NOTICE: This article is a reproduction from Submitters Perspective No 27, April 1987.
They ask: “If the Qur’an is complete, perfect and fully detailed (as the Qur’an claims in 6:19, 38, 114–115; 7:52; 41:3; & 50:45), where in the Qur’an can we find the number of Rak’aas (units) in each contact prayer; where in the Qur’an can we find that the noon prayer, for example, consists of four units?”
The strange thing is that the people who ask this challenging question invariably state first that the Qur’an is complete and fully detailed. But then, they add the conjunction “but” and proceed to ask their famous question shown above.
When they say: “Show me in the Qur’an that the noon prayer consists of four Rak’aas,” the response that stumps them is: “Show me in Hadith or Sunna that the noon prayer consist of four Rak’aas.” Their fanatic opposition to the fact that the Qur’an is all we need blinds them and causes them to forget that Hadith & Sunna do not provide any details of the contact prayers (Salat).
In their desperate attempt to challenge God and reject the perfection of the Qur’an, they say, “There is a Hadith that says: “Pray as you saw me pray.” After acknowledging that they never saw the Prophet pray, they proceed to claim that this Hadith covers all five daily prayers. Because they refuse to believe God’s repeated assertions that the Qur’an is complete, perfect and fully detailed, and because God has forbidden them from understanding the Qur’an (see 17:45-46 and 18:57)’ they fail to realize that the Qur’an says: Pray, give Zakat charity, fast during Ramadan, and observe Hajj pilgrimage as you saw Abraham do. This Qur’anic fact is found in 22:78, 21:72 – 73, 2:187, and 22:26–27. In fact, the Prophet Muhammad is commanded in the Qur’an to follow the practices of Abraham (please see 16:123).
Thus, the Hadithist Muslims believe the fabrication “Pray as you saw me pray” which is falsely attributed to Muhammad, and reject God’s words that came out of Muhammad’s mouth commanding us to worship as Abraham worshiped (please see 2:135).