......... The prophet is dead, but the Qur'an is still alive and Allah has instructed us through the Qur'an to gain knowledge and continue reading and trying to understand this Qur'an.
firstly Quran is not alive, its not a living thing....
secondly, do strive to understand the Quran in the light of Hadith....
the Prophet(saw) is dead, but his words have been recorded....
so do give them the significance they deserve....
To reject every single hadith on the basis of weakness found in one set of narrations is IMO a slippery slope.
The Quran is a book, a source of guidance for all mankind. It contains all sorts of knowledge both literal and 'hidden' or ambigious. The literal aspect of Quran such as the 'hukm' or amr are self explanatory and can be understood by everyone. The 'hidden' aspects are not. These are as the Quran itself mention understood by those to whom it was revealed, i.e. The Prophet (saw).
What I mean is we read and try to understand the Quran basically to find out God's 'intent' or what God is saying to us. But because the Quran was not revealed to each and everyone of us, how can we know in a case of where one or more than one meaning can be ascribed to a verse, what EXACTLY God want to tell us? In this case we have no choice but to turn to those who according to the Quran, "have knowledge". If we were to put our own meanings and interpretations to the verses of the Quran, we would be comitting a big mistake because our meanings and interpretations will always be limited by our experiences, and limited by our knowledge. We would be like the four blind men and the elephant in our understanding because we only know and see a part and not the whole. This is the greatest disrespect we could do to the Quran, putting our own spin as it where onto God's word. To understand what the Quran means, we need to turn to the words of God's Messenger, which have been recorded and although we acknowledge the recording has been less than perfect, we cannot reject it ALL while there is hope of finding genuine guidance from the Prophet (saw). Instead of outright rejection we need to separate the 'wheat' from the 'chaff' in the collections of narrations and to do this we can use the Quran because we know the Prophet (saw) would never do or say anything contrary to Quranic injunctions.
In any case, if you refute the argument for need of Prophet (saw) to wholly understand the meaning of the Quranic verses, I would like to ask you the meaning of huroof muqatta'at such as alif laam meem, saad etc as one example of your understanding. What does God wish to convey to us by those letters?
rhia, you are 2 much yaar :)
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*Originally posted by armughal: *
secondly, do strive to understand the Quran in the light of Hadith....
the Prophet(saw) is dead, but his words have been recorded....
so do give them the significance they deserve....
[/QUOTE]
Actual words said by the Prophet are worthy of all significance. Sadly all we have today masquerading as his words are opinions of scholars about narrations that are supposed to be words of the Prophet..
you go ahead base your understanding of the Qur'an on that.. I'd rather use my own 'aql' cuz I take Allah for his word when he says the Qur'an was made easy and He explained things in it.