuffling the hadiths, not abolish them.
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Sola scriptura Abrahamics tend to not be very sucessful until the Reformation and even then and with Karaites as well a new tradition of extra-scriptural customs traditions theology and hermeneutics still arises.
People like complicating things and getting nitty gritty. It's a feature not a bug.
Probably true. Consider the early Protestants who tried to return to a Bible-only view of Christianity were notoriously socially conservative, while today the trend is for mainline Protestant denominations to become more liberal.
Combined with the previous comment, that is why I believe Quranism would have to emerge with a separation of religious and secular power and a subversion of the former to the latter. Which happened to some extent in Protestant countries.
Yeah, Quranism would not eliminate the need for theology, just make it dependent on interpretation of the Quran only rather than the hadiths. And you bet that will cause lots of schisms like in Protestantism
Which makes pre Ghazalian Cordoba or Ayyubid Egypt your best locations for such a movement to arise.
IMO? Pretty damn difficult.
IIRC a significant amount of information on the actual practice of Islam comes from the Quran. I don't see any real good options for intermediary steps from mainstream Sunni (or Shi'a? Ibadi? Kharijite?) jurisprudence to full Quranism the way that there were are are many, many, many degrees of separation between the Roman Catholic Church, and, say, ultra low (no "mass" to speak of/communion almost entirely centered, no saints, denigration of the Virgin Mary and even denial of the virgin birth, etc) calvinistic protestant churches. Hadith are pretty central to the understanding of Islam, and to remove them is to remove a fundamental cornerstone of Islamic thought. You'd need to have several layers of "hadith-lite" Islamic jurisprudences and even then.
IIRC a significant amount of information on the actual practice of Islam comes from the Quran. I don't see any real good options for intermediary steps from mainstream Sunni (or Shi'a? Ibadi? Kharijite?) jurisprudence to full Quranism the way that there were are are many, many, many degrees of separation between the Roman Catholic Church, and, say, ultra low (no "mass" to speak of/communion almost entirely centered, no saints, denigration of the Virgin Mary and even denial of the virgin birth, etc) calvinistic protestant churches. Hadith are pretty central to the understanding of Islam, and to remove them is to remove a fundamental cornerstone of Islamic thought. You'd need to have several layers of "hadith-lite" Islamic jurisprudences and even then.
I thought that most Protestants in Brazil were evangelicals, not mainline?
Evangelical here is a catch-it-all term for protestantes, Baptists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, Reformed, etc. Here they are called "historical sects" in contrast to the modern or "pentecostal sects".
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True, here in Brazil, "Evangelical" does not has the same meaning as it does in the US, like how in Ethiopia, "P'ent'ay" (originally referring to Pentecostals) now means all Ethiopian Protestants in general.
Well, this idea of relating Protestantism to tolerance is not correct. In Brazil, or in Africa. As @Monter and @athgtq16129 said, Protestants in Brazil are the most reactionary group. What usually happens is that the majority Christian sect in the country is more liberal while the minority is more reactionary. So in the USA the reactionaries are Catholic, in Brazil they are Protestant.
Look, if you want more "liberal" Islam what you really want are more heresies rather than looking at Quranism, which is only arbitrarily liberal in our current time but if taken fully would actually be very conservative. The weirder stuff in Islam is what you want to cultivate (like the Khurramiya for instance).
Maybe a Muladi revolt/coup d'état, making them control the country. In conjunction with this a strengthening Shu'ubiyya movement.