The Neglected Sunnah

Abstract

The present article is a contribution to the continuing discussion of sunnah. I hope to show the scholar who deals with texts referring to sunnah that he or she is not, when interpreting a text containing the word, confined to a choice between the sunnah of the Prophet, local sunnah, and the sunnah of the Companions and the early community. It is quite possible that the sunnah referred to is the sunnah mentioned in the Qur'an, namely, the sunnah of God. We must remember certain characteristics of Sunnah. a) it is set intentionally by one having the authority to do so-the imam; b) it is meant to be imitated and not changed, and c) the imam who sets the sunnah shares responsibility for the deeds of thcse who imitate him. What seems to be missing from most discussions of sunnah is the fact that it is a Qur'anic notion as well. Joseph Schacht, for example, quotes no Qur'anic occurrences, not even in his 1963 article that asserts that the sunnah of the Prophet was precisely to follow the Qur'an. Bravmann's citation of Q 8:38 at the end of his discussion of the phrase madat sunnat al awwalin is the only Qur7anic instance of the word that he cites in his own voice; the othem are in quotations from al Shafi'i, Ibn Hisham, and al Baydawi. Apparently neither Mustafa al Siba'i nor Muhammad al Khatib’ refer to the sunnah of God. The sunnah that God sets for Himself is certainly authoritative, unchanging, and meant to be imitated. But it is more important to note that God’s sunnah is also what God Himself does, what He has prescribed for Himself. Human beings know that God will inevitably do a certain thing because He has always done the same thing in the past. These are universal and unchanging rules and, as such, can form the basis for logical arguments. The branch of modem legal logic called rule-based reasoning holds that such reasoning is prior to all other forms, since no communication using the word in the concrete and not the metaphorical sense can even take place until the interlocutors agree on certain rules, such as the rules of language ...