Does the Qur’an need a Sunnah to perfects its rulings, interprets its words, and abrogates its verses?

by : Akram al-Zuraibi

Lawyer at the Court of Cassation in Tunisia

If the Qur’an and the so called Sunnah share the same source, which is that both of them are revelations from God Almighty and participate in the formula of revelation to humans, then both of them are considered revelations from God that He revealed to all people through the tongue of His Prophet Muhammad.

And if both of them share the same function, which is to control the religion in terms of reference, content and obligatory formula  And if both of them share the same period of revelation, which is the period of the prophethood of Muhammad, then why was the separation between the Qur’an and the Sunnah!?

Why did God preserve the Qur’an with explicit pronunciation and kept the so called Sunnah not preserved?

Why do we find one Qur’an after fourteen centuries in one form, but we do not find verses narrated by so-and-so and others narrated by another so-and-so, and we do not find authentic and weak verses, and we do not find frequent narrated verses and other single narrated ones?

Is it impossible for God to send down to us one detailed, clear and comprehensive book instead of revealing to us a part of the religion in the Qur’an and the other part that we are looking for in a so called sunnah distributed over books to which we do not know the limits, and which contain a huge amount of different hadiths about them!?

And here is the fact that the books of Al-Sahih, despite the ambiguity of the method they adopted for collecting hadiths, centuries after the death of the Prophet, and despite the difference in their content, are still subject to consideration and investigation by jurists, correcting what was weak and weakening what was true, while the Great Qur’an is immune from this absurd!!!

Which makes us wonder, is the so called Sunnah really complementary to the Qur’an!!? And God Almighty tells us: “We have not neglected anything in the Book,” and we ask whether the so called Sunnah really explains and restricts the meanings of the Qur’an, and God Almighty says to us, ((…. And We have sent down to you the Book as clarification for all things and as guidance and mercy and good tidings for the Muslims. Chapter 16 verse 89

And also said (( And We have certainly made the Qur’ān easy for remembrance, so is there any who will remember?(( chapter 54 verse 17.

Of course, I did not discuss what the jurists say about another role of the Sunnah, which is the abrogation of some provisions of the Qur’an, and this is more sinister and misleading.