How a community can continue quoting the Quran while allowing something else to determine its meaning

At a Glance: The Main Points

·    How can the Quran be deserted? By continuing to read, study, and quote it while allowing someone else's explanations to become the final authority over what it says.

·    What does hadith actually mean? A statement, narration, conversation, or account. The Quran itself is called God's best hadith (39:23). Hadith does not automatically mean a fabrication or a statement transmitted by somebody else.

·    What did Rashad instruct Submitters to do? Uphold the Quran alone as the criterion, examine his teachings against it, and reject anything not supported by God's words.

·    Verifying IF versus THAT: Are we genuinely examining whether Rashad's explanation is correct, or searching for evidence to confirm a conclusion that he must be correct?

·    What defines a Submitter? Does examining the messenger's explanations against the Quran constitute placing personal opinion above him—or is that precisely what he instructed believers to do?

·    The dietary-laws controversy: In the discussions I witnessed, the majority defended both an incorrect methodology and what I consider an incorrect conclusion while accusing the minority of rejecting and fighting the messenger. Yet they were disregarding teachings from that very messenger.

·    The ultimate question: When Rashad's explanation and the Quran appear to disagree, is the Quran permitted to establish that Rashad himself was mistaken?

The issue is not whether we respect the messenger. The issue is whether the Quran remains the ultimate authority over his explanations as well as our own.

The following sections explain these points in greater detail.

1. The Warning We Should Apply to Ourselves

In 25:30, the messenger says:

[25:30] The messenger said, "My Lord, my people have deserted this Quran."

Rashad Khalifa applied this warning to his own mission as God's Messenger of the Covenant. Therefore, for Submitters who recognize that mission, this is not merely a warning about other religious communities.

It is a warning that concerns us.

This raises an important question: How could people who believe in the Quran, study it regularly, quote its verses, and repeatedly proclaim "the Quran, the whole Quran, and nothing but the Quran" nevertheless desert it?

One possibility is that desertion does not necessarily involve abandoning the physical scripture or refusing to read it.

It can happen when the Quran remains present, but its authority is gradually transferred elsewhere.

A person may continue quoting Quranic verses while treating somebody else's explanation as the predetermined truth. When the Quran appears to disagree with that explanation, the Quran must be reinterpreted until it conforms.

The Quran is still being read, but it is no longer being permitted to determine the conclusion.

That is the danger this article examines: the displacement of Quranic authority without the visible abandonment of the Quran itself.

This is not an argument for rejecting Rashad Khalifa, disregarding his teachings, or diminishing his role as a messenger.

It is an argument for applying the very principle he repeatedly instructed Submitters to uphold.

2. Whose Hadith Are We Talking About?

Before examining this issue, we need to understand the meaning of the Arabic word hadith.

Among some Submitters, the word has acquired a restricted meaning, as though it necessarily refers to false religious statements attributed to Prophet Muhammad or narrations passed down by other people.

But the Quran uses the Arabic word ḥadīth much more broadly.

It means a statement, narration, conversation, account, or discourse. The word itself does not establish whether the information is true or false, divine or human, reliable or fabricated.

Consider three important distinctions.

God's Hadith — The Quran

In 39:23, God describes the Quran as the best hadith.

[39:23] GOD has revealed herein the best Hadith; a book that is consistent, and points out both ways...

The Quran is God's revealed word. As the best hadith, it possesses an authority that cannot be equated with human religious explanations.

This distinction is fundamental.

The Quran does not identify all hadith as automatically false or satanic. Rather, it establishes the superiority of God's own revelation.

Muhammad's Hadith — His Statements and Reports Attributed to Him

Prophet Muhammad spoke to people, answered questions, explained matters, and engaged in ordinary conversations.

In 66:3, the Quran describes something the prophet privately communicated as a hadith.

His own statements were therefore not exempt from the ordinary meaning of the word.

However, we must distinguish Muhammad's actual statements from the later Hadith and Sunnah collections, which contain reports attributed to him through transmitters.

Whether a particular report accurately preserves something Muhammad said is a separate question from the meaning of the word hadith.

Rashad's Hadith — His Statements, Explanations, and Teachings

Rashad's recorded Quran studies, lectures, sermons, written explanations, footnotes, and religious teachings are also hadith in the ordinary linguistic sense.

Calling them hadith does not imply that they are fabricated or incorrect.

They can be accurate, insightful, valuable, and fully supported by the Quran.

But Rashad's explanations about the Quran are not themselves the Quran.

His words and God's revealed words must remain distinguishable, even when Rashad explains the Quran correctly.

Does Hadith Have to Come From Someone Else?

Some have proposed an even narrower definition: that hadith must be a report transmitted by another person, rather than something spoken directly by the original speaker.

Under this understanding, Rashad's own recorded speech would supposedly not qualify as hadith because it came directly from him.

But this restriction does not reflect the broader Quranic usage.

In 66:3, a communication made by Muhammad himself is described as hadith. In 39:23, God's revealed scripture is called the best hadith.

Neither example depends upon a later narrator transmitting the original speaker's words.

Consequently, whether we hear Rashad speaking directly in a recording or hear somebody else reporting what he said does not determine whether the communication can be described as hadith in its ordinary meaning.

The important distinction is whose words they are, whether the information is reliable, and what authority those words are being given.

We can study, appreciate, and benefit from Rashad's hadith without elevating his religious explanations to the authority of God's hadith.

And that brings us to the central question: What determines religious truth?

3. The Quran Must Remain the Source of Authority

The Quran describes God's revelation as fully detailed.

[6:114] Shall I seek other than GOD as a source of law, when He has revealed to you this book fully detailed?

The Quran also commands us to verify information rather than follow what we do not know.

[17:36] You shall not accept any information, unless you verify it for yourself. I have given you the hearing, the eyesight, and the brain, and you are responsible for using them.

These verses establish principles that Rashad repeatedly emphasized throughout his mission.

His explanations can help us understand the Quran, but they cannot become an independent authority that determines what the Quran must mean.

A source of religious law is not simply something we read or learn from. It is the authority to which we ultimately defer when deciding what is religiously correct.

Two sources might appear to agree, but the real test of authority arises when they appear to disagree.

If Rashad's explanation appears inconsistent with the Quran, which one has the authority to correct the other?

Within a Quran-alone framework, the answer must be the Quran.

This does not mean we automatically assume Rashad was mistaken. We should examine his reasoning carefully, consider the possibility that we misunderstood him, and study the relevant Quranic evidence.

However, we must also allow for the possibility that we understood Rashad correctly and that Rashad himself made a mistake.

Without that possibility, the Quran is no longer functioning as the final criterion.

4. Honoring the Messenger Includes His Instructions About Verification

Recognizing Rashad as God's Messenger of the Covenant does not require disregarding his teachings or minimizing his role.

The Quran assigns important responsibilities to messengers, including delivering God's message, warning people, and clarifying matters.

However, recognizing a messenger's God-given responsibilities is different from declaring every religious interpretation he offers to be infallible.

Rashad was particularly explicit about the source of religious authority.

In Quran Study #39, on December 28, 1989, he stated:

"The criterion of obeying the messenger is that whatever he says must be in the Quran and be backed up by what God is saying. If it is not in the Quran, it is your obligation to disobey him."

He referred to the same surah containing 60:12, which qualifies obedience to the prophet in terms of what is right.

This was not an isolated statement.

Throughout his mission, Rashad repeatedly emphasized that believers follow God and God's words, not the independent opinions of human beings—including his own.

These principles appear throughout the collection of 27 teachings from Rashad emphasizing the Quran as the ultimate authority.

They are not peripheral remarks. They concern the fundamental method by which Submitters are supposed to approach religious teachings.

This creates a significant contradiction for those who insist that all Rashad's explanations must be accepted without hesitation.

If obeying Rashad requires accepting everything he teaches, why would someone refuse to apply his repeated teaching that his own explanations must be verified against the Quran?

We cannot claim to uphold all his religious teachings while making an exception for the very teachings that establish how his other explanations must be evaluated.

More importantly, those teachings are consistent with the Quranic principle that God's revelation remains the criterion.

Following a messenger cannot require giving his explanations greater authority than the scripture he was sent to confirm.

5. Verifying IF Rashad Is Correct—or Verifying THAT He Is Correct?

This distinction is fundamental.

Two Submitters may listen to the same Quran study, examine the same verses, and even arrive at the same conclusion.

Yet their methods of determining the truth may be entirely different.

Method One: Verify IF Rashad Is Correct

The first person approaches Rashad's explanation with respect and an expectation that he probably had sound reasons for what he taught.

However, the person does not begin with an unchangeable conclusion.

Instead, the question is:

Does the Quran support this understanding?

If the Quran supports it, the explanation is accepted.

If further study reveals a misunderstanding, that misunderstanding is corrected.

And if the Quran demonstrates that Rashad himself made an error, the explanation is rejected or corrected accordingly.

The Quran determines the conclusion.

Method Two: Verify THAT Rashad Is Correct

The second person begins with the conclusion that Rashad's religious explanation cannot be mistaken.

This person may also examine the Quran and quote numerous verses.

However, the purpose of that examination has changed.

Instead of determining whether the explanation is correct, the person is searching for a way to demonstrate that it must be correct.

Any apparent contradiction must be resolved in Rashad's favor because the possibility that he made an error has already been excluded.

This is not genuinely open-ended verification.

It is confirmation of a predetermined conclusion.

Three Possibilities That Genuine Verification Must Allow

When examining a particular explanation, three outcomes must remain possible:

1. Rashad is correct, and we understand him correctly. The Quran supports the explanation.

2. Rashad is correct, but we have misunderstood him. Further examination corrects our misunderstanding.

3. We understand Rashad correctly, but Rashad himself is mistaken. The Quran establishes the error, and we follow the Quran.

The third possibility is essential.

Without it, verification becomes an exercise in defending Rashad's presumed infallibility rather than establishing what God actually says.

We do not verify Rashad's teachings against the Quran because we assume he was wrong. We verify them because we do not assume he was incapable of being wrong.

The Quran—not Rashad's explanations—is the criterion that determines what is correct.

6. What Defines a Submitter?

In some discussions, those who accuse other Submitters of rejecting or fighting the messenger have advanced what amounts to a five-part definition of a Submitter:

1. You believe in God.

2. You believe in the Quran.

3. You believe Rashad Khalifa is God's messenger.

4. You believe in the Quran's mathematical code of 19.

5. You do not place your personal opinion above the messenger.

The central dispute addressed in this article does not concern the first four points.

The disagreement concerns how the fifth point is understood and applied.

What exactly does it mean to place your personal opinion above the messenger?

Does examining Rashad's explanation against the Quran, as he explicitly instructed, constitute placing your personal opinion above him?

Or could the opposite be true?

Suppose someone insists that their understanding of Rashad must be correct, even when the Quran presents evidence against it.

Suppose that person also disregards Rashad's repeated instructions to use the Quran as the ultimate authority.

Is that person truly defending the messenger?

Or are they defending their own understanding of him?

There is an important distinction between rejecting a messenger's actual message and questioning whether a particular explanation—either his or ours—is correct.

Rashad's religious explanations could be mistaken, and our understanding of his explanations could also be mistaken.

That is precisely why the Quran must remain the final criterion over both.

A person who carefully verifies Rashad's explanation against the Quran is not automatically placing personal opinion above the messenger.

That person may be applying the very standard Rashad explicitly instructed Submitters to uphold.

If every disagreement with an interpretation is automatically classified as rejecting the messenger, then that interpretation becomes effectively immune to correction.

And once that happens, the individual's understanding of Rashad risks becoming the practical authority over the Quran.

7. The Dietary-Laws Controversy: A Lesson We Should Not Forget

The dietary-laws controversy of 2010–2011 provides a particularly revealing example of how this problem can develop.

In the discussions I witnessed, the majority defended the position that anything dedicated to other than God—including vegetables, fruit, or even water—was prohibited.

A minority maintained that the relevant Quranic dietary prohibitions concerned animals and meat.

The disagreement partly arose from Rashad's English translation of 16:115, which used the broader word "food," while the relevant Arabic passages in 2:173, 6:145, and 16:115—and Rashad's more specific recorded explanations—supported, in my examination, the animal-products understanding.

Over time, the narrower interpretation gained acceptance among the Submitters involved in these discussions.

However, the most important lesson is not simply which interpretation was correct.

It is how people determined what was correct—and what happened when others disagreed.

Two Methods, Three Possible Outcomes

Consider three approaches that appeared during the controversy.

Approach A: Quran as the criterion — Animal-products conclusion

A person examines the relevant Quranic verses, their Arabic wording, and the surrounding context.

The person concludes that the prohibitions concern animals or meat because that is what they understand the Quran to establish.

Rashad's explanations may support that conclusion, but the Quran remains the determining authority.

Approach B1: Rashad as the criterion — Animal-products conclusion

A person accepts the animal-products interpretation primarily because Rashad explained the prohibitions that way.

The person then examines the Quran to demonstrate that Rashad's explanation must be correct.

The conclusion agrees with Approach A, but the methodology differs.

Approach B2: Rashad as the criterion — Broader-food conclusion

A person interprets Rashad's use of the word "food" to mean that anything dedicated to other than God is forbidden.

The person then defends that understanding as the messenger's teaching, despite contrary evidence from the Quran and his other explanations.

Under the Quranic interpretation presented here, this approach produces both the wrong methodology and the wrong conclusion.

These outcomes demonstrate something extremely important:

A correct conclusion does not necessarily establish that the correct methodology was used.

And an incorrect conclusion does not become correct simply because a majority of believers confidently attributes it to a messenger.

The Majority Was Making the Accusations

What makes this historical controversy especially significant is what happened to the minority.

In the discussions I witnessed, it was the majority defending the broader-food prohibition that accused other Submitters of being:

·    "Enemies of God"

·    "Advocating idol worship"

·    "Fighting the messenger"

·    "Fighting God"

·    "Hypocrites"

These were not insignificant disagreements over dietary interpretation.

They were serious religious accusations directed at people who did not accept the majority's understanding of Rashad's teachings.

Some were accused of rejecting the messenger, rejecting his explanations, and refusing to obey him.

Yet the majority's own position contained a contradiction.

Defending Their Understanding While Disregarding the Messenger's Teachings

The majority insisted that believers must uphold all of Rashad's religious teachings.

They argued that rejecting his explanations constituted disobedience to God's messenger.

Yet in defending their interpretation of a particular English word, they were disregarding his other explanations on the very same dietary issue.

More importantly, they were disregarding his repeated teachings that the Quran must remain the final criterion.

They were defending what they understood Rashad to mean while refusing to apply the very method he had instructed believers to use.

They claimed the minority was disobeying the messenger, while they themselves were disregarding teachings from that same messenger.

And according to the Quranic evidence examined here, their dietary conclusion was also mistaken.

This is the central historical lesson.

The majority was not simply mistaken about dietary laws.

They were defending a methodology that treated their interpretation of Rashad as authoritative, and that methodology helped produce an incorrect conclusion.

Their confidence in being right became so strong that they condemned people who disagreed with them in severe religious terms.

Yet the fact that they were the majority did not establish that they were correct.

Nor did their accusations establish that those in the minority were rejecting God or His messenger.

They were defending their understanding of the messenger rather than consistently applying the messenger's instructions to verify that understanding against the Quran.

This is why the 27 collected teachings emphasizing the Quran's authority are so important.

They establish a recurring principle that must apply to every religious explanation, including interpretations we are confident we already understand.

The lesson is not that a majority is necessarily wrong or that a minority must be right.

The lesson is that neither numbers, confidence, nor accusations can substitute for Quranic verification.

And it demonstrates how dangerous it can become when disagreement with a particular interpretation is treated as evidence of rejecting the messenger himself.

8. An Explanation Is Not Automatically a Divine Judgment

Another important distinction concerns the difference between a messenger's explanations and his judgments.

The Quran describes messengers conveying God's message, explaining matters, and, where applicable, judging disputes brought before them.

But a judgment delivered in a particular dispute is not necessarily the same thing as a general explanation offered during a recorded Quran study.

A judge may apply an authoritative law to a specific dispute. The judge's decision concerns that case.

A general discussion of the law, however, is not automatically a binding judgment concerning every possible future dispute.

Similarly, a Quran study in which Rashad explains his understanding of a verse should not automatically be converted into an unchangeable divine judgment governing every subsequent disagreement.

The Quran's recognition that God explains His revelations also does not, by itself, establish that every explanation preserved in Rashad's recordings, footnotes, or appendices must be accepted as an additional, infallible body of divine interpretation.

That further claim requires Quranic evidence.

This distinction does not diminish the value of his teachings.

They can be extremely useful in understanding what he taught, how he reasoned, and which Quranic passages he considered relevant.

But an authentic recording establishes what Rashad said; it does not, by itself, establish that what he said was correct according to the Quran.

These are two separate questions.

One concerns the authenticity of the statement.

The other concerns the correctness of its religious content.

And the latter must be determined by the Quran.

9. How Could Submitters Desert the Quran?

We now return to the warning in 25:30:

"My Lord, my people have deserted this Quran."

Deserting the Quran does not necessarily require somebody to deny it, stop reading it, or openly adopt another religious scripture.

It may occur in a much subtler way.

People may continue studying the Quran while allowing their preferred interpretation of a messenger's explanations to become the authority that determines what the Quran must say.

They may believe they are defending God's messenger while rejecting the possibility that the Quran could correct his interpretation.

They may even accuse others of disobeying the messenger because those people are examining his teachings against the Quran.

Yet that is precisely the verification process Rashad repeatedly instructed believers to follow.

The dietary-laws controversy provides a historical warning of how this can happen.

A majority can be confident.

A majority can be sincere.

A majority can insist that it is defending God's messenger.

And a majority can still be mistaken—both in its interpretation and in the methodology used to defend it.

This is why the distinction between verifying IF Rashad is correct and verifying THAT he is correct is not merely semantic.

It concerns the actual source of religious authority.

If we begin with the conclusion that Rashad's religious explanations cannot be wrong, then the Quran is never genuinely permitted to establish that he made a mistake.

The outcome has already been determined.

And if we will accept only an interpretation of the Quran that preserves Rashad's presumed correctness, then we have reversed the relationship between the messenger and the scripture.

Instead of examining the messenger's explanation through the Quran, we are examining the Quran through the messenger's explanation.

The messenger's material has become the filter through which the Quran must pass.

That is the very reversal the Quran-alone principle is intended to prevent.

Recognizing Rashad as a messenger does not require assuming that every explanation he gave was infallible.

Nor does acknowledging an error necessarily constitute rejecting his messengership.

The Quran records instances in which prophets themselves received correction. Receiving correction did not invalidate their God-given missions.

How much more important, then, is it to acknowledge the possibility of error in the explanations of a messenger who repeatedly instructed people not to follow his personal opinions over God's words?

We can respect Rashad, appreciate his work, recognize his mission, and give serious consideration to his explanations without surrendering the Quran's authority over them.

Indeed, taking his repeated instructions seriously requires us to preserve that distinction.

Conclusion: What Has the Final Say?

Ultimately, the issue is not whether Rashad's teachings are valuable.

Nor is it whether we should listen to him, study his explanations, or recognize his role as a messenger.

The issue is whether the Quran retains the authority to establish that a religious explanation—even one given by Rashad himself—is mistaken.

We do not verify Rashad's teachings against the Quran because we assume he was wrong. We verify them because we do not assume he was incapable of being wrong.

The Quran must remain the final authority over his explanations and over our own understanding of those explanations.

That means allowing for all three possibilities: Rashad was correct and we understood him correctly; Rashad was correct but we misunderstood him; or we understood Rashad correctly and he himself was mistaken.

Only genuine verification permits the evidence to determine which possibility is true.

The 2010–2011 dietary-laws controversy should remind us why this distinction matters.

Those who were most confident that they were defending the messenger were not necessarily applying his instructions correctly. Some condemned others for disagreeing with an interpretation that they themselves had misunderstood, while disregarding other teachings from the messenger and the Quranic evidence.

Such a history should encourage greater care, greater humility, and greater willingness to examine our own conclusions.

It should not become another reason to condemn people who sincerely reach different interpretations.

Rashad's repeated teachings about the Quran's authority were not optional qualifications to his mission. They expressed the very principle he was calling people to uphold:

The Quran, the whole Quran, and nothing but the Quran.

Therefore, the most important question we can ask ourselves is this:

When Rashad's explanation and the Quran appear to disagree, are we genuinely willing to let the Quran establish that Rashad himself was wrong?

If the answer is no, then the Quran is no longer functioning as our ultimate criterion.

And that brings us back to the warning that every Submitter should reflect upon:

[25:30] "My Lord, my people have deserted this Quran."

The challenge is not simply to proclaim that we follow the Quran alone.

It is to ensure that, in practice, the Quran truly has the final say.

Principal References

Quranic verses: 2:173; 3:81; 5:19; 5:92; 6:114; 6:145; 16:115; 17:36; 25:1; 25:30; 39:23; 60:12; 66:3.

Rashad Khalifa: Quran Study #39 (December 28, 1989); statements from his 1988–1989 conferences; recorded Quran studies; Authorized English Version of the Quran; Appendix 16, Dietary Prohibitions; his notes concerning 25:30.

Additional resource: The collected 27 teachings emphasizing the Quran alone as the source of religious authority.

Historical note: The account of the 2010–2011 dietary-laws controversy describes the discussions I personally witnessed, including the majority and minority positions and the accusations made during those discussions. It is not presented as an independently documented survey of all Submitters worldwide.