The claim that "he is a Quranist who says 'the Qur'an is enough for us'"

What does the Quranism claim amount to?

Quranism is the name of the approach that holds that religion is to be understood from a translation of the Qur'an alone and that does not treat the sunnah as a binding source. The claim places Alparslan Kuytul on this line. The strange part is this: in the recording we have, that line appears not as a view held but as a question being answered.

What was the question, and what was the answer?

The question put to him on 26 March 2014 was this: there are people who say "the Qur'an is enough for us, there is no need for the sunnah"; what should our attitude towards them be? The answer begins with the rejection of that saying and goes on to explain why the sunnah is indispensable.

The "perform the prayer" example

The example he chooses takes the argument out of the abstract. The Qur'an commands the prayer, it commands the zakat; but it does not explain how the prayer is to be performed. In the same way, from which property, how many times and in what amount zakat is to be given; what does and does not break the fast; how the hajj is to be performed; the definition of intoxicants and of interest — the details of these are not in the Qur'an.

"The Qur'an says 'Perform the prayer' and leaves the rest to the Prophet, so that we may learn it from him."

Therefore the person who says "the Qur'an is enough" cannot so much as perform their prayer with the book they hold in their hand. This is the point the claim skips.

The argument from preservation

The justification most used by those who reject the sunnah is this: Allah gave His word to preserve the Qur'an, He did not give His word to preserve the sunnah. Kuytul turns this objection around within its own logic:

"If the sunnah, which is the explanation of the verse, is not preserved, does the preservation of the wording of the verse alone count as the preservation of the Qur'an? Allah, who gave His word to preserve the Qur'an, has preserved along with it as much authentic sunnah as we need in order to understand the Qur'an."

The reasoning is clear: if the text stays but is not understood, it does not count as preserved. The Qur'an's being preserved requires that the authentic sunnah which makes it understandable be preserved as well.

The objection from fabricated hadith

He does not deny that there are fabrications among the reports. But he does not draw from this the conclusion "let us give up all of them"; he recalls that this sifting was carried out centuries ago by Imam al-Bukhari, Imam Muslim and the other hadith scholars. The details of the subject are under the heading the "hadith denier" claim.

"These two sources are enough for us" — which two sources?

This is the one sentence that could serve as evidence for the claim, and torn from its context it really can be read as "the Qur'an is enough". Yet the sentence comes at the end of a paragraph that speaks of not even a single letter of the Qur'an having changed, and immediately afterwards this sentence is said:

"And without the sunnah it is never possible to understand the Qur'an."

That is, the two sources counted are the Qur'an and the sunnah. The function of the sentence is not to leave the sunnah out but to say that no third measure is needed beyond these two sources.

The foundation's line

From the day it was founded, the Furkan Education and Service Foundation has described its own line as "the Qur'an and the sunnah" and has named its method "the Prophetic Method of Movement". An approach that leaves the sunnah out does not stand together with either of these two definitions.

Conclusion

The claim presents an objection as a view: the person who answers the sentence "the Qur'an is enough for us" is shown as the one who said it. The recording of the answer is there in public; to test the claim it is enough to listen to it from beginning to end.

Related subject: the claim that "he does not regard the sunnah as revelation and does not consider it binding".