Percentage of Guidance Provided by the Qur’an.
Liaquat Ali
10/2/2003
The "Qur'an As It Explains Itself" Project
http://www.qaiu.org

Dear Friends, AA

Contemplating the Qur'an is a journey. Following are basically some thoughts to understand certain concepts.

There seems to be significant amount of confusion as to what percentage of guidance is available from Qur’an and where the rest of the guidance comes from. The conventional Muslim wisdom says that X percentage of guidance comes from the Qur’an, and Y percentage of guidance comes from Hadith/Sunnah/Sirah.

The "progressive" Muslims are struggling to sneak Z percentage of guidance through Ijmah or Consensus. These percentages vary depending upon which sect, school-of-thought, or group of Muslims you study.

In my understanding of the Qur’an, the above approach is flawed because it tantamount to having laws parallel to the Qur’an. Some people would try to justify that obeying the messenger, and consultation, hence consensus, are prescribed in the Qur’an.

According to my current understanding, the Qur’an, the messenger and the mutual consultation are integrated concepts, and not mutually exclusive concepts. Let's see how:

- The Qur’an provides immense amount of Wisdom to any seeking mind.

- When you have sizable sincere, seeking minds studying the Qur’an for its Wisdom, you soon have people who are able to consult among themselves to create solutions to daily problems based on the Wisdom provided by the Qur’an.

- When a critical mass develops, and an appropriate opportunity arrives, these seeking minds create a Qur'anic Societal System that is headed by the Central Authority.

- The Central Authority supervises the workings of the "oolil amr" or "those with authority."

- Obeying this Central Authority satisfies the need of obeying the Prophet.

- Using the Qur'anic Wisdom, the rules that are explicitly defined in the Book, are used as the "solved papers" or "templates" to devise solutions for the issues that are not explicitly defined in the Qur’an.