squier 53). The written record of these revelations, the Qur'an, is held to be "the full and complete message of the infinite Divine Mind to humanity" (Ellwood & McGraw 382). Every word and every stylistic choice is, therefore, a reflection of the divine essence and the scripture is revered in and of itself. It is complete in the sense that Muhammad was the last in the line of prophets stretching back to Moses and Abraham, and including Jesus. All these prophets had come before but their revelations were incomplete.
The purpose of the Qur'an is the proclamation of the essential unity of God. Unity, "the primary concept of Islam, implies totality" and, for the adherent, Islam "necessarily includes everything which makes up his life" (Du Pasquier 76). Although it also includes the Muslim "view of previous religious history" and occasional "instructions to the faithful," it is a work of proclamation, first and foremost, that tells the people of the necessity of submission to God (Ellwood & McGraw 382). The call to submit to God is not, however, merely a question of personal submission and the religion "has tried hard to combat the human proclivity to mix piety and egoism" by making adherence to the shari'a, or law--derived from the instructions in the Qur'an--a basis for community (Ellwood & McGraw 385).
Shari'a consisted of the interpretation of the words of the Qur'an as it applied to practical matters such as marriage, relations with non-Muslims and civil justice. The second source of Shari'a was hadith, the non-Qur'anic traditions related to Muhammad's sayings and exemplary experiences. Some modernist Muslims have argued that the hadith collections are inconsistent and chiefly represent a miscellaneous tradition that only shows how people thought in early Islam. They have, therefore, rejected the hadith "and appeal instead to the exclusive authority of the Qur'an"--but this is an extreme position even among the presen...