A Source Shift

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

The warning we should apply to ourselves

In 25:30, the messenger says, “My Lord, my people have deserted this Quran.” Rashad Khalifa's translation and accompanying notes apply this warning to the Messenger of the Covenant as well as to Muhammad. For Submitters, therefore, this is not merely a criticism of other religious communities. On that understanding, the question is not whether the warning concerns the community, but how people committed to the Quran alone could become those described.

But how could people who read, quote, study, and proclaim the Quran alone nevertheless desert it?

One answer is that a person can keep the Quran in view while quietly transferring its authority elsewhere. The Quran is still quoted, but another person's explanation determines what its words must mean. When the scripture appears to disagree, it is the scripture that must be reinterpreted—not the explanation reconsidered.

That is the danger this article examines. It is not an argument for dismissing Rashad Khalifa, rejecting his mission, or disregarding his teachings. It is an argument for taking seriously what he repeatedly taught about the Quran's authority.

The Quran, hadith, and the source of authority

Part of the confusion begins with language. Among some Submitters, hadith is used as though it necessarily means a fabricated, satanic religious statement attributed to Muhammad. But the Arabic word ḥadīth has a broader meaning: a statement, narration, conversation, or account. In 66:3, it refers to a statement made by the prophet; in 39:23, the Quran itself is called the best ḥadīth. The word, by itself, does not tell us whether a statement is true or false.

That means describing Rashad's lectures, writings, or explanations as human hadith does not accuse him of fabricating lies against God. It distinguishes his communications about revelation from the revelation itself. We may study them, learn from them, and discover valuable explanations in them without treating every explanation as independently binding religious law.

There is a parallel confusion about Quran alone. The Quran is the revealed scripture; a translation makes that scripture accessible, and commentary attempts to explain it. These functions are valuable, but they are not identical. If every footnote, recorded explanation, and interpretive conclusion is treated as unchallengeable merely because it came from the messenger, the practical definition of “Quran alone” has expanded beyond the Quran.

The essential issue is not whether a teaching is useful or even factually correct. It is which source has final authority when a question remains disputed. The Quran describes God's revelation as fully detailed (6:114), identifies itself as the best ḥadīth (39:23), and presents the Furqan as the criterion (25:1). Verse 17:36 also requires us to examine information responsibly rather than follow what we do not know. Within a Quran-alone approach, Rashad's explanation must therefore be evaluated by the scripture, not the other way around.

Honoring the messenger includes his instructions about verification

Recognizing Rashad as God's Messenger of the Covenant does not require minimizing his role. The Quran assigns duties to messengers, including conveying the message, warning, and clarifying (5:19; 5:92), while 3:81 describes a messenger confirming existing scripture. Those responsibilities must be taken seriously. But acknowledging a messenger's Quranically established duties is different from declaring every subsequent interpretation or recorded study to be a divine ruling immune from scrutiny.

Rashad himself was explicit. In Quran Study #39, on December 28, 1989, he said:

“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 connected that principle to the same surah, which includes 60:12 and its qualification that the prophet is not to be disobeyed in what is right (fī maʿrūf). The verse does not provide a detailed modern verification procedure, but its wording matters: obedience is not described there as unqualified obedience to anything a person might say.

Rashad also repeatedly directed people to God's words rather than to himself. In another recorded statement, he acknowledged the possibility of making mistakes, even deliberately, while discussing the need to destroy idols. These teachings cannot simply be set aside because they complicate a claim that all his religious explanations must be correct.

Here is the contradiction: If someone insists that obeying Rashad means accepting all his religious teachings without hesitation, why would that person refuse his teaching to verify those very teachings against the Quran?

Following the messenger cannot sensibly require disregarding his explicit instruction to preserve the Quran as the criterion.

Verifying IF he is correct—or verifying THAT he is correct?

Two Submitters can listen to the same Quran study, open the same Arabic Quran, and reach the same conclusion. Yet their methods may be fundamentally different.

The first provisionally assumes Rashad probably had sound reasons for his explanation, but leaves the outcome open. This person asks: Does the Quran support this understanding? If the evidence calls for a correction, the explanation—or the person's understanding of it—can be revised.

The second begins with a settled conclusion that Rashad's explanation cannot be mistaken. This person also consults the Quran, but asks, in effect: How can I demonstrate that Rashad must be correct? Every apparent difficulty must be resolved in favor of the explanation already accepted.

Both approaches can produce the same answer when the explanation is sound. That agreement does not prove the methods are equivalent. One method allows the Quran to determine the result. The other allows a predetermined result to control how the Quran is read.

This is a form of circular reasoning. The decisive question is not simply, “Can you quote a verse?” It is: What Quranic evidence, if any, could cause you to reconsider the explanation you are defending? If the answer is “none,” the conclusion is no longer genuinely open to verification.

The dietary-laws controversy: why the method matters

The 2010–2011 dietary-laws controversy illustrates this distinction. In the discussions I witnessed, the majority defended the broader-food prohibition: they argued that anything dedicated to other than God—including vegetables, fruit, or even water—was forbidden. A minority concluded that the relevant prohibitions concerned animals or meat.

The dispute partly arose because Rashad's English translation used broader wording in 16:115, while 2:173 and 6:145—and his more specific recorded explanations—directed attention to animals and meat. My own examination of the Arabic, the surrounding prohibitions, and the restrictive wording of 6:145 led me to the animal-products interpretation. That was also consistent with Rashad's more specific explanations.

Yet people could arrive at the same conclusion by different routes:

Quran as criterion, animal-products conclusion: examine the Arabic evidence and accept the conclusion because it is judged to follow from the Quran.

Rashad as criterion, animal-products conclusion: accept the same conclusion primarily because Rashad explained it that way, and then search the Quran for confirmation.

Rashad as criterion, broader-food conclusion: defend an understanding of his English wording, even when other parts of his material and the Arabic evidence challenge it.

These are not three equally sound methods. The first keeps the Quran as the authority even if a person's interpretation needs correction. The second can reach a correct conclusion for the wrong methodological reason. In the third, an interpretation of Rashad becomes the controlling authority—and, on the Quranic reading presented here, produces the wrong conclusion as well.

What makes this history especially revealing is who was making the accusations. In the discussions I witnessed, people in the majority defending the broader-food view directed accusations such as “enemies of God,” “advocating idol worship,” “fighting the messenger,” “fighting God,” and “hypocrites” at members of the minority. They accused others of rejecting the messenger and his explanations, including people who reached the narrower conclusion by examining the Quran and people who relied on Rashad's more specific recorded explanations.

Yet that same majority insisted that all of the messenger's religious teachings must be upheld. In defending its understanding of a translated word, it was setting aside his other teachings on dietary prohibitions—and, more fundamentally, his repeated instructions that the Quran must remain the criterion for evaluating anything he said. Those instructions are not obscure exceptions; they recur throughout the collected 27 teachings emphasizing the Quran's authority.

The irony is that they claimed to be defending the messenger while resisting teachings from that very messenger. They were defending their interpretation of Rashad rather than allowing the Quran and his broader body of teachings to test it. The majority's confidence did not make its conclusion correct, and its accusations did not establish that the minority was disobeying God.

This is why the controversy matters beyond dietary laws. A community may become so certain that it is defending the messenger that it begins condemning people for following his instruction to verify. The lesson is not that a minority must always be right. It is that neither numbers, certainty, nor accusations can substitute for allowing the Quran to determine the truth.

A commentary is not automatically a divine judgment

The Quran gives messengers responsibilities that must not be dismissed. It also records the messenger judging disputes brought before him. But a specific judgment given in an actual dispute is not the same thing as a general explanation made during a recorded Quran study. We should not automatically convert every interpretation preserved on audio, video, or in a footnote into a binding judgment for every future disagreement.

Nor does the Quran's recognition that God explains His revelation establish that a later archive of a messenger's personal commentaries must be accepted as an additional, uncorrectable body of divine interpretation. That further claim requires Quranic evidence of its own.

The distinction does not diminish Rashad's work. His explanations can be important evidence about what he understood and taught. They may also help us notice meanings we had overlooked. But evidence about the messenger's understanding is not a substitute for evidence from the Quran itself.

What would it mean to desert the Quran?

Deserting the Quran need not look like closing it, refusing to recite it, or denying its importance. It can be subtler: reading it frequently while allowing someone's interpretation to have the final word. In that situation, the Quran remains visible but loses its practical authority to correct a belief.

Rashad's application of 25:30 to his own mission makes the warning unavoidable for Submitters to examine: the question is how such desertion could occur within the community. It does not authorize us to declare every person who disagrees with us guilty of desertion. The dietary-laws dispute shows how easily such accusations can be turned against people who are trying to verify. Rather, the warning requires each of us to examine whether our own method permits the Quran to correct even a respected messenger's explanation.

We need not begin by assuming Rashad was mistaken. We can respect him, learn from him, and approach his material with an expectation that he had good reasons for what he said. But an expectation is not a verdict. The Quran must be permitted to determine whether that expectation is justified.

So the decisive question is not how many of Rashad's recordings we have studied, how firmly we defend his reputation, or how often we proclaim “Quran alone.” It is this:

When Rashad's explanation and your reading of the Quran appear to differ, which one is actually allowed to change?

If only the Quran may be reinterpreted while Rashad's explanation remains beyond correction, then Rashad's explanation—not the Quran—has become the functional criterion.

A messenger can direct us to God's word. He must not become the reason God's word is denied the final say. That is how we honor his mission while guarding against the very desertion described in 25:30.

Principal textual references

Quran 3:81; 5:19, 5:92; 6:114; 17:36; 25:1, 25:30; 39:23; 60:12; 66:3; 2:173; 6:145; 16:115. Rashad Khalifa, Quran Study #39 (December 28, 1989); 1989 conference statements on Quran alone; Appendix 16, Dietary Prohibitions; translation note on 25:27–30. The account of the dietary controversy reflects the author's experience and interpretation, not an independently established community-wide survey.