United Submitters International

The United Submitters International is a minor Islamic group, founded by Dr. Rashad Khalifa. Its founder was stabbed to death in 1990. It is regarded by most Muslims as heretical. The group calls itself the "Submitters" and follows the Quran Alone rule (rejecting hadiths).

Beliefs of the Submitters

• All worship should be dedicated to God alone
• The Qur'an is the last and best of all scriptures
• Islam as the world knows it today has been corrupted beyond recognition by adherence to hadith and sunnah
• Dr. Rashad Khalifa was the consolidating and purifying Messenger of the Covenant prophesied in the Bible (Malachi 3:1-3) and in the Quran (3:81)
• God put an authenticating code in all His scriptures, including the Qur'an, based on the number 19

Submitters describe themselves as Qur'an Alone Muslims. It is not clear if the Submitters and any Submitter splinter groups are the only Qur'an Alone Muslims, or if there are other Muslims who describe themselves as such.

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Further details of Submitter beliefs:

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Rejection of hadith

Academics and scholars in the Western tradition have long taken a jaundiced view of hadith (see hadith, historiography of early Islam), believing that many of the "traditions" are later inventions. Khalifa was notable for being both a practicing Muslim and a critic of hadith. He argued that the hadith were not credible, and that much of the elaborate structure of religious and family law, sharia, erected on the basis of the hadith, was not binding on Muslims. Indeed, he argued that the Qur'an alone was sufficient as a basis for Islam. His ideas have clearly had some influence, even outside his sect of Submitters, but it would be difficult to quantify it.

Related Topics:
Hadith - Historiography of early Islam - Sharia

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Rejecting two verses of the Qur'an

While Khalifa's early publications claimed that the numerical code he saw in the Qur'an confirmed that the Qur'an was perfectly preserved, errors were found in his earlier counts. In the end, to keep the counts of certain critical words, Khalifa denounced two long-accepted verses (Sura 9:128?129) of the Qur'an as later interpolations, portraying himself as a "purifier" of the Qur'an. He claimed that the numerical patterns he found in the Qur'an showed the verses to be false. He also pointed to a tradition found in al-Bukhari, that these verses were only found in one version of the ninth sura when the Qur'an was compiled and standardized under the early caliph Uthman ibn Affan.

Related Topics:
Sura 9 - Al-Bukhari - Uthman ibn Affan

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Claiming to be a divine messenger

The controversy surrounding Khalifa deepened when he declared himself a messenger of God, just as Abraham and Muhammad had been. He claimed to be the Messenger of the Covenant, prophesied in the Bible (Malachi 3:1-3) and the Quran (3:81), sent to purify and consolidate all God's messages into one.

Related Topics:
Abraham - Muhammad

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The introduction to his translation of the Quran reads: "The time has come to purify and consolidate all the messages delivered by God's prophets into one message, and proclaim that henceforth, only one religion is acceptable by God, Islam (Quran 3:19). "Islam" is not a name of a religion; it is a description. "Islam" is the total submission and devotion to God ALONE. Thus, there are many Muslim Christians, Muslim Jews, and Muslim Muslims. There is only one religion - devoting one's worship to God ALONE. This is the First Commandment in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and this Final Testament."

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Khalifa distinguished between "messengers" and "prophets"; he considered Muhammad the final prophet but not the last messenger. Most Muslims consider Muhammed to be both the final prophet and the final messenger. Other Muslims henceforth considered Khalifa a heretic and an apostate.

Related Topics:
Heretic - Apostate

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Altering prayers

Khalifa claimed that it was wrong to mention any name besides the name of God in any of the worship practices, including the salat, or daily prayer, and the shahadah, or confession of faith. The usual forms of prayer and confession mention Muhammad. Removing Muhammad's name was not well received by other Muslims.

Related Topics:
Salat - Shahadah

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Belief in the significance of the number nineteen

Many cultures and religions in the world have believed, or still believe, that certain numbers are especially lucky, significant, or meaningful. Some traditions have also found numeric significance, or messages, in sacred texts. Searching for meanings or omens though numbers is usually called numerology.

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In the long history of Islam, some Muslims have believed in significant numbers and numerology.

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Significant numbers

Many Muslims would find the numbers five and seven especially significant.

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• Muslims are to pray five times a day: Sunnis believe in the Five Pillars of Islam.
• There are about twenty-five references to the number seven in the Qur'an; for example, the Qur'an makes reference to the "seven heavens" (or the "seven skies"), the seven periods of creation, and the Sleepers of Ephesus, whose number is not mentioned in the Quran, although it says people will speculate about it, saying three, five, or seven (Quran, 18:22). According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad flew from Mecca to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and from there he ascended through the seven heavens. This is why there are seven embossed panels with seven windows on each face of the octagonal Dome of the Rock mosque on the Temple Mount. Furthermore, during the ritual circulation of the Kaaba in the grand mosque in Mecca, during piligrimage, Muslims walk in a circle around the cubic structure of the Kaaba exactly seven times. During the Hajj pilgrimage, Muslims throw stones at the devil three times, using seven stones in each round.

Characters in sacred texts read as numerals

Before the use of the numerals now known as Arabic numerals,

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Semitic writing systems used characters or letters also as numerals. In time, every character was associated with a number, so that every word could be represented as a number and every number could represent several words. This was taken into Arabic as the abjad system. Medieval Islamic scholars used abjad to write treatises on the subject of numerology and the Qur'an. Islamic numerology is referred to as "ilm al-jafr" or "ilm al-huroof" in Arabic http://www.islamonline.net/askaboutislam/display.asp?hquestionID=8602.

Related Topics:
Semitic - Abjad

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The use of the abjad system became quite popular in India. Indian Muslims commonly continue to place great signifance on the number 786 because it is the abjad numerological equivalent of the Islamic invocation known as the Bismillah.

Related Topics:
India - 786 - Bismillah

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Numeric patterns in the Qur'an, according to Khalifa

Khalifa did not use the abjad system. Starting in 1969, he used computers to analyze counts of letters, words, ayahs and surahs in the Qur'an; initially he was searching for any kind of numerical pattern, specifically relating to letter frequencies in connection with the initial letters; later, having found a number of multiples of 19, he and others looked for letter, word, and other counts that were also 19-multiples. He believed that the Qur'an itself pointed to the significance of the number 19, which is mentioned in surah 74).

Related Topics:
Ayahs - Surahs - Qur'an - Surah 74

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When Khalifa first began using a computer to "extract" patterns involving the number 19, many Muslims were both interested and supportive. However, as Khalifa became more involved with his findings, he began claiming that the patterns in the Qur'an identified him as a messenger sent by God. At this point Khalifa's "patterns" became controversial and were rejected by mainstream Islamic opinion.

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