Edip Yuksel (E) Islamic Reform - 1 (introduction)

19.org Manifesto For Islamic Reform

"O people, a proof has come to you from your Lord, and We have sent down to you a guiding light." (4:174)
"...and do not make corruption on the Earth after it has been reformed..." (7:85)
"It is one of the great ones. A warning to humanity. For any among you who wishes to progress or regress." (74:36-37)

The influence of the religion concocted by clerics during the Umayyad and Abbasid dynasties is still dominant in Muslim countries. The idea that the Quran is incomplete, unintelligible, and insufficient for spiritual guidance created a huge demand for religious books, and the scholars and clergymen supplied volumes of them. The masses were told that those books were going to complete, explain, and detail the Quranic revelation. These clerics thus implied that God was not a wise and articulate author; He could not make His message sufficiently clear and He failed to provide guidance on many issues, even issues involving important spiritual principles and practices. Without these supplementary books, the Quran was of limited use to the individual seeking religious guidance. Some even went so far as to declare that reading the Quran alone would mislead the reader. Numerous books of hadith and sectarian jurisprudence (sharia) were labeled "authentic" and for all practical purposes, replaced the Quran. The Quran was not a book to be understood on its own; people needed to read books written by professional narrators, collectors, editors, and scholars of hearsay and speculation. Many people got lost among the volumes of books written to interpret and explain the Quran and did not find sufficient time to study the Quran itself. The privileged few who did find that time had little chance of understanding it, since their minds were tainted with man-made religious instructions, and their logic had been corrupted by contradictory teachings or what we might call "holy viruses."