The Misleading Sunnah?

© G.M. Woerlee

According to the followers of Islam, Mohammed was the foremost and last prophet of God. He lived from 570 to 632 CE, and throughout the latter half of his life he received revelations from God (see biography of the prophet Mohammed). These revelations were complied after his death to form the Holy Koran, or Quran, and the followers of Islam believe the Arabic text of the Koran to be the true and undiluted text of the direct revelations of God to Mohammed (see history of the Koran).

Islam is a major world religion with a following of more than 1.5 billion people. And just like all world religions it too preaches many praiseworthy human values, as well as forming the base of social cohesion in many of the lands where it is practiced. Fortunately for all those who cannot read the ancient dialect of Mecca spoken by Mohammed, the Holy Koran has been capably translated into many languages. This is also a direct instruction of God in the Holy Koran, and translation of the Koran into many languages is promoted by the highest Islamic authorities.

And We never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make (the message) clear for them. (Koran 14:4)

But for many, the lessons in the Koran were incomplete or insufficient, and they looked to the speech and deeds of Mohammed for guidance with problems not clearly expressed in the Koran. God had even revealed that this was a sensible and good thing to do, for God had revealed to Mohammed that:

Verily in the messenger of Allah ye have a good example for him who looketh unto Allah and the last Day, and remembereth Allah much. (Koran 33:21)

Accordingly, many scholars began collecting and compiling the known sayings and deeds of Mohammed. One of the most authoritative compilations is that of Muhammad Ismail al-Bukhari who lived from 810 to 870 CE in the city of Bukhara (see biography of Muhammad Ismail al-Bukhari). For 16 years he travelled widely collecting thousands of deeds and/or sayings of Mohammed. Legend tells that he collected more than 300,000 such sayings and/or deeds. Each of these sayings and/or deeds is called a Hadith. Bukhari was a meticulous scholar working about 200 years after the death of Mohammed, and knew that many such stories were wild fabrications, half remembered truths, while some really were true. So he adopted the careful procedure of only accepting those Hadiths as true sayings and/or deeds of Mohammed if the line of transmission, called the Isnad, from one person to another across the 200 years was clear, trustworthy, and unequivocal. He even graded Hadiths as to their reliability, correctly assuming those Hadiths confirmed by multiple unrelated Isnads to be the most reliable. This was astoundingly good scholarship, and all done in a time long before computers were even dreamed of. He was finally left with only 2,602 Hadiths, which were duly compiled according subject, and published. The published compilation of these Hadiths is called the Sunnah, or compilation of Hadith. Even today, the Sunnah of Bukhari is considered to be the most authoritative of all compilations of Hadith, and is considered as second only to the Koran in authority by the Sunni Moslems who use this book next to the Koran.

The Sunnah of Bukhari contains Hadith dealing with a simply enormous range of human activities, such as: rules governing trade, rules of plunder, clothing, menstruation, urination, defecation, when to have sex, the sale of slaves, the buying of dates, when to rape female prisoners, the washing of hands, alcohol, etc. But Mohammed was a man. So were his urination and defecation under divine control? Were his eating, going to the market for food, and his haggling over the price of food under divine control? He was married with many wives. Were his sexual activities and settling of personal marital problems divinely inspired? Other followers of Islam, and even godless unbelieving-dog heathens, perform these same activities without any evident divine control by the God of Islam. At these times, his deeds and his words were almost certainly his own, because I cannot imagine that the urination, defecation, eating, buying food in the market, or the sexual activities of Mohammed were divinely controlled by God. This means that Mohammed was certainly not receiving revelations from God all the time. Unfortunately, the Sunnah does not differentiate which of the words and deeds of Mohammed were from Mohammed himself, and which originated from divine revelation. This is an important weakness of the Sunnah which no-one has ever completely explained to me.

There is another, even more important weakness regarding the use of the Sunnah. The revelations of God in the Koran are considered to be true revelations from God. But in this very same Koran, even though God said that Mohammed is a good example to follow (Koran 33:21), God also revealed that regardless of what Mohammed desired, did, or said, it is God who ultimately decides the fate of each individual during their mortal life, as well as in a life after death (see also Koran 2:142, Koran 7:178, Koran 14:4, Koran 22:18, Koran 81:29).

Lo! thou (O Muhammad) guidest not whom thou lovest, but Allah guideth whom He will. And He is best aware of those who walk aright. (Koran 28:56)

This actually means that while the Sunnah tells us what Mohammed desired, did, and said, it does not tell us if God ultimately approved of these things. This is a major logical flaw in the use of the Sunnah as a holy book. Such a statement from God (or Allah) means that to use the Sunnah as a source of information regarding the will of God is actually unjustified! The only, and inescapable conclusion able to be drawn from these inconsistencies, is that the only sensible course of action for true followers of Islam is to totally discard the use of the Sunnah altogether, because the potentially misleading texts within may doom them to hell in the afterlife promised all true believers. By implication, the Koran is all that can be relied upon, because this is believed to be the direct and unadulterated message of Gods to mankind.

As if this were not enough reason for followers of Islam to save themselves from portential doom, there is another even more serious reason - just as in Judaism and Christianity, the God of Islam sometimes also purposely leads people astray so that they can later undergo ghastly torments in hell for all eternity (see also Koran 7:178, Koran 7:186).

And We never sent a messenger save with the language of his folk, that he might make (the message) clear for them. Then Allah sendeth whom He will astray, and guideth whom He will. He is the Mighty, the Wise. (Koran 14:4)

This is truly shocking! So the Koran tells the followers of Islam that the sayings and/or deeds of Mohammed in the Sunnah are all very well, but it is God who determines whether a person goes to hell or heaven. And we cannot know what God really wants, because God is unknowable. Furthermore, God tells us in this same passage that God also sends people astray - God actually intentionally deceives people! This is really dreadful, because we can never know when God is leading people astray, and this was even true for Mohammed at times (Koran 2:142, Koran 22:18, Koran 81:29).

This may sound surprising, but one of the best examples of the ways Mohammed was led astray by God is revealed in the contradictory and inconsistent relationship between followers of Islam and dogs. Now if God is perfect and eternal, and the laws of God equally perfect and eternal, then why were the sayings and deeds of the prophet Mohammed regarding dogs so contradictory and inconsistent? After all, we know from the Koran that Mohammed was a man who supposedly best knew the wishes of God (see Koran 33:21). I have discussed this topic quite exhaustively in my website Islam and dogs, as well as clearly demonstrating the ways how the inconsistent sayings and deeds of Mohammed with regard to dogs clearly demonstrates the imperfect nature of the Sunnah, all of which casts considerable doubts upon the validity of the use of the Sunnah next to the Koran.

This means that, regardless of whether they are prophets or not, God willfully sends people astray so they can later undergo an eternity of unspeakable torment in hell for being mislead by this same God! Accordingly, following the lessons in the Sunnah is not necessarily following the instructions of God, which means that to use the Sunnah for guidance may also be a delusion, dooming those who believe in its message. This is not the message of a loving God.

All these things make it very evident that Allah, the God if Islam as well as the God of the Jews and the Christians, is a God of inconceivable mendacity and cruelty, a God who evidently stoops to deception in order to get as many souls as possible to torture in hell for all eternity. Read more about the ghastly trinity of God - deception, disease, and death - in The Unholy Legacy of Abraham , a book proving the truly perfidious nature of the God described in texts of the Torah, Bible and Koran!