A Message from a Young man
Was published in Arabic in October 17, 2015
Translated by Ahmed fathy
We have recently received this email message from a young man. We have decided to publish it along with our reply. Here's his message.
(Peace be upon you! I am very happy indeed to find your website. I have been looking for those who share my logical convictions, but in vain. At last, when I have found your website by mere chance, I feel I breathe fresh air. I am a staunch believer in the fact that the so-called Sunna is distorted and fabricated; otherwise, why don't we, Muslims, follow the Bible? Prophet Muhammad is dead in his tomb now; he performed his mission to the full, and he knew no other gods but Allah: the Eternal God who does not die and is not judged: He is the Eternal Judge of humanity. I shall never understand the Sunnite people who claim to be Muslims and take pride in Prophet Muhammad just because he was an Arab like them. They feel as if he were alive in his tomb; as if he were an immortal deity. The Sunnite creed is nothing but pride. Sunnites mention reverently Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, among other mortal deities, more than they mention God and His prophet. Sunnites even mention reverently their imams of fiqh more than God the Almighty. As for Shiites, they mention reverently their mortal deity Ali Ibn Abou Talib more than God. Both the Sunnites and Shiites deify Muhammad the prophet and claim he is the best among creatures of God. We should not give any epithets to Prophet Muhammad not mentioned by God in the Quran. I am engaged in continuing arguments with people whose Islam is a mere habitual rites not real faith. I hope that you accept me as a brother in faith; a Quranist. Please let us keep up correspondences between us; I am in dire need of that sort of correspondence. I wish you all success to spread real Islam and restore it to its earlier nature.)
This is our reply:
Firstly:
1- I wish you all God's blessings. We agree with you in your criticism of those who worship mortal human beings and material things like stones. We call them Muhamadans, not Muslims, because the central point of their worship is the deification of Prophet Muhammad. For the Muhammadans, they created from the figment of their imagination a deity called Muhammad of mythical and Biblical proportions. This deity has nothing to do with the mortal human being that was Prophet Muhammad who is mentioned in the Quran.
2- Please allow me to make corrections to some of your ideas mentioned in your message.
2/1: "convictions": one should not have necessarily convictions shared with others. Be true to yourself and your faith; this is more important.
2/2: distortion of the Sunna:
We believe in practical ''Sunna'': prayers, fasting, pilgrimage, and zakat charity that have come down to us via traditions in accordance with the Quran. That is why we, Quranists, pray five times in the same way as Sunnites except that we say (3:18) as the testimony. We refuse to combine two prayers together except in times of war/battle or fear. We, Quranists, believe that prayers are not to be performed automatically like acrobats; rather, prayers are to be performed reverently and piously and in fear of God. Piety should extend to our times between prayers in all our actions. This is the meaning of performing prayers. We, Quranists, believe that all rituals and acts of worship are means to attain piety, not goals by themselves. Muhammadans – especially the Sunnites – have made prayers a goal by themselves, and this applies to other rituals and acts of worship like fasting, pilgrimage, zakat…etc. and this has led them to allow to themselves all crimes like killing, corruption, enslavement, stealing and swindling…etc. as we see in the demeanor of practicing Wahabis. We, Quranists, believe in pilgrimage; but one cannot possible perform this ritual instead of a living or a dead person. We refuse to visit Yathreb and the so-called tomb/shrine of Prophet Muhammad: this is a form of idolatry forbidden in the Quran. We refuse to wear white drapes and swathes of cloth during pilgrimage; how can one perform rituals semi-naked? We refuse the idea of making the pilgrimage confined to one week: it can be performed any time for a few days during the four lunar months: Zu Al-Hijja, Muharram, Saffer, and Rabei Awwal. Details of this is in our book published here on our website titled "Pilgrimage between Islam and Muslims". As for the oral ''Sunna'', it is in the Quran exclusively in the verses beginning with the word "Say". Details of this is in our book published here on our website titled ''The Word ''Say'' in the Quran". We find in the human-made, fabricated Sunnite creed that the word ''Sunna'' means the so-called hadiths (sayings attributed falsely to Prophet Muhammad) written two centuries after the death of Prophet Muhammad by people like Al-Bokhary and other clergy and imams in the Abbasid Era. This body of falsehoods is considered by the Sunnites as divine revelation. It is as if Gabriel has been descending upon imams in the Abbasid Era with chaotic, contradictory messages. This is absurd!
2/3: About your reference to the so-called tomb of Prophet Muhammad:
No one really knows the location of his tomb. Historically, we know that the prophet died in the room of his wife, Aisha, and later on, her room was demolished after her death, caused probably by men of Mu'aweiya, the first Umayyad caliph. Hence, the prophet was not buried in a tomb, but in a room demolished to widen the mosque in Yathreb as well as other rooms of the other wives after their death. This story is acknowledged by Sunnites in the books of Al-Bokhary; he wrote that when the room of Aisha was demolished, they found a human leg bone. They feared it might be the prophet's. Then, they were told a refutation to this surmise. Of course, they had no DNA tests in Middle Ages! This story is within history not a fact of Islam (the Quran). The veracity of history is relative; it might contain truths and falsehoods. History is not faith tenets. The only faith tenets and notions in Islam is in the Quranic verses. Quranic verses to us, Quranists, are the only absolute truths. Within the historical research methodology, we, Dr. Mansour, might accept the story of the leg bone in Aisha's room and the demolished rooms to widen the famous mosque in Yathreb. Lastly, no one can know exactly the burial place of the prophet. This was not deemed importance at the time. But in the beginning of the 3rd century after the advent of Islam, the age of writing down the earthly fabricated creeds (i.e., Sunnite, Shiite, and Sufi creeds) in the Abbasid Era began with its falsehoods imposed on the faith beliefs of the general public. within such an age, some claimed that the mosque in Yathreb is a holy shrine that contained the tomb of the prophet and should be visited during pilgrimage. Such writers/imams fabricated hadiths that urge others to visit the mosque in Yathreb; as if the prophet knew his burial place! This contradicts the Quran: "... and no soul knows in what land it will die. God is All-Knowing, Well-Informed." (31:34). Hence, they chose a spot randomly in the mosque to build a shrine. Widening the mosque in Yathreb reoccurred many times until recently in the current third KSA, when the Al-Saud family has invaded Yathreb. In sum, the tomb in the mosque of Yathreb is an idol of the devil that should be avoided as per Quranic orders: "... So stay away from the abomination of idols, and stay away from perjury." (22:30).
2/4: Your reference to Arabs taking pride in the Prophet:
This sham notion is spreading within the Muhammadans; they call themselves the "People of Muhammad". This deity, Muhammad, is supposed by them to intercede in Doomsday to transfer them from Hell to Paradise. Hence, in their falsehoods, this mortal deity is the master and owner of the Day of Judgment, not God! This is an absurd myth! That is why they take pride in their mortal deity: this feeling is shared by millions of Sunnites. This is not taking pride in the Arab race. Non-Arab Sunnites, Shiites, and Sufis exceed in number the Arab counterparts, especially in the Gulf monarchies. The biggest number of arabophone Sunnites/Wahabis is in Egypt; yet, Egyptians are not originally Arabs. Egypt is more ancient than the times of the emergence of Arabs. The Arab name of Egypt (Misr or Masr) is derived from an Arab verb that means ''to build an urban area; a city" in contrast to Bedouin style of life. The word ''Misr'' in the Quran is not Egypt; but it means any city by the river: "…Go down to Misr, where you will have what you asked for…" (2:61). Details of this are to be found in our book published on our website here titled: "Egypt in the Quran". Likewise, the word ''Furat'' means in Arabic ''sweet river water'', and Arabs gave this name to the Euphrates river in Iraq. The Quran used this word thrice: "And it is He who merged the two seas; this one fresh and sweet "furat", and that one salty and bitter; and He placed between them a barrier, and an impassable boundary."(25:53), "…The two seas are not the same. One is fresh, sweet, ''Furat" good to drink, while the other is salty and bitter…. "(35:12), and "And set on it lofty mountains, and given you pure ''Furat'' water to drink?" (77:27). Suffice it here to say that the forefather of Arabs, Abraham, came to Egypt once within the times of the Middle Phase of the Pharaonic Era. Egypt has been a central powerful state with its own civilization and people before Arabs by at least ten centuries. Amazigh and other original people in Iraq and the Levant are not as ancient as the Pharaonic Egyptians. Thus, arabophone Egyptians today are not of Arab origin.
Lastly:
Thank you again for your email message and you are welcome in the website of the Quranists. By the way, this announcement is addressed to you and to those who want to sign up in our website:
1-Anyone who wants to sign up in our website should send us, Dr. Mansour, an email message with a new email address, mentioning his/her name, birth date, education, nationality, country of residence, and city of residence. The conditions of writing on the website are two: never attributing any of the so-called hadiths to Prophet Muhammad, and never to deny facts of the Islam found in the Quran.
2- We, Dr. Mansour, will sign him/her up ourselves, and will send him/her via email message the username and password so that he/she can write comments under articles published on our website.
3- Later on, some might be promoted as a writer on our website.
With my sincere, cordial wishes,
Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour