The Verses Constituting Evidence for the Sunna in Mūsā Jārullāh Bīgī's Work Kitāb al-Sunna

Mûsâ Jārullāh Bīgīyef (d. 1949) is one of the most prominent Islamic scholars produced by the Kazan Turks in the last century. Bîgî lived during a period when Islamic societies and states were undergoing a complete collapse in political, military, economic, and cultural terms. He devoted himself to finding solutions rooted in the Qurʾān and Sunna to help the Islamic world emerge from this crisis. The subject of this article, Kitāb al-Sunna, envisions a novel approach to the relationship between the Qurʾān.and Sunna and was written as a response to the Qurʾānists discourse, which emerged in the modern era initially in the Indian subcontinent and sought to marginalize the Sunna. Bîgîyef could not remain silent in the face of the excessive stance of the Qurʾānists and proposed a different theory that placed the Sunna above the Qurʾān. According to him, the Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad holds primacy among the four foundational sources of Islamic legal and theological authority. In his view, every ruling in Islam was first established by the Sunna, and subsequently, the Qurʾānic verses confirmed, validated, and even eternalized the Prophet’s words, actions, and approvals. The essential principles of faith and religion, as well as all obligatory rules and regulations in Islam, were first determined by the Sunna and later confirmed and established by the Qurʾānic verses. For example, the acts, conditions, and times of prayer were first explained by the Sunna, and only later were they validated by Qurʾānic verses. In Kitāb al-Sunna, Bîgîyef supports his unique theory of the Sunna with various Qurʾānic verses. This study examines the verses cited by Bîgîyef as evidence for the Sunna within the framework of contextual integrity (intratextual, extratextual, and divine context), which forms the core of the Qurʾān's holistic approach. It aims to investigate whether these verses actually support Bîgîyef's theory of the Sunna. The findings reveal that the verses cited by Bîgîyef have no direct connection to the Prophet's Sunna. This is due to a fragmented approach to interpretation that generally disregards the textual historical context. Although Bîgîyef's claims about the Sunna suggest some positive ideas, it would not be wrong to say that his theory remains only theoretical.