Why, in Several Discussions Where Isra’iliyyat Do Not Exist, Hadith and Reports Also Do Not Exist?
When Qur’anic silence is filled with reports
By name of The God The Merciful The Compassionate
Introduction: When Qur’anic Silence Is Filled with Reports
When one studies the heritage of hadith, tafsir, stories of the prophets, and Muslim religious culture with care, one encounters a phenomenon that cannot be ignored: many names, stories, rulings, predictions, and details that today are imagined to be part of “religious knowledge” do not exist in the Qur’an itself.
A portion of these materials are known in Islamic studies as Isra’iliyyat. Despite its name, in broad usage this term is not limited only to Jewish materials. It may include reports drawn from Jewish traditions, Christian traditions, oral tales, apocalyptic literature, local cultures, and other extra-Qur’anic sources.
The existence of Isra’iliyyat in the exegetical heritage has been acknowledged by Muslim scholars and by researchers in the history of religions. Even within the hadith tradition itself, reports exist that permit narrating from the Children of Israel; and this permission, in the early centuries, opened the way for the broad entry of stories and details attributed to the Children of Israel. The well-known study by M. J. Kister on the phrase “Narrate from the Children of Israel and there is no harm” shows that this idea circulated among Muslims in the early centuries and helped spread Jewish and Christian narrative materials. One can say with confidence that a vast and influential portion of extra-Qur’anic details, especially in stories of the prophets, angelology, eschatology, creation, the history of peoples, and some legal rulings, is connected with Jewish and Christian traditions and with the cultural atmosphere of Late Antiquity.
The main issue of this article is not to accuse every interpreter and narrator of deliberately inventing extra-Qur’anic concepts. Perhaps some of them did not properly distinguish between history, story, and revelation; and God knows best. But what is evident in the inherited legacy is that many of them did not have the courage to say “we do not know,” or the ability to accept the limits of their own knowledge.
Before the Qur’an speaks about the epistemic slips of the human being, it gives an instructive example in the story of human creation. When the Lord announced the placing of a khalifah on earth, the angels asked a question on the basis of the knowledge they had:
وَإِذْ قَالَ رَبُّكَ لِلْمَلَائِكَةِ إِنِّي جَاعِلٌ فِي الْأَرْضِ خَلِيفَةً ۖ قَالُوا أَتَجْعَلُ فِيهَا مَن يُفْسِدُ فِيهَا وَيَسْفِكُ الدِّمَاءَ وَنَحْنُ نُسَبِّحُ بِحَمْدِكَ وَنُقَدِّسُ لَكَ ۖ قَالَ إِنِّي أَعْلَمُ مَا لَا تَعْلَمُونَ ٣٠
And when your Lord said to the angels, “I am placing a khalifah on earth,” they said, “Will You place in it one who will cause corruption in it and shed blood, while we glorify You with praise and sanctify You?” He said, “I know what you do not know.”
Then The One God gave Adam a knowledge that the angels did not possess:
وَعَلَّمَ ءَادَمَ الْأَسْمَاءَ كُلَّهَا ثُمَّ عَرَضَهُمْ عَلَى الْمَلَائِكَةِ فَقَالَ أَنبِئُونِي بِأَسْمَاءِ هَٰؤُلَاءِ إِن كُنتُمْ صَادِقِينَ ٣١
And He taught Adam all the names; then He presented them to the angels and said, “Inform Me of the names of these, if you are truthful.”
When the angels were confronted with the limit of their knowledge, they did not fabricate an answer to preserve their rank. They did not take refuge in conjecture, and they did not fill what they did not know with stories and interpretation. They submitted and said honestly:
قَالُوا سُبْحَانَكَ لَا عِلْمَ لَنَا إِلَّا مَا عَلَّمْتَنَا ۖ إِنَّكَ أَنتَ الْعَلِيمُ الْحَكِيمُ ٣٢
They said, “Glory be to You; we have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Indeed, You are the Knowing, the Wise.”
This answer of the angels is one of the clearest Qur’anic models for trustworthiness in knowledge:
لَا عِلْمَ لَنَا إِلَّا مَا عَلَّمْتَنَا
We have no knowledge except what You have taught us.
The angels did not say: because we occupy a high station, we must have an answer for every question. They did not treat not knowing as shame, and they did not add anything to the speech of The One God in order to cover the limits of their knowledge. They accepted that their knowledge was only as much as had been given to them.
If the angels, before The One God, explicitly said, “We have no knowledge except what You have taught us,” why should a human interpreter or narrator be ashamed to say, “The Qur’an has not explained this, and we do not know”? Why must Qur’anic silence be filled with names, stories, predictions, and details about which there is no established knowledge?
The problem does not begin with asking; the angels also asked. The problem begins when the human being, after the limit of his knowledge becomes clear, is unwilling to accept that limit. The angels distinguished between asking and claiming knowledge; but a large part of our report-based heritage slipped precisely at this boundary.
At the same time, social and religious structures can turn “having an answer for everything” into a source of authority and power. When people turn to someone because they imagine he knows the answers to all mysteries, saying “I do not know” may threaten his social position. In such an environment, storytelling, interpretive construction, and presenting unknown details can become tools for gaining influence, even if we cannot prove the inner motive of every individual.
The fundamental question is this: what method does the Qur’an teach the human being when facing unknown matters?
Al-Imran 3:7 is not merely a marginal recommendation about interpreting the Qur’an. This verse clarifies the boundary between muhkam and mutashabih, knowledge and conjecture, rootedness in knowledge and deviation of the heart:
هُوَ ٱلَّذِيٓ أَنزَلَ عَلَيْكَ ٱلْكِتَابَ مِنْهُ ءَايَاتٌ مُّحْكَمَاتٌ هُنَّ أُمُّ ٱلْكِتَابِ وَأُخَرُ مُتَشَابِهَاتٌ ۖ فَأَمَّا ٱلَّذِينَ فِي قُلُوبِهِمْ زَيْغٌ فَيَتَّبِعُونَ مَا تَشَابَهَ مِنْهُ ٱبْتِغَآءَ ٱلْفِتْنَةِ وَٱبْتِغَآءَ تَأْوِيلِهِۦ ۗ وَمَا يَعْلَمُ تَأْوِيلَهُۥٓ إِلَّا ٱللَّهُ ۗ وَٱلرَّاسِخُونَ فِي ٱلْعِلْمِ يَقُولُونَ ءَامَنَّا بِهِۦ كُلٌّ مِّنْ عِندِ رَبِّنَا ۗ وَمَا يَذَّكَّرُ إِلَّآ أُو۟لُوا۟ ٱلْأَلْبَابِ ٧
He is the One who sent down upon you the Book. Some of it consists of clear and firm verses; they are the mother and reference of the Book, while others are mutashabihat. As for those in whose hearts there is deviation, they follow what is mutashabih from it, seeking fitnah and seeking its ta’wil, while no one knows its ta’wil except The One God. And those rooted in knowledge say, “We believe in it; all of it is from our Lord.” And none take reminder except people of pure understanding.
The structure of the verse is very precise.
First, the Qur’an does not say that all verses are of one kind. It names a portion muhkamat and calls those verses umm al-kitab, the mother, foundation, and reference of the Book. The muhkamat must be the basis of understanding; they must not be pushed aside so that an ambiguous report, a dream, a story, or an external interpretation can rule over them.
Then the Qur’an speaks of mutashabihat. A mutashabih matter is not something upon which the human being is permitted to impose whatever meaning he wants. The existence of mutashabihat does not mean that the field is open for imagination and story-making.
Then the verse describes the behavior of those in whose hearts there is zaygh, crookedness and deviation. Instead of understanding the mutashabih in the light of the muhkam and accepting the limits of their knowledge, they pursue the mutashabih itself:
فَيَتَّبِعُونَ مَا تَشَابَهَ مِنْهُ
They follow what is mutashabih from it.
Their aim is also stated in the verse itself:
ٱبْتِغَآءَ ٱلْفِتْنَةِ وَٱبْتِغَآءَ تَأْوِيلِهِ
Seeking fitnah and seeking its ta’wil.
After that, the Qur’an makes the boundary of human knowledge clear:
وَمَا يَعْلَمُ تَأْوِيلَهُۥٓ إِلَّا ٱللَّهُ
No one knows its ta’wil except The One God.
Those rooted in knowledge do not then say, “We also know its ta’wil.” Their answer is not a claim of ownership over the unseen. They say:
ءَامَنَّا بِهِۦ كُلٌّ مِّنْ عِندِ رَبِّنَا
We believe in it; all of it is from our Lord.
Therefore, in the logic of this verse, rootedness in knowledge is not recognized by the claim to know everything. Sometimes the sign of real knowledge is that the human being knows where he must stop. “We do not know” in the face of mutashabihat is not a sign of weak knowledge or weak faith; it may be exactly the answer the Qur’an expects from an honest human being.
This does not mean that every name or omitted detail in the Qur’an must technically be called mutashabih. But verse 3:7 gives a general epistemic principle: the human being is not permitted, where he has no demonstrable knowledge, to present his conjecture as religious truth.
The problem of many extra-Qur’anic reports begins exactly here. The Qur’an does not mention a name, but the interpreter assigns one. The Qur’an does not specify the location, but the storyteller builds a city, a cave, and a king. The Qur’an does not explain the form of an unseen matter, but the narrator provides shape, size, number of wings, time, and exact sequence. Then later generations forget that these details were not in the Qur’an and imagine them to be part of “Islam.”
Why Do We Imagine Qur’anic Silence as a Gap?
The Qur’an is not a chronology book, a historical encyclopedia, or a collection of complete biographies. Its purpose in narrating stories is not always to satisfy human historical curiosity. The Qur’an states from a past event only the amount needed for its ethical, epistemic, and theological argument.
When the Qur’an does not mention the name of Adam’s wife, the aim of the story does not depend on that name. When it does not specify the type of tree, botanical knowledge of that tree is not the axis of the warning. When it does not make the number of the People of the Cave decisive, the human being’s faith does not depend on knowing their number. When it does not name the angel of death, human responsibility before death is not completed by knowing a specific name.
For this reason, what appears to a later interpreter as an “information gap” may not be a gap at all. It may be part of the Qur’an’s own method: separating necessary guidance from unnecessary curiosity.
But the human mind loves a complete story. People ask: what was his name? Where did he live? How old was he? What was the dog’s name? In which country was the cave? How many wings did the angel have? On what day is the Hour, and what is its first sign?
The honest answer to many of these questions is: the Qur’an did not say, and we do not know.
But when “we do not know” is not accepted, the market of reports appears.
How Did Isra’iliyyat Enter Tafsir?
The first Muslim community did not live in a cultural vacuum. Jews, Christians, followers of other religions, merchants, travelers, new Muslims, and storytellers lived in a shared environment. Stories of prophets, angels, creation, and the end of the world had circulated in different languages and communities before Islam as well.
After Muslim political expansion, contact with Jewish, Christian, Persian, Syriac, and other cultures increased. Some followers of earlier religions entered Muslim society and brought with them their previous knowledge. In that same environment, storytellers, or qussas, narrated detailed stories to people. A report that the Qur’an had stated in a few verses became, on the tongue of the storyteller, a long narrative with names, dialogues, places, and multiple events.
One of the important and traceable channels through which Isra’iliyyat entered tafsir was the presence of people who had been raised before Islam in Jewish or Christian environments and, after becoming Muslims, brought their previous religious knowledge, stories, and concepts into Muslim society. By accepting Islam, such people did not suddenly forget their earlier religious memory. They brought with them stories of prophets, statements of Jewish scholars, oral interpretations, apocalyptic reports, sacred geography, and materials attributed to the Torah or other earlier books.
In a society where people constantly asked about the unstated details of Qur’anic stories, the speech of such individuals gained special importance. When a former Jewish scholar said, “I found this in the Torah,” or “It is written in the earlier books,” many listeners assumed that he had access to an ancient and heavenly source. In this way, matters about which the Qur’an had remained silent were completed through the stories and reports of the People of the Book. Over time, the boundary between “the statement of a Jewish convert,” “the interpretation of a narrator,” and “the speech of Muhammad” became blurred in public memory and in books of reports.
This transmission, in addition to answering people’s curiosity, could also have a missionary and polemical function. Jews who had become Muslims could argue to their former co-religionists that accepting Muhammad did not mean breaking with Moses and denying the prophets of Israel. They could say: what we know from the Torah and earlier books finds continuation in the Qur’an and in Muhammad. Such a way of speaking made Islam appear not as a rupture from previous sacred history, but as its completion. The problem, however, began when explanatory and missionary materials gradually became religious proof, and then those proofs came to rule over the Qur’an.
For this reason, every report must be examined through several separate questions:
Is this matter in the Qur’an?
If it is not in the Qur’an, is there certain knowledge for it?
Is it taken from Jewish, Christian, local, or storytelling heritage?
Has it been attributed to Muhammad only later?
Does it govern the Qur’an, or is it itself being measured by the Qur’an?
In many cases, when these questions are asked carefully, the report no longer remains as strong as it first appeared.
The Qur’an says in Surat as-Sajdah:
قُلْ يَتَوَفَّاكُم مَّلَكُ الْمَوْتِ الَّذِي وُكِّلَ بِكُمْ ثُمَّ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكُمْ تُرْجَعُونَ
Say: the angel of death who has been assigned to you will take you fully, then to your Lord you will be returned.
The Qur’an names him “the angel of death,” but it does not call him Azra’il. In the Jewish and later narrative heritage, however, the name Azrael/Azra’il is known. This name entered Islamic culture and became so famous that many Muslims imagined it to be a Qur’anic name, while the Qur’an itself never uses it.
The trace of this name in Islamic sources can be found in early tafsirs. It is transmitted from Muqatil ibn Sulayman and al-Kalbi that the name of the angel of death is Azra’il. But this is precisely the kind of material that must be examined: is the name in the Qur’an? No. Is there a clear statement from Muhammad that established it as revelation? No. Does the name have a background in Jewish and extra-Qur’anic tradition? Yes.
So the clear and authoritative logic is this:
The Qur’an has named the function, not the personal name. The function is enough for guidance: death has an appointed agent, and the human being returns to his Lord. Knowing the personal name does not change the responsibility of the human being before death. When a name that the Qur’an did not provide becomes religious certainty, the silence of the Qur’an has again been filled by external inheritance.
Stoning: When a Ruling of the Children of Israel Became Muslim Law
Stoning existed before Islam in the law of the Children of Israel. In their laws, some sexual relations carried the death penalty, and in some cases its execution was by stoning. Therefore stoning was not a ruling that began with the Qur’an. The question of this article is not whether Jews historically practiced stoning or not; the question is how a punishment belonging to their law, although not legislated in the Qur’an as the punishment for zina, entered Muslim jurisprudence through reports and eventually became known as an “Islamic hadd.”
The Qur’an speaks about Jews bringing a legal matter to Muhammad:
وَكَيْفَ يُحَكِّمُونَكَ وَعِندَهُمُ ٱلتَّوْرَىٰةُ فِيهَا حُكْمُ ٱللَّهِ ثُمَّ يَتَوَلَّوْنَ مِنۢ بَعْدِ ذَٰلِكَ ۚ وَمَآ أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ بِٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ ٤٣
How do they make you judge while they have the Torah, in which is God’s ruling, then turn away after that? Those are not believers.
Muhammad was not even required to accept every internal dispute of theirs. He could judge between them or turn away from judging. If he judged, he was commanded to judge with justice. The next verse also explicitly speaks of their separate ruling in the Torah:
إِنَّآ أَنزَلْنَا ٱلتَّوْرَىٰةَ فِيهَا هُدًۭى وَنُورٌۭ ۚ يَحْكُمُ بِهَا ٱلنَّبِيُّونَ ٱلَّذِينَ أَسْلَمُوا۟ لِلَّذِينَ هَادُوا۟ وَٱلرَّبَّـٰنِيُّونَ وَٱلْأَحْبَارُ بِمَا ٱسْتُحْفِظُوا۟ مِن كِتَـٰبِ ٱللَّهِ وَكَانُوا۟ عَلَيْهِ شُهَدَآءَ
Indeed, We sent down the Torah, in which was guidance and light. The prophets who submitted judged by it for those who were Jews, as did the rabbis and scholars, by what they were entrusted to preserve of God’s Book, and they were witnesses over it.
The Qur’an, after speaking of the Torah and the Gospel, states the position of the Qur’an as follows:
وَأَنزَلْنَآ إِلَيْكَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ بِٱلْحَقِّ مُصَدِّقًۭا لِّمَا بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ مِنَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ وَمُهَيْمِنًا عَلَيْهِ
And We sent down to you the Book with truth, confirming what was before it of the Book and as a guardian over it.
The Qur’an is muhaymin over earlier scripture. This means that earlier scripture does not rule over the Qur’an. Its ruling cannot be transferred into the law of the Qur’an unless the Qur’an itself confirms and legislates it.
When the Qur’an legislates punishment for zina, it says:
ٱلزَّانِيَةُ وَٱلزَّانِى فَٱجْلِدُوا۟ كُلَّ وَٰحِدٍۢ مِّنْهُمَا مِا۟ئَةَ جَلْدَةٍۢ
The woman who commits zina and the man who commits zina: lash each one of them one hundred lashes.
The verse does not distinguish between married and unmarried. It does not mention stoning. It does not say: lash the unmarried and stone the married. It gives one countable and divisible punishment: one hundred lashes.
The Qur’an also says about believing slave women, if they commit fahishah after marriage:
فَإِذَآ أُحْصِنَّ فَإِنْ أَتَيْنَ بِفَـٰحِشَةٍۢ فَعَلَيْهِنَّ نِصْفُ مَا عَلَى ٱلْمُحْصَنَـٰتِ مِنَ ٱلْعَذَابِ
When they are protected in marriage, if they commit fahishah, upon them is half of what is upon free protected women of punishment.
This verse alone is enough to break the claim of stoning. Stoning cannot be halved. Death cannot be divided into two equal legal portions. But one hundred lashes can be halved. Therefore the punishment that the Qur’an recognizes in this legal field is a measurable and divisible punishment, not stoning.
The later hadith tradition solved the absence of stoning in the Qur’an through several routes. One route was to present the stoning of Jews as if it had become a Muslim legal rule. Another route was to claim that there had once been a verse of stoning which was recited but then was not preserved in the Qur’an, while its ruling supposedly remained. This claim is extremely serious, because it says that a legal verse that takes human life is absent from the Book, but its ruling continues through report.
This is exactly the point at which the Qur’an must be the criterion. If a ruling is not in the Qur’an, and if the existing Qur’anic ruling contradicts it in structure, it cannot be imposed on the Qur’an through a claim about a missing verse. The Book that The One God preserved does not contain an ayah of stoning. The existing ayah prescribes one hundred lashes. Another ayah makes the punishment half-able. A life cannot be taken on the basis of a text that The One God did not place in the Qur’an.
The path of transmission for stoning is clear. This punishment existed in the law of the Children of Israel. The Qur’an did not enter it into the law of zina; instead, it prescribed a countable and divisible punishment. Then the report of implementing the Torah’s ruling among Jews was transmitted. Later, other reports extended the same punishment to Muslims. Finally, the claim of an “ayah of stoning” was produced in order to cover its absence from the Qur’an. Later jurisprudence, instead of measuring the report by the Qur’an, restricted the Qur’an through the report and imposed the qualification “unmarried” on an ayah that contains no such qualification.
Therefore the conclusion is clear: stoning is not a Qur’anic ruling. Stoning is a ruling from the law of the Children of Israel that entered Muslim jurisprudence through reports. The Qur’an prescribed one hundred lashes, made the punishment divisible, and did not state any distinction between a married and unmarried fornicator in the punishment verse. An existing ayah cannot be pushed aside by an ayah that does not exist, and human life cannot be taken on the basis of a text that The One God did not place in the Qur’an.
The Hour: What Muhammad Was Commanded to Say
The Qur’an does not merely hide the exact time of the Hour; it also rejects any claim that Muhammad had access to knowledge of the Hour. People asked him about the time when the Hour would be established, but he was not commanded to build a timetable for them or arrange future political and military events in sequence. His answer had to be that knowledge of the Hour is only with the Lord and that the Hour comes suddenly.
The Qur’an says:
يَسْـَٔلُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلسَّاعَةِ أَيَّانَ مُرْسَىٰهَا ۖ قُلْ إِنَّمَا عِلْمُهَا عِندَ رَبِّي ۖ لَا يُجَلِّيهَا لِوَقْتِهَآ إِلَّا هُوَ ۚ ثَقُلَتْ فِي ٱلسَّمَاوَاتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ ۚ لَا تَأْتِيكُمْ إِلَّا بَغْتَةً ۗ يَسْـَٔلُونَكَ كَأَنَّكَ حَفِيٌّ عَنْهَا ۖ قُلْ إِنَّمَا عِلْمُهَا عِندَ ٱللَّهِ وَلَٰكِنَّ أَكْثَرَ ٱلنَّاسِ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ ١٨٧
They ask you about the Hour: when will it be anchored? Say: knowledge of it is only with my Lord. None will reveal it at its time except Him. It is heavy in the heavens and the earth. It will not come to you except suddenly. They ask you as though you were well informed about it. Say: knowledge of it is only with The One God, but most people do not know.
The verse commands Muhammad twice to return knowledge of the Hour to The One God. The first time it says: إِنَّمَا عِلْمُهَا عِندَ رَبِّي; knowledge of it is only with my Lord. The second time it says: إِنَّمَا عِلْمُهَا عِندَ ٱللَّهِ; knowledge of it is only with The One God. Between these two emphases it says: لَا تَأْتِيكُمْ إِلَّا بَغْتَةً; the Hour will not come to you except suddenly.
These three statements form one logic. Because knowledge of the Hour is only with The One God, people cannot calculate its time; and because its time cannot be calculated, the Hour comes suddenly. If Muhammad were meant to give people hundreds of ordered and recognizable signs so that by observing them they could identify the remaining stages before the Hour, the Qur’an’s emphasis on the hiddenness of the Hour’s knowledge and its suddenness would become meaningless.
In Surat an-Nazi‘at, the same question appears, and the Qur’an’s answer again limits Muhammad’s task to warning:
يَسْـَٔلُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلسَّاعَةِ أَيَّانَ مُرْسَىٰهَا ٤٢ فِيمَ أَنتَ مِن ذِكْرَىٰهَآ ٤٣ إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ مُنتَهَىٰهَآ ٤٤ إِنَّمَآ أَنتَ مُنذِرُ مَن يَخْشَىٰهَا ٤٥ كَأَنَّهُمْ يَوْمَ يَرَوْنَهَا لَمْ يَلْبَثُوٓا۟ إِلَّا عَشِيَّةً أَوْ ضُحَىٰهَا ٤٦
They ask you about the Hour: when will it be established? What have you to do with mentioning its time? Its end and final knowledge is with your Lord. You are only a warner to the one who fears it. On the day they see it, it will seem to them that they remained only an evening or its morning.
The phrase فِيمَ أَنتَ مِن ذِكْرَىٰهَا clarifies the boundary of Muhammad’s mission: determining the time of the Hour is not within his knowledge. Then it says: إِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ مُنتَهَىٰهَا; its final knowledge is with your Lord. Muhammad’s duty is defined by إِنَّمَآ أَنتَ مُنذِرُ: you are only a warner. A warner’s duty is to make people aware of the coming judgment, not to give them its hidden calendar.
The Qur’an says elsewhere:
هَلْ يَنظُرُونَ إِلَّا ٱلسَّاعَةَ أَن تَأْتِيَهُم بَغْتَةً وَهُمْ لَا يَشْعُرُونَ ٦٦
Do they wait for anything except the Hour to come to them suddenly while they are unaware?
The Hour not only comes suddenly; people are لَا يَشْعُرُونَ, unaware when it comes. This statement does not fit a system that places before the Hour a long row of minor signs, major signs, wars, governments, and appearances of figures. If people, by observing several events, could locate themselves inside a schedule for the end of the world, the arrival of the Hour while they are unaware would no longer make sense.
Against this clear logic, defenders of reports about signs of the Hour appeal to verse 47:18. They say the Qur’an itself speaks of أَشْرَاطُهَا, its ashrah; therefore the Hour must have a set of prior signs, and the reports of Dajjal, Mahdi, the descent of Jesus, and apocalyptic wars are the explanation of those ashrah. But this claim is produced only when the word ashrah is separated from its context, the past tense of the verse is ignored, and already-realized preliminaries are turned into future events.
The verse says:
فَهَلْ يَنظُرُونَ إِلَّا ٱلسَّاعَةَ أَن تَأْتِيَهُم بَغْتَةً ۖ فَقَدْ جَآءَ أَشْرَاطُهَا ۚ فَأَنَّىٰ لَهُمْ إِذَا جَآءَتْهُمْ ذِكْرَىٰهُمْ ١٨
Do they wait for anything except the Hour to come to them suddenly? Its ashrah have already come. Then when it comes to them, how will their reminder benefit them?
The verse itself begins with the suddenness of the Hour: أَن تَأْتِيَهُم بَغْتَةً. Then it says: فَقَدْ جَآءَ أَشْرَاطُهَا. Therefore the sentence about ashrah did not come to deny the suddenness of the Hour; it stands inside the same verse and continues the emphasis on suddenness.
The word in the verse is أَشْرَاطُهَا, not عَلَامَاتُهَا. Shart with sukun on the ra’ refers to something upon which the realization of a matter depends, and its plural is shurut. Sharat with a vowel on the ra’ refers to the beginning, prelude, or first manifestation of a matter, and its plural is ashrah. These two forms belong to one root, but ashrah should not be turned without explanation into the later technical doctrine of minor and major signs of the Hour. In the context of the verse, ashrah points to preliminaries and beginnings that have prepared the coming of the Hour, not warning bells that are supposed to appear one after another in the future.
The verb of the verse makes this meaning even more decisive:
فَقَدْ جَآءَ أَشْرَاطُهَا
Its ashrah have come.
The Qur’an does not say its ashrah will come. It does not say: wait until its ashrah appear in the future. The verb جَاءَ is past tense, and قَدْ emphasizes its realization. Therefore whatever the referent of ashrah may be, it had already come at the time of revelation. Turning a past-tense verb into a list of future events reverses the language of the verse.
The necessary preliminaries for the Hour were the preliminaries of completion of proof: the final messenger had been sent, the warning had reached people, religion had been completed, truth and falsehood had been made clear, and what was necessary for human guidance and responsibility had been placed within reach. Muhammad was introduced as the seal of the prophets, and after him no new prophet or new book was needed to complete another link in the chain of proof.
The Qur’an says:
مَّا كَانَ مُحَمَّدٌ أَبَآ أَحَدٍۢ مِّن رِّجَالِكُمْ وَلَـٰكِن رَّسُولَ ٱللَّهِ وَخَاتَمَ ٱلنَّبِيِّـۧنَ ۗ وَكَانَ ٱللَّهُ بِكُلِّ شَىْءٍ عَلِيمًۭا ٤٠
Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but he is the Messenger of The One God and the seal of the prophets; and The One God is Knowing of all things.
The Qur’an also declares that the Book was sent down to clarify what relates to human guidance and responsibility:
وَيَوْمَ نَبْعَثُ فِى كُلِّ أُمَّةٍۢ شَهِيدًا عَلَيْهِم مِّنْ أَنفُسِهِمْ ۖ وَجِئْنَا بِكَ شَهِيدًا عَلَىٰ هَـٰٓؤُلَآءِ ۚ وَنَزَّلْنَا عَلَيْكَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ تِبْيَـٰنًۭا لِّكُلِّ شَىْءٍۢ وَهُدًۭى وَرَحْمَةًۭ وَبُشْرَىٰ لِلْمُسْلِمِينَ ٨٩
And the day We raise in every nation a witness against them from among themselves, and We bring you as a witness against these; and We sent down to you the Book as clarification of everything, and guidance, mercy, and good news for those who submit.
Now the ending of the verse about ashrah becomes clear: فَأَنَّىٰ لَهُمْ إِذَا جَآءَتْهُمْ ذِكْرَىٰهُمْ; when the Hour comes to them, how will reminder benefit them? Before the Hour, the message, warning, and proof had reached them. After the Hour comes, the time for faith and return is over. The ashrah that had already come are the preliminaries of the completion of proof, not future political and military signs.
Verse 47:18 does not mention Dajjal, Mahdi, Sufyani, black banners, final wars, or a sequence of future governments. It does not divide any event into minor and major signs and does not provide a timetable. Most importantly, it does not say that the ashrah will come in the future; it says they have come. Therefore using this verse to prove the detailed doctrine of signs of the Hour is not an explanation of the Qur’an; it is placing a report-based system on top of a Qur’anic word.
Later, Jewish, Christian, and other apocalyptic literatures entered the culture of reports. The future was divided into periods and stages, a figure was assigned to each period, and wars, banners, sounds, and events were attributed to Muhammad that do not come from the Qur’an itself. The same apparatus that filled Qur’anic silence in the stories of the prophets with Isra’iliyyat also filled Qur’anic silence about the future with apocalyptic stories.
The contradiction is clear. The Qur’an commands Muhammad to say that knowledge of the Hour is only with the Lord; the report tradition presents him as the speaker of hundreds of reports about future stages. The Qur’an says the Hour comes suddenly; reports place before it a long row of recognizable signs. The Qur’an says its ashrah have come; reports say its main signs have not yet come. In this conflict, the Qur’an is the criterion, and the report must be set aside.
The People of the Cave: A Gap for Which Occasions of Revelation Were Built
Muhammad was asked three questions: about Dhul-Qarnayn, the People of the Cave, and the Ruh. These three questions should not be viewed separately, because their being placed together gives important information about the intellectual environment of the questioners. The question about the People of the Cave relates to a story known in a Christian setting. The question about the Ruh also appears connected with discussions of the Holy Spirit, the nature of spirit, and disagreements related to Christian belief. The question about Dhul-Qarnayn was connected with sacred history and the image of a chosen ruler. The combination of these three questions shows that the questioners were not familiar only with Torah material; they were also dealing with subjects related to Jesus and Christian tradition.
The Qur’an records two of these questions with the expression يَسْـَٔلُونَكَ. Regarding the Ruh, it says:
وَيَسْـَٔلُونَكَ عَنِ ٱلرُّوحِ ۖ قُلِ ٱلرُّوحُ مِنْ أَمْرِ رَبِّى وَمَآ أُوتِيتُم مِّنَ ٱلْعِلْمِ إِلَّا قَلِيلًۭا ٨٥
They ask you about the Ruh. Say: the Ruh is from the command of my Lord, and you have been given only a little knowledge.
Regarding Dhul-Qarnayn, it says:
وَيَسْـَٔلُونَكَ عَن ذِى ٱلْقَرْنَيْنِ ۖ قُلْ سَأَتْلُوا۟ عَلَيْكُم مِّنْهُ ذِكْرًا ٨٣
They ask you about Dhul-Qarnayn. Say: I will recite to you a remembrance of him.
The later famous report claims that Jews designed these three questions to test Muhammad. But this attribution is incomplete and inconsistent when measured by the internal logic of the questions. Why would Jews who did not accept the prophethood of Jesus make a story about a group of followers of Christ the criterion for recognizing Muhammad’s prophethood? Merely asking about another group’s belief does not always mean confirming it; but when a story is chosen as a test question for recognizing a prophet, the questioner is granting that story religious value and authority. It is unlikely that someone who rejects the very prophethood of Jesus would turn the story of Jesus’ followers into the test for another prophet.
On the other hand, the placement of the question about the Ruh in the same set shows that the questioners were dealing with something beyond purely Jewish literature. The Ruh, the Holy Spirit, and its place in Christian belief were among the central subjects of disagreement among the People of the Book. Therefore the more logical form is that the questioners were a group from the People of the Book who accepted the Torah and also accepted the prophethood of Jesus. They wanted to test Muhammad about subjects that stood between Torah inheritance and their Christian beliefs.
Over time, the real identity of this group became unknown to later narrators. Once again, they faced a gap in information. Instead of saying that we do not know exactly who the questioners were, they built a story for the occasion of revelation: supposedly Quraysh went to Jewish scholars, the Jews designed three questions, and then Muhammad was tested with them. This story may have arisen from conjecture, from suspicion toward Jews, or from the bad intention of narrators who wanted to portray them as enemies testing Muhammad. But in all cases the result was the same: a report was produced and attributed to the Jews, even though it does not fit the structure of the questions themselves.
Here too, the method of producing reports can be seen. One part of an event is forgotten or unknown; the later narrator does not say “I do not know”; he fills the gap with a story; the story reaches the next generation; and eventually what began as conjecture is repeated as occasion of revelation and certain history.
Regarding the People of the Cave, another stage of the same process occurred. The story of the sleepers in the cave had many details in Christian settings: the names of the young men, the city, the ruler, the duration and manner of their escape, and other details. The Qur’an narrated the guiding part of the story, but did not include those details. Afterward, interpreters faced the Qur’an’s silence and returned again to the same Christian reservoir. They entered the names, places, and even the dog’s name into tafsir, filling the Qur’an’s deliberate silence with external stories.
The Qur’an itself, in this very story, states the method for dealing with unknown details:
سَيَقُولُونَ ثَلَاثَةٌ رَّابِعُهُمْ كَلْبُهُمْ وَيَقُولُونَ خَمْسَةٌ سَادِسُهُمْ كَلْبُهُمْ رَجْمًۢا بِٱلْغَيْبِ ۖ وَيَقُولُونَ سَبْعَةٌۭ وَثَامِنُهُمْ كَلْبُهُمْ ۚ قُل رَّبِّىٓ أَعْلَمُ بِعِدَّتِهِم مَّا يَعْلَمُهُمْ إِلَّا قَلِيلٌۭ ۗ فَلَا تُمَارِ فِيهِمْ إِلَّا مِرَآءًۭ ظَـٰهِرًۭا وَلَا تَسْتَفْتِ فِيهِم مِّنْهُمْ أَحَدًۭا ٢٢
They will say: three, the fourth of them their dog. And they will say: five, the sixth of them their dog; throwing stones into the unseen. And they will say: seven, the eighth of them their dog. Say: my Lord knows best their number. None knows them except a few. So do not dispute about them except with an apparent and limited dispute, and do not seek a ruling about them from any of them.
The Qur’an calls guessing about their number رَجْمًۢا بِٱلْغَيْبِ, throwing at the unseen. Then it commands Muhammad to return knowledge to the Lord: رَّبِّىٓ أَعْلَمُ بِعِدَّتِهِم. Then it forbids him from extensive argument and from turning to them for more details: وَلَا تَسْتَفْتِ فِيهِم مِّنْهُمْ أَحَدًا.
Despite this command, later interpreters did exactly what the Qur’an had closed the way to. They assigned names to the young men, made their number decisive, identified the city and ruler, and named their dog Qitmir. These details do not come from the Qur’an; they come from a Christian story that later wore the clothing of Islamic tafsir.
Thus the proof from the People of the Cave in this article has two connected parts. First, the occasion-of-revelation story that attributes the questions to Jews fills the gap of the questioners’ identity with an inconsistent report, while the combination of the questions about the People of the Cave and the Ruh points more toward a group from the People of the Book who also accepted the prophethood of Jesus. Second, interpreters filled the Qur’an’s silence about the story itself with Christian details of the sleepers in the cave. In both stages, the inability to say “we do not know” led to the production of reports: once to build the identity of the questioners, and again to build the details of the story.
The Sabians: A Name Known at the Time of Revelation and Forgotten in the Age of Reports
The Qur’an mentions the Sabians three times and places them beside known religious groups. First, in Surat al-Baqarah, it says:
إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَٱلَّذِينَ هَادُوا۟ وَٱلنَّصَـٰرَىٰ وَٱلصَّـٰبِـِٔينَ مَنْ ءَامَنَ بِٱللَّهِ وَٱلْيَوْمِ ٱلْـَٔاخِرِ وَعَمِلَ صَـٰلِحًۭا فَلَهُمْ أَجْرُهُمْ عِندَ رَبِّهِمْ وَلَا خَوْفٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا هُمْ يَحْزَنُونَ ٦٢
Indeed, those who believed, and the Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians: whoever believed in The One God and the Last Day and did righteous work, their reward is with their Lord; no fear shall be upon them, nor shall they grieve.
The second time, in Surat al-Ma’idah, it says:
إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَٱلَّذِينَ هَادُوا۟ وَٱلصَّـٰبِـُٔونَ وَٱلنَّصَـٰرَىٰ مَنْ ءَامَنَ بِٱللَّهِ وَٱلْيَوْمِ ٱلْـَٔاخِرِ وَعَمِلَ صَـٰلِحًۭا فَلَا خَوْفٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلَا هُمْ يَحْزَنُونَ ٦٩
Indeed, those who believed, and the Jews, and the Sabians, and the Christians: whoever believed in The One God and the Last Day and did righteous work, no fear shall be upon them, nor shall they grieve.
And the third time, in Surat al-Hajj, it says:
إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَٱلَّذِينَ هَادُوا۟ وَٱلصَّـٰبِـِٔينَ وَٱلنَّصَـٰرَىٰ وَٱلْمَجُوسَ وَٱلَّذِينَ أَشْرَكُوٓا۟ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يَفْصِلُ بَيْنَهُمْ يَوْمَ ٱلْقِيَـٰمَةِ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍۢ شَهِيدٌ ١٧
Indeed, those who believed, and the Jews, and the Sabians, and the Christians, and the Magians, and those who associated partners: The One God will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection. Indeed, The One God is witness over all things.
The Qur’an does not introduce the Sabians as an unknown word. It does not say that the Sabians are a group with such-and-such belief or that they live in such-and-such land. It mentions them without explanation beside Jews, Christians, Magians, and polytheists. This way of speaking shows that the name Sabians was understandable and known to Muhammad and the first audience of the Qur’an. If no one knew who the Sabians were, mentioning them in a general ruling without the slightest introduction would have made the verse’s connection with its audience incomplete.
So the Sabians were not an unknown riddle at the time of revelation. Muhammad and the people around him knew to which community this name referred. For this reason, the Qur’an sees no need to introduce them, just as it does not define Jews, Christians, and Magians from the beginning.
But here the report apparatus faces a problem. If hadith truly were the complete and necessary explanation of the Qur’an, and if Muhammad had explained outside the Qur’an all the names and summaries in it for the community, at least one clear statement from him should have remained about who the Sabians were. Such an explanation does not exist. What remains are scattered opinions of later interpreters: one brings them close to Jews, another to Christians, another calls them star-worshippers, and another considers them a separate community. These disagreements are not the speech of Muhammad; they are the guesses of people who, in their own time, no longer had clear knowledge of the first Sabians.
This silence is very important for the claim of the article. About Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Solomon, because Jewish and Christian sources were full of stories, books of tafsir were also filled with names, ages, places, and dialogues that the Qur’an had not stated. But about the Sabians, there was no ready-made story in the sources of the People of the Book that could be taken and retold as an explanation of the Qur’an. As a result, the same apparatus that had long answers about the name of the dog of the People of the Cave, the details of Noah’s Ark, and the events of the prophets’ lives suddenly had nothing to say before a Qur’anic name.
This silence is not accidental. Wherever external material was abundant, reports also became verbose; and wherever the external source had nothing ready to copy and impose on the Qur’an, the report tradition suddenly found nothing to say. The Sabians are a clear witness to this parallel silence.
The Disjointed Letters: Where Hadith Has No Explanation from Muhammad
The disjointed letters appear at the beginning of twenty-nine surahs of the Qur’an. Combinations such as alif-lam-mim, alif-lam-ra, kaf-ha-ya-‘ayn-sad, ta-ha, ya-sin, ha-mim, qaf, and nun are part of the text of the Qur’an. Muhammad recited them, scribes wrote them, and Muslims from the beginning recited them in prayer and recitation. Yet no clear and direct explanation has remained from Muhammad that states the definite meaning of these letters.
If Muhammad was commanded to explain all summaries and difficult parts of the Qur’an in statements separate from the Qur’an, the disjointed letters should have been among the first subjects of that explanation. These letters stand at the beginning of twenty-nine surahs and are constantly recited. How is it possible that reports preserved dozens of details about very secondary matters, but regarding letters that are part of the Qur’an itself, not even one clear and consistent explanation from Muhammad remained?
Later interpreters built many theories. Some regarded these letters as names of The One God, some as names of surahs, some as oaths, some as a private code between The One God and Muhammad, and others built numerical calculations and abbreviations from them. The abundance of these theories is not a sign of abundant knowledge; it is a sign of the absence of an established explanation. If a clear and single meaning from Muhammad had existed, all these inconsistent answers would not have appeared.
The claim that “only God and the Messenger know these letters” also does not come from the Qur’an itself. The Qur’an never says that the disjointed letters are a private secret between The One God and Muhammad. If Muhammad knew their meaning and had taught it to people, that teaching should have remained in a clear statement from him. When such a statement does not exist, turning ignorance into “a private secret” is only covering the gap with a sacred-looking phrase.
Here too, the pattern of parallel silence is visible. For the specific combinations of the disjointed letters, there was no ready and consistent explanation in Jewish and Christian stories that narrators could take and attribute to Muhammad. Therefore a hadith tradition that is extremely talkative in subjects with abundant Isra’iliyyat becomes silent before the disjointed letters. Then interpreters fill the empty place of report with their own guesses.
The trustworthy answer is that the disjointed letters are part of the Qur’an, but their definite meaning has not reached us through a clear statement from Muhammad. No interpreter, sect, mystic, or calculator has the right to impose his conjecture on people as the definite ta’wil of The One God. What we do not know must remain unknown; adding the word “secret” to ignorance does not turn it into knowledge.
Dhul-Kifl: A Qur’anic Name without a Reported Biography
The Qur’an names Dhul-Kifl twice. In Surat al-Anbiya it says:
وَإِسْمَـٰعِيلَ وَإِدْرِيسَ وَذَا ٱلْكِفْلِ ۖ كُلٌّۭ مِّنَ ٱلصَّـٰبِرِينَ ٨٥
And Ishmael, Idris, and Dhul-Kifl; each was among the patient.
And in Surat Sad:
وَٱذْكُرْ إِسْمَـٰعِيلَ وَٱلْيَسَعَ وَذَا ٱلْكِفْلِ ۖ وَكُلٌّۭ مِّنَ ٱلْأَخْيَارِ ٤٨
And remember Ishmael, al-Yasa‘, and Dhul-Kifl; each was among the excellent.
The Qur’an praises him, but it gives no biography. It does not say what people he was sent to, what happened in his life, why he was called Dhul-Kifl, and whether “kifl” in his name refers to a covenant, responsibility, share, guarantee, or something else. Even the title “prophet” is not explicitly used for him, though the placement of his name among prophets caused Muslims to regard him as a prophet.
If hadith were the comprehensive explanation of the Qur’an, a clear explanation from Muhammad should have remained about who Dhul-Kifl was and why the Qur’an mentioned him beside Ishmael, Idris, and al-Yasa‘. But no such explanation exists. Later interpreters tried to identify him with various figures and to construct a biography for him. This very disagreement shows that they did not possess clear knowledge from Muhammad about his identity.
The same pattern repeats again. Because in Jewish and Christian sources there was no clear and agreed-upon figure with this same name whose story could easily be taken, Islamic reports also did not provide a clear and coherent biography for Dhul-Kifl. What emerged was a collection of later guesses and identifications. Where the external source was not clear, the report tradition also did not remain clear.
Dhul-Kifl, like the Sabians and the disjointed letters, shows that hadith did not explain all the summaries of the Qur’an. It also shows that the abundance of reports in other subjects cannot simply be attributed to an abundance of independent teachings from Muhammad. If that abundance came from Muhammad’s independent teaching, a clear explanation should have remained about Dhul-Kifl as well. But when exegetical materials depend on the stock of external stories, silence in such cases becomes completely understandable.
Parallel Silence: The Other Face of Isra’iliyyat
The main pattern of this article is simple and clear. Wherever Jewish and Christian sources had abundant stories about a figure or event, abundant details also appeared in Islamic tafsirs and reports. For Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Solomon, names, places, dialogues, and events were transmitted that the Qur’an did not state, while similar materials existed in the stories of the People of the Book. Regarding the People of the Cave as well, the Christian story of the sleepers in the cave was ready; therefore interpreters were able to fill the Qur’an’s silence with the names of the young men, the name of the city, the ruler, and their dog.
The same condition appears in the subject of the Hour. Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature was full of stories about the end times, the savior, the return of Christ, final wars, trials, and cosmic signs. Islamic reports likewise became full of minor and major signs, Dajjal, apocalyptic wars, the appearance of figures, and the sequence of states, while the Qur’an places knowledge of the Hour only with The One God and announces that its coming is sudden.
But when the external source is silent, hadith also becomes silent. The Qur’an names the Sabians three times, but no clear explanation from Muhammad exists about their identity. The disjointed letters stand at the beginning of twenty-nine surahs, but hadith does not state their definite meaning. The Qur’an names Dhul-Kifl twice, but reports do not clarify his life or identity.
This is not merely an argument from absence; it is two sides of a dependent pattern. On one side, abundance of external material is accompanied by abundance of similar Islamic reports. On the other side, the absence of ready material is accompanied by silence, scattering, and disagreement among interpreters. If hadith were an independent and preserved source from Muhammad’s teaching, its content should not rise and fall according to the amount of stories available among the People of the Book. But when reports become verbose precisely where external sources are verbose, and silent precisely where those same sources are silent, their dependency becomes evident.
The Sabians, the disjointed letters, and Dhul-Kifl are not the only subjects about which we do not have enough information today. They are witnesses to the silence of the report apparatus; a silence that appears exactly where the storehouse of Isra’iliyyat also had nothing ready to offer. This silence is the other face of the same copying.
The Inability to Say “We Do Not Know”
The entry of Isra’iliyyat was not only the result of the existence of Jewish and Christian stories. Another factor was the inability of interpreters and narrators to accept the boundaries of their own knowledge. They faced questions that the Qur’an had not answered: how many were the People of the Cave? What was the name of their dog? Who was Dhul-Kifl? What did the disjointed letters mean? Who were the Sabians? After which events would the Hour come? The trustworthy answer in many of these cases was one sentence: we do not know.
But saying “we do not know” was not easy for those whose position rested on answering every question. A scholar who offered an answer for every name and every silence appeared more knowledgeable in the eyes of the people. A storyteller who narrated astonishing details about the beginning of creation, the lives of the prophets, and the events of the end times gained more listeners and followers. By contrast, someone who said that the Qur’an did not state this matter and I also do not know did not warm the market of stories and did not build a monopoly over knowledge of the unseen.
The Qur’an offers another example of how to deal with unknowns. When The One God taught Adam the names and then presented them to the angels, the angels were confronted with a question whose knowledge had not been given to them:
وَعَلَّمَ ءَادَمَ ٱلْأَسْمَآءَ كُلَّهَا ثُمَّ عَرَضَهُمْ عَلَى ٱلْمَلَـٰٓئِكَةِ فَقَالَ أَنۢبِـُٔونِى بِأَسْمَآءِ هَـٰٓؤُلَآءِ إِن كُنتُمْ صَـٰدِقِينَ ٣١
And He taught Adam all the names; then He presented them to the angels and said: inform Me of the names of these, if you are truthful.
The angels did not guess to preserve their rank, did not build stories, and did not claim access to hidden knowledge. They submitted and said:
قَالُوا۟ سُبْحَـٰنَكَ لَا عِلْمَ لَنَآ إِلَّا مَا عَلَّمْتَنَآ ۖ إِنَّكَ أَنتَ ٱلْعَلِيمُ ٱلْحَكِيمُ ٣٢
They said: glory be to You; we have no knowledge except what You taught us. Indeed, You are the Knowing, the Wise.
This answer is the criterion of scholarly trustworthiness: لَا عِلْمَ لَنَآ إِلَّا مَا عَلَّمْتَنَآ; we have no knowledge except what You taught us. If the angels were not ashamed to say “we do not know,” why should the interpreter be ashamed of it? If the angels did not invent knowledge to preserve their status, why should a religious scholar prepare a story for every letter, name, and silence of the Qur’an?
The inability to say “we do not know” was not only a personal weakness; it became a structure of religious power. Every new answer increased the authority of the one who answered, and every story made people more dependent on him for knowledge of the unseen. Thus Qur’anic silence became an opportunity to produce reports and gain rank. In such an environment, an external story became tafsir, tafsir became report, and report eventually became religious doctrine.
The Principle of Al-Imran: Mutashabihat Are Not the Property of Interpreters
The Qur’an gives a clear principle for dealing with muhkamat and mutashabihat:
هُوَ ٱلَّذِىٓ أَنزَلَ عَلَيْكَ ٱلْكِتَـٰبَ مِنْهُ ءَايَـٰتٌۭ مُّحْكَمَـٰتٌ هُنَّ أُمُّ ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ وَأُخَرُ مُتَشَـٰبِهَـٰتٌۭ ۖ فَأَمَّا ٱلَّذِينَ فِى قُلُوبِهِمْ زَيْغٌۭ فَيَتَّبِعُونَ مَا تَشَـٰبَهَ مِنْهُ ٱبْتِغَآءَ ٱلْفِتْنَةِ وَٱبْتِغَآءَ تَأْوِيلِهِۦ ۗ وَمَا يَعْلَمُ تَأْوِيلَهُۥٓ إِلَّا ٱللَّهُ ۗ وَٱلرَّٰسِخُونَ فِى ٱلْعِلْمِ يَقُولُونَ ءَامَنَّا بِهِۦ كُلٌّۭ مِّنْ عِندِ رَبِّنَا ۗ وَمَا يَذَّكَّرُ إِلَّآ أُو۟لُوا۟ ٱلْأَلْبَـٰبِ ٧
He is the One who sent down upon you the Book. Some of it consists of firm verses that are the mother and reference of the Book, and others are mutashabihat. As for those in whose hearts is deviation, they follow what is mutashabih from it, seeking fitnah and seeking its ta’wil, while no one knows its ta’wil except The One God. And those rooted in knowledge say: we believe in it; all of it is from our Lord. And none take reminder except people of understanding.
The verse calls the muhkamat أُمُّ ٱلْكِتَـٰبِ, the mother, foundation, and reference of the Book. Therefore mutashabihat must be understood in the light of the muhkamat, not that external reports rule over the muhkamat. When the Qur’an prescribes one hundred lashes for zina, one cannot make stoning rule over it through a missing ayah. When the Qur’an says knowledge of the Hour is only with The One God, one cannot build a schedule of events for the Hour through hundreds of reports. When the Qur’an calls guessing about the People of the Cave “throwing into the unseen,” one cannot import their names and number from external stories into belief.
Those rooted in knowledge in this verse are not people who claim ownership of all ta’wil. They know the boundaries of their knowledge and say:
ءَامَنَّا بِهِۦ كُلٌّۭ مِّنْ عِندِ رَبِّنَا
We believe in it; all of it is from our Lord.
This answer is harmonious with the answer of the angels. The angels said: we have no knowledge except what You taught us. Those rooted in knowledge also do not turn mutashabihat into an excuse for claiming knowledge of the unseen. Both answers call the human being to trustworthiness and recognition of his own boundary.
The mutashabihat and silences of the Qur’an are not empty land on which every interpreter may build whatever story he wants. What the Qur’an has not said is not permission to invent new speech in the name of Muhammad. The one who fills Qur’anic silence with Isra’iliyyat does not merely add details to the text; he also violates the Qur’an’s method of knowledge.
The Boundary between the Qur’an and Human Inheritance
The boundary between the Qur’an and human inheritance must remain clear. The speech of the Qur’an must be presented in the name of the Qur’an, and speech attributed to Muhammad must remain attributed report. The statement of a Companion, a Successor, or an interpreter does not become revelation merely because it entered an Islamic book. A Jewish or Christian story does not become the speech of The One God by changing the names of characters and adding a chain of transmission.
This boundary does not mean destroying history and cultural memory. A story may have value for understanding past culture, but its historical or literary value does not permit it to be attributed to Muhammad. An interpreter may offer an intelligent opinion, but his opinion remains the opinion of an interpreter. The problem begins when report, opinion, and legend are mixed together and then all of them, in the name of religion, rule over the Qur’an.
The name of the dog of the People of the Cave is not in the Qur’an; therefore it should not be considered part of Qur’anic teaching. The Qur’an did not name the angel of death Azra’il; therefore the fame of this name does not make it Qur’anic. The Qur’an prescribed one hundred lashes for zina; therefore an unseen ayah cannot impose stoning upon it. The Qur’an says knowledge of the Hour is only with the Lord; therefore apocalyptic reports cannot present Muhammad as the possessor of a schedule for the future. The Qur’an named the Sabians three times, but hadith did not explain their identity; therefore the claim that hadith gives the complete explanation of the Qur’an collapses with this very example.
The Qur’an is not one of several equal sources to be placed beside the Torah, the Gospel, reports, and jurisprudence, and then restricted by the opinions of narrators. The Qur’an is the Furqan and the criterion by which claims are measured. Reports must be measured before the Qur’an, not the Qur’an put on trial before reports.
Conclusion
The entry of Isra’iliyyat into tafsir is not a remote possibility. Its trace can be seen both in the abundance of reports and in their silence. Wherever Jewish and Christian sources had abundant stories, similar details also became abundant in Islamic tafsir. The stories of the prophets, the People of the Cave, stoning, and apocalyptic literature expanded through this path. But wherever no ready source existed, such as the Sabians, the disjointed letters, and Dhul-Kifl, hadith also remained silent and interpreters turned to contradictory guesses.
In the story of the People of the Cave, this process is visible in two stages. First, the identity of the questioners was forgotten, and to fill the gap, an occasion-of-revelation story was created that attributed questions with Christian content to Jews. Then the details of the Christian story of the sleepers in the cave entered tafsir, even though the Qur’an had forbidden Muhammad from seeking precisely those details. In the discussion of the Hour, the ashrah that the Qur’an said had already come were turned into signs that supposedly have not yet come. In the matter of stoning, the ruling of the Children of Israel entered Muslim law through reports, and to justify it, people even spoke of an ayah that does not exist in the Qur’an.
The fundamental problem is not only that a story came from Judaism or Christianity. The problem is that human inheritance was presented in the name of Muhammad, then speech attributed to Muhammad came to rule over the Qur’an, and finally what was not in the Qur’an was imagined to be part of the religion of The One God.
The Qur’an shows another way. The muhkamat are the mother and reference of the Book; mutashabihat are not the property of interpreters; knowledge of the unseen is not obtained through storytelling; knowledge of the Hour is with The One God; the Lord knows best the number of the People of the Cave; and where knowledge has not been given, the answer of the angels remains the criterion of trustworthiness: لَا عِلْمَ لَنَآ إِلَّا مَا عَلَّمْتَنَآ; we have no knowledge except what You taught us.
“We do not know” is not a defect in faith. Where The One God has not stated something, “we do not know” is exactly trustworthiness. The defect is when the human being calls his conjecture knowledge, the stories of others hadith, and human inheritance revelation.
We seek refuge in The One God from the evil of the expelled Satan, from the domination of Taghut, and from that part of our own self that presents conjecture in the name of truth and human speech in the name of revelation.