Makan Silmiun

So here's the thing.

If you are making books to "supplement" the book of God, you must consider yourself some sort of equal with God, because who else is responsible for making God's rules, except God? The problem is that this is down-right shirk, a term frequently define in Islam d as "idolatry" or "polytheism", but what is more accurately described as 'assigning partners or equals to God'.

It's fine to record history, that is not the problem. The problem is when these extra stories, books, and the people who read them start making rules, guidelines, and procedures that never existed in the Qur'an to begin with, and then they make these procedures 'mandatory', even prescribing punishment from God to those who do not follow these man-made rules.

Once you are making the rules of God, you surely must think you either are God or are as important as God.

Nothing is unlawful unless prohibited directly by God, and God provided the Qur'an as a complete book, sufficiently detailed, which is referenced in the book itself. The Qur'an goes on to say if all the trees were pens, and the oceans supplied, God would not run out of words (31:27)... in other words God could have chose to micromanage our lives, but didn't. God gave us SOME things not to do, and the rest is entirely allowed.

And before anyone says "but who transmits the Qur'an" (as in "the chain of custody" and there are only 'certain people' who have that chain of custody, and those 'certain people' can basically make up NEW rules as they go along as a result), the entire Islamic Ummah has always been responsible for transmitting Qur'an. This is why it has survived intact, not just because "authorized scholars" memorized it, but because so many regular people memorized it as well, that's how it remained intact. In fact if ONLY scholars had transmitted it, it would be far more suspicious, because nothing good comes from the so-called "elite" being the only ones responsible for holy books.

Anyone who issues Islamic edicts not spoken of in the Qur'an is going directly against the Qur'an itself: (16:116) You shall not invent lies about God by attributing lies with your tongues, saying: "This is lawful and that is forbidden." Those who invent lies about God will not succeed.

The final point people bring up is to ask "what is wrong with following the Prophet's actions as a source to copy, imitate, or know how to behave" -- and the answer is, I mean, nothing? With one caveat: as long as the actions written about, stories, behaviors and other transmissions are backed up directly by what is in Qur'an -- but sadly a not-insignificant portion of mainstream Islam today is not at all backed up by the Qur'an. Various prohibitions, rulings, fatwas, they are just not Qur'anic, and it gets worse: Even instructions on very basic practices, right down to the way people pray in mainstream Islam, is made up heavily of procedures and protocols not backed up by the Qur'an itself.

There are so many examples of this that it has overwhelmed the modern understanding of what it is to be Muslim, and has created a dichotomy where Man is at the center of Islamic practice, not God.

At the end of the day, if it's not in the Qur'an, Muslims can't say it came from God, and it's important to remember that even the Prophet(AS) was just a man (so in other words, you can't turn his later actions and life into a God that you follow).