GREAT BOOK: Sunnah of Allah

Assalamu Alaikum- More from the book “Unfettered Thoughts”, again I had to copy past from PDF to Word which required me to organize the words, so there may be mistakes. In later chapters the author explains the difference between learning, knowledge and information in Islam. This is from the inro

“…It is my believe through my experience and observation that some of us in the Muslim community today have lost consciousness and in an urgent need to rid ourselves of certain desires and emotions stemming from our detrimental cultural practices and traditions that inhibit our consciousness. This can only be achieved if we go back to basics, and base our actions and thoughts on the following only:
Quran
Islam requires that we base our actions on knowledge, and the Quran is our ultimate source of knowledge and is the first reference for justification or Hujja of all our thoughts and actions. The Quran is the timeless word of God which contains every form of guidance and legislation that humanity will ever need. In the Quran is what is referred to as the Sunnah or tradition of God. Sunnah of God refers to the manner in which God acts towards us in our relationship with Him. For example; He teaches us through examples and by example hence when He teaches us about the dangers of injustice and tyranny He not only explains it but gives us an example with the story of the Pharaoh, and teaches this by example by been just Himself in our relationship with Him. Similarly he has commanded us to seek for knowledge and has created us in such a way that it is only through knowledge that we can behave in a favorable or righteous manner, and He too only creates through knowledge in a manner that we can investigate and learn from as an example. Thus we are able to study the human body and learn how it functions and use it as an example to make prosthetic limbs.
Sunnah of the Prophet (SAW)
The Sunnah of the prophet (saw) refers to everything the prophet did, say, or kept silent on, which indicated it was acceptable. A recorded Sunnah in writing is called a Hadith which is obligatory on every Muslim to try to live up to, and to claim that the term sunnah means optional is in fact false, unless he specifically indicated it as such. The prophet’s whole life was meant to serve as an example of how to live life as indicated by the Quran. When I first started to go through the Sunnah it was indeed a daunting task. Daunting because unlike the Quran hadith have been fabricated for political, economic and reasons relating to tribal sentiments. The prophet though was clear and warned us that he has left for hujja or justification the Quran and the Sunnah only. He did not say the Quran or the Sunnah, which means whatever Hadith contradicts the Quran including of course the Sunnah of God, cannot be from the prophet. If a hadith does not contradict the Quran including the Sunah of God than its validity is in fact not of a major significance; we are obligated to use information that is of benefit that doesn’t contradict them anyways. I am not suggesting that seeking to distinguish invented from authentic hadith is not important using other methods such as the chain of narration, it is, and is an obligation on us all. My point though is that this exercise is more for academic purposes rather than practical. The requirement that a hadith can’t contradict the Quran as set out by our prophet automatically prevents harmful or unnecessary practices seeping into the religion and is foolproof because of the nature of the Quran.
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In Islam we believe that we are accountable for all our actions and the Quran and the Sunnah should be the only source of justification for these actions. Everything and everyone else besides God and His messenger is prone to error and hence should not and cannot serve as a justification or Hujja for our actions. These two are also what I have used to justify my thoughts in this book and I have placed a lot of effort to ensure that nothing I have written contradicts the teaching of the Quran and the prophet of Islam, irrespective of what culture, scholars, science and other sources of information say. There are however other sources of learning which although cannot serve as a Hujja are sources of learning that both God in the Quran and through His prophet has commanded us to pursuit.
The first and most important of these is the acquisition of knowledge and skills through investigation such as in History, Physics, Math Archaeology, Psychiatry, Biology and all other fields that serve to further the existence of mankind. Pursuing theses though should be within the context of the Quran and the teachings of the prophet. We should always remember that the Quran and the Sunnah validates these fields of knowledge and no the other way around. The second source of learning is the Sunnah or traditions of those people who have preceded us or people of old. This includes the time before our prophet all the way down to modern times. We have been commanded to learn from their good traditions which are those that do not contradict the Quran, Traditions of the prophet and our knowledge acquired through advances in Biology, Medicine and history for instance. We should also learn from their mistakes so that we don’t repeat them and must always keep in mind however that their good deeds or mistakes are not a part of faith and can never be a justification or used as such, otherwise we risk elevating them to the category of God and His prophet. The ones who have priority in this category are the honored companions of the prophet including Umar, Abubakar, Uthman and Ali.
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In many parts of the world our community is dangerously edging back to the Jahiliya or the time of ignorance before the arrival of our prophet, the mercy to mankind. Our community who were the pioneers in Math, Physics, Geography, Chemistry, Medicine and much more have been reduced to imitating others, and even at that we seem to only excel in imitating that which at best is of no benefit to us. This is not to suggest that we can’t learn from others, in fact we must, but it should be done through adapting what is good from them within the framework of our values, rather than only what we desire. The Messenger of God was not sent to bring us wealth or power but to liberate our thoughts of these very desires that are the consequence of harmful cultural and religious practices inhibiting them, in order to live a more productive and just life. He came at a time when the issue of whether or not a woman possessed a soul was still been debated, the girl child was buried alive, clergy freely decided on who deserved Gods grace, and a person’s worth and status was based on his lineage, and tribe. The prophet came to give us freedom from our harmful emotions, desires and these devastating practices.
Islam teaches us that all people are equal regardless of color, ethnicity or nationality and have the same abilities, but that because of differences in the environment we live in and our believe systems, our thought processes are different, mainly due to our varied needs stemming from these differences. Islam further teaches us that this is strength and that God intended it to be as such so that we may learn from each other. Islam has its own thought process that is unique to it and what I have attempted to do in this book is to share with you the thought process in Islam and show that through this process we can study and write books in any field of knowledge that can compete with any other thought process. Therefore even though there is nothing new in this book, information is presented from a different point of view-of Islam, through my life’s story.”