Misinterpreted Verses

When a Quranic verse appears to conflict with a hadith, the interpreter faces a choice. He can accept the Quranic verse at face value and conclude that the hadith is unreliable. Or he can manipulate the meaning of the Quranic verse to bring it into alignment with the hadith. Across centuries of Islamic scholarship, the second path has been taken with troubling frequency - and understanding why requires first understanding the framework God established in 3:7 for how the Quran is to be read.

[3:7] He is the One who revealed to you this scripture, containing straightforward verses - which constitute the essence of the scripture - as well as multiple-meaning verses. Those who harbor doubts in their hearts will pursue the multiple-meaning verses to create confusion, and to extricate a certain meaning. None knows the true meaning thereof except GOD and those well founded in knowledge. They say, "We believe in this - all of it comes from our Lord." Only those who possess intelligence will take heed.

God divides the verses of the Quran into two categories. The first category is the muhkamaat - the clear-cut verses that constitute the foundation of the Book. These are the law-giving verses: the verses that prescribe obligations, establish prohibitions, and define the conduct by which believers will be held accountable on the Day of Judgment. Because accountability requires clarity, God has phrased these verses in direct and unambiguous language. No foreign words need to be added to arrive at their meaning. No specialized training is required to understand them. The law they contain stands plainly on the words God chose to express it, and those words support only one coherent reading.

The second category is the mutashabihat - verses that allow multiple meanings. These are not law-giving verses. They are verses in which more than one interpretation is linguistically possible, and God placed them in the Book deliberately.

The mutashabihat verses serve several purposes, but the one most relevant here is that they function as a test. When a verse admits more than one meaning, the reader must choose. Will they select the meaning that conforms to the overall message of the Quran - the meaning supported by other Quranic verses, derived from Quranic evidence, and consistent with the Book's internal logic? Or will they reach for a meaning that serves a position they already hold, importing into the verse a conclusion the words alone do not require?

God makes clear in 2:26 that the Quran itself is the instrument through which both guidance and misguidance operate:

[2:26] GOD does not shy away from citing any kind of allegory, from the tiny mosquito and greater. As for those who believe, they know that it is the truth from their Lord. As for those who disbelieve, they say, "What did GOD mean by such an allegory?" He misleads many thereby, and guides many thereby. But He never misleads thereby except the wicked.

The same Book guides the sincere and misguides the insincere - not because the Book contains error, but because the reader's condition determines what they find in it. The person who approaches the mutashabihat verses with a predetermined conclusion will find a way to read that conclusion into them. The person who approaches them honestly, using the Quran as its own guide, will find the meaning that harmonizes with the whole.

The majority of manipulated Quranic interpretations follow a recognizable pattern. A clear-cut verse exists whose meaning is plain. A hadith exists whose content contradicts that verse. Rather than concluding that the hadith is unreliable, the interpreter manipulates the Quranic verse - treating a muhkam verse as though it were mutashabih, adding words that do not appear in the text, narrowing the scope of universal language, or extracting phrases from their context - until the verse appears to accommodate the hadith.

This approach produces a deeply troubling implication that its practitioners rarely confront directly: if the hadith contradicts the Quran and the Quran is the word of God, then the hadith is attributing to the prophet words and positions that stand in opposition to God's own revelation. The question this raises is unavoidable - could the faithful prophet of God have genuinely preached what contradicts the Word of God?

The answer, for anyone who believes both in the Quran and in the integrity of the prophet, is that he could not. The prophet's entire function was to deliver the Quran and to embody its message. God affirmed this throughout the Book and warned in the strongest terms against the prophet attributing to God anything beyond what was revealed to him (17:73-75, 69:44-46). A prophet who contradicted the Quran in his own teachings would have been contradicting the very revelation he was commissioned to deliver.

The conclusion that genuine belief demands is therefore not that the Quran must be reinterpreted to accommodate the hadith, but that any hadith contradicting the Quran is fabricated - words attributed to the prophet that he never said, composed after his death by those who had their own reasons for putting them into circulation. The prophet is innocent of what was invented in his name. The Quran, which he delivered faithfully, remains the standard by which everything attributed to him must be measured - and whatever fails that standard must be set aside.

For more information on the history of the collection and documentation of the hadith please see:

The History of Hadith

The following are some of these many misinterpretations: