When Islam is criticized, Muslims often encounter a situation that may seem strange. Someone claims, “Islam says this,” and the immediate response is: “But that isn’t Islam. It’s just culture,” “That is an unreliable hadith,” “That is the opinion of one scholar,” or “That is a particular interpretation of fiqh.”
And very often, such a response does have a valid basis. The deeper question, however, is why there is a need to repeatedly separate Islam from things that have already become attached to it under the name of Islam.
One reason is the gradual loss of hierarchy between sources. Divine revelation, historical reports, scholarly commentaries, and human legal rulings begin to be treated as though they belong to the same level. Once different levels of sources are placed on an equal footing, human interpretation gradually begins to determine what the Quran itself is supposed to mean.
Not Everything Written About Religion Is Revelation
We should begin with a simple distinction. The Quran is the text of revelation. Tafsir is a human attempt to explain it. Fiqh is the human effort to derive legal rulings. Hadiths are historically transmitted reports about the words, actions, and events associated with the Prophet.
These materials may have very different functions and varying degrees of historical reliability. But the most important distinction goes beyond that.
They are not the same type of source.
A tafsir does not become revelation simply because it was written by a renowned scholar. Fiqh does not become divine law simply because the followers of a particular school accepted it. And a historical report does not become the word of God merely because it has a chain of transmission.
This is a fundamental boundary that should not be erased.
What Is Fiqh?
Fiqh represents the human understanding and development of legal norms on the basis of religious sources. Scholars analyzed texts, compared them, employed different methods of reasoning, and arrived at legal conclusions.
As a result, it is entirely natural that different rulings emerged within fiqh. Some scholars considered something obligatory, others recommended it, while others considered it permissible or prohibited.
The very existence of different schools demonstrates that we are dealing not with an additional text of revelation, but with human interpretation.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this as long as a human conclusion remains a human conclusion.
The problem begins when the statement “a scholar derived this rule” gradually turns into “Allah established this rule.”
If the Quran does not establish something, there must be sufficient grounds before attributing that rule to Allah Himself.
A Hadith Is Not a Synonym for “The Prophet”
Another substitution occurs here.
A report claiming that the Prophet supposedly said or did something is not the same as the fact that the Prophet actually said or did it.
Even a hadith regarded as authentic within a particular tradition is the result of a specific historical and methodological assessment of its transmission. That assessment does not automatically transform a human record into revelation.
Therefore, the transition from “there is a hadith attributing X to the Prophet” to “the Prophet definitely said X” is already a separate claim that requires justification.
And the transition from “the Prophet said X” to “Allah established X as a mandatory law for all people” is yet another separate step.
These steps are often passed over without being noticed.
Why Should the Quran Remain the Criterion?
The Quran itself continually directs people back to revelation as the criterion.
Allah says:
“Follow what has been sent down to you from your Lord, and do not follow other protectors besides Him.” (7:3)
And He says:
“Do they not reflect upon the Quran? Had it been from other than Allah, they would have found within it much contradiction.” (4:82)
This is especially important as a method of reading.
If a particular understanding of one verse leads to a contradiction with other parts of the Quran, the problem cannot be resolved simply by saying, “But our tafsir says that this is what it means.”
On the contrary, this is a reason to return to the text itself and examine the original understanding.
The Quran cannot be read as a collection of isolated quotations, each of which receives its meaning from an external commentary. It is a coherent text. Therefore, the meaning of one passage should also be tested through its context, the surrounding verses, and the overall logic of the Quran.
Tafsir Is Not the Quran Either
A similar problem arises with tafsirs. When someone says, “This verse means exactly this,” the basis of the statement is often not the verse itself but a particular commentary on it.
Moreover, the author of a tafsir inevitably reads the Quran within the framework of his own era, culture, language, and the ideas that existed around him. This is not, by itself, an accusation, nor does it make every tafsir useless. But it is an important distinction that cannot be ignored.
If a particular interpretation begins to contradict other verses, we cannot simply overlook the contradiction and choose a convenient interpretation because it was proposed by an authoritative commentator. There is the direct text of the Quran, and there is the human explanation of that text. The further a commentary moves beyond what can directly be derived from the Quran, the more carefully it should be treated.
A tafsir may explain the Quran, but it does not become the Quran. Therefore, the words of a commentator cannot be placed on the same level as the words of Allah.
Where Does Distortion Begin?
Consider a simple sequence.
First, there is the Quran.
Then historical reports about the Prophet appear. Later come commentaries, legal schools, different methods of interpretation, and numerous rulings on specific questions.
The emergence of these materials is not, in itself, a problem.
The problem arises when the order is reversed.
For example, a person first accepts a particular legal rule from fiqh. Then he finds a hadith that can be used to support it. After that, he looks for a Quranic verse that can be interpreted accordingly.
On paper, everything looks religious.
But something else has actually happened: a human ruling was accepted first, and the primary text was then adjusted to fit it.
This is where the hierarchy is lost.
When Hadith Begins to Determine the Quran
This problem becomes particularly visible when a particular understanding of the Quran cannot be derived from the text itself without the assistance of later material.
Instead of asking, “What does the Quran say?” a person asks, “What is this verse supposed to mean according to this hadith?”
That is an entirely different method.
In such a case, the hadith ceases to be historical material that can be compared with the Quran and becomes a lens through which the Quran must be read in advance.
The result is a potentially problematic sequence:
hadith → interpretation → verse.
Whereas logically, the priority should be the reverse:
Quran → testing the interpretation → evaluating the historical material.
This does not mean that every hadith should automatically be rejected. It simply means that a historical report should not be given the authority to alter the meaning of the primary text without sufficient grounds.
Why Does the Loss of Hierarchy Create Contradictions?
This is where one reason becomes clear why some people, when reading the Quran independently, encounter questions that are not apparent within the traditional system.
A person takes an established rule from fiqh or a particular interpretation from tafsir. He then tries to apply it to the entire Quran. But eventually he encounters other verses that do not fit the construction.
One can attempt to explain every such case through a separate exception, a special context, abrogation, metaphorical meaning, or another additional rule.
But the number of such explanations gradually increases.
Eventually, the person is no longer investigating the Quran. He is defending a previously accepted interpretive system.
The words of the Quran are then adjusted to fit the system instead of the system being tested against the Quran.
That is a fundamental difference.
Halal and Haram Cannot Be Turned into Personal Declarations
There is another particularly important boundary.
The Quran warns people against declaring lawful what is unlawful and unlawful what is lawful on their own authority:
“Do not falsely describe with your tongues, saying, ‘This is lawful and this is unlawful,’ in order to fabricate lies against Allah.” (16:116)
Therefore, the word “haram” is not simply a stronger version of saying, “I think this is wrong.”
When someone claims that something is haram in the religious sense, they are effectively making a statement on behalf of God.
And here a fundamental question arises: where did Allah prohibit this?
If the answer is merely the opinion of a scholar, a particular hadith, or a legal deduction, then it should be called exactly what it is: a human interpretation or a legal ruling.
It should not quietly be transformed into the direct word of Allah.
Why Does This Also Affect How Islam Is Perceived from the Outside?
There is another side to the problem.
When someone who has never studied Islam deeply encounters a particular rule, unusual practice, or controversial claim, they naturally perceive all of it as part of Islam.
A Muslim may respond: “That isn’t Islam, it’s just culture,” “That is only the opinion of a particular madhhab,” “That is a weak hadith,” or “That comes from a medieval tafsir.”
But if a society has presented these things as religious norms for decades, it is hardly surprising that an outside observer perceives them that way.
Therefore, the problem does not lie only with critics of Islam. To some extent, it is also a problem within the Muslim environment itself: we have allowed different levels of human religious heritage to speak in the name of the one word of God.
And then we wonder why people cannot distinguish the Quran from culture, historical tradition, or a legal school.
Hierarchy Does Not Eliminate Historical Sources
None of this means that hadiths, tafsirs, or fiqh should simply be discarded.
Historical material can be studied seriously. It allows us to investigate early Muslim history, the development of ideas, the formation of legal schools, and how different generations understood religious texts.
But studying a source and submitting to it as revelation are two different things.
We can study what early Muslim scholars said without declaring them infallible. We can investigate hadith without assuming in advance that every transmitted story is historical fact. We can read tafsir without forgetting that what we are reading is an interpretation.
This distinction allows historical material to retain its value without turning it into an additional revelation.
Where, Then, Should We Begin?
We should begin with the simplest question:
What did Allah actually say?
After that, we can ask how the Prophet, according to historical sources, understood and applied these principles. We can examine how early Muslims interpreted the text, which legal conclusions emerged later, which historical reports are supported, which raise doubts, and which remain disputed.
But the order matters.
We cannot first accept a later interpretation and then force the Quran to conform to it.
We cannot turn a commentary into revelation, a historical report into the word of God, or a legal ruling into an eternal divine law without evidence from the Quran itself.
If the Quran is the primary and preserved source of revelation, it cannot be treated as an appendix to a later human system.
The first task is to separate the divine word from human understanding. Only then is it possible to evaluate everything else honestly.
The loss of this hierarchy is not a minor methodological error. It changes the very way religion is read: a person stops testing his assumptions against the Quran and begins testing the Quran against his own assumptions.
