Letter to the Prophet Muhammad

This is a letter, which was sent to us by one of our readers. We are publishing it as we feel it gives an insight into what some people today may wish to say to the prophet Muhammad.
 
 

Dear Messenger Of God,
Salamun Alaikum (Quran 6:54, 58:8)

Remember Prophet when you thought the following verse to us.

"The Prophet will say, "My Lord, indeed my people have gone away from this Quran" – Surah 25:30.

Well indeed this verse has come true. By the twentieth century we have millions of people claim to be ulema (scholars) but they do not even know how many surahs there are in the Quran. Instead of teaching the message of Quran, they spend all their time teaching all kinds of junk like hadith, ijmak and qiyas.

Forgive me my dear prophet but I almost forgot that you do not know what I am talking about. I forgot that I must explain to you the meanings of all these things, which will be totally strange to you.

Well let me tell you about hadith first. The ulema have created what they call "hadith". The ulema ‘s version of hadith is not what you taught us. You revealed to us that the Quran itself is the best and only hadith. You taught us, from your own mouth, that Quran is the "ahsanul hadith" or the best hadith (Surah 39:22).
For those of us who doubted this you even challenged us which other hadith, other than the Quran, would you believe in? (Surah 75:50)
 

Well, prophet the ulema have boldly risen to answer your challenge. They have totally ignored the Quran. They have written tons of what they call " hadith" and you know what? They say all their hadith actually comes from you!!. Can you imagine their temerity? These people are real mercenaries when it comes to making tell tales.
There is a guy called Bukhari. You have never heard of him because he was born about two hundred and fifty years after you. Anyway this guy claims he went out all over the Middle East on foot and on camelback (without any trains, cars or jumbo jets) and dug up about 600,000 hadith from you.
He then threw out about 99.5% of what he dug up and kept about 6000 hadith or less.
He says these are your authentic hadith. Included in this authentic hadith is a story that you had people eyes gouged out, their tongues cut out and that you asked people to drink camel’s urine. (Bukhari, vol. 7 hadith no. 590
 

He also says that you ordered your men to burn the houses of those people who did not go to the mosque to pray (Bukhari, vol. 1 hadith no. 626). He says you prescribed strange medical cures like dipping dead flies into your drink to fight germs.
 

The problem is the ulema have conned many millions of simple and honest people into believing that this is actually what you told them to do.
 

Excuse me? Did you ask why they wrote this false hadith? Well, the ulema feel that without their hadith, they will not be able to understand the meaning of your true teachings i.e. the Quran.

Excuse me? Did you ask me if I believe this? No way. I don’t buy this at all.
They have cooked up this mischievous story to mislead people from your true teachings of the Quran. Yes, in other words this is a plot by your enemies to keep the Muslims from the Quran.

Well there is also something else they have created. After they wrote their hadith, they went ahead and created something called ijmak or consensus of the scholars. The ijmak captured things they forgot to write in the hadith.

For example you only taught us prayers from the Quran (Surah 11:114) which gives us three names of these prayers (Surah 24:58, 2:2). But the ulema went ahead and created their own prayers. The strange thing is that these five prayers cannot even be found in their hadith. So they went ahead and made an ijmak about it. Excuse me? Did you ask me who are these scholars who are brave enough to make this ijmak? To be very frank, my dear Prophet, I don’t know.
And neither do the scholars themselves know. It is usually some Abu or some Ibnu but no one really knows for sure who these scholars are or what were their qualifications. What I do know is that for every ijmak made by any one scholar, there is at least one equal and opposite ijmak put forward by another scholar. To maintain their sanity, these scholars made another ijmak which said that is OK to have different ijmak. People belonging to different ijmaks started calling themselves madhabs.
 
 

Today the ulema have divided themselves into many madhabs like ahlul sunnah, Shiite, Wahhabi, hanafi, maliki and shafie madhab.
 

Recently one man said that you yourself belonged to the shafie madhab! Other scholars insist that you were an ahlul Sunnah madhab.

Excuse me? Did you ask me what is a madhab? Well, a madhab is a group of people who share ijmak and qiyas (I’ll explain qiyas later) that are similar. For example those who say that you can marry your own illegitimate daughter belong to the shafie madhab. Those who say you can have contractual intercourse with women for one hour or a period of two weeks belong to the Shiite madhab.

Excuse me? Did you ask who is Shafie? I don’t know. Apparently he is one of the scholars who was good at making ijmak.

Excuse me? Yes they say that all these things are derived from what you did. Please try not to be angry.

Their ignorance of the Quran is complete and done on purpose. There is a famous Sufi professor who runs a famous institute of Islamic thought who says quite proudly that the Quran is not his field of specialization. If you talk to him about the Quran he says, "go and ask the hafiz or the Quran scholars". His field is something called tassawuf – which I am sure you will never understand because you never taught to us. Tasawwuf ulema claim "out of body experiences to have a union with God. The call this "fana". If they are on drugs (and some of them were) then they claim "out of this world experiences" which they call "fana’ al fana". They claim to actually be with God.
 
You taught us, from your own mouth, that the Quran is the "ahsanul hadith" or the best hadith.
 
Qiyas is something else which will be totally strange to you. But you are not alone. It is totally strange to me too. Qiyas means analogy. The ulema themselves are still arguing which qiyas or whose qiyas are acceptable, arguable etc. etc. It is a real mess there. Unfortunately some of the so-called Islamic law fabricated by the ulema runs on qiyas. Some ulema say if you reject qiyas, you reject faith. Others say since we do not know which qiyas are correct it is not part of faith.

But with the ijmak it is otherwise. If you reject their ijmak, then they say you are a disbeliever.
 
This then my dear Prophet is the pathetic state of affairs of the people who claim to be following in your footsteps.

But please do not despair. Despite the millions who have been betrayed by the ulema there are an increasing number who are reading the Quran, which you brought to us. They are trying their best to be true believers in the message, which you have safely delivered to us in the form of the holy Quran.
 
Do not despair my dear Prophet. It is you who told us that " the truth will prevail"
(Surah 17:81).

We have absolute faith in what you taught us. Indeed the truth will always prevail. And damned will be the schemes of the betrayers.