The Hadith Rejector’s Dilemma: Questions They CAN’T Escape

The Qurʾān frequently legislates by presupposition. In a range of its commands it imposes a binding obligation while withholding the particulars that determine it, marking those particulars, lexically, as already known to its addressees. Where it does so, it presupposes an extra-textual body of knowledge containing the very content compliance requires. Qurʾānic sufficiency cannot therefore consist in textual self-containment, since in these cases the text's own conditions of obedience are unsatisfiable on those terms. The doctrine of textual isolation is defeated, not by any claim imposed upon the Qurʾān from outside, but by the internal grammar of the commands it purports to obey.