Editing Sunnah (section)

===Alternative view===
The minority argument against the sunnah of Muhammad being divine revelation (''waḥy'') goes back to the ''ahl al-Kalam'' who al-Shāfiʿī argued against in the second century of Islam. Their modern "[[Quranist]]s", the modern successors of the ''ahl al-Kalam'', argue that the sunnah falls short of the standard of the Quran in divinity.<ref>[[#DWBRTMIT1996|D. W. Brown, ''Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought'', 1996]]: p. 52</ref> Specifically because
#with the exception of the ''ḥadīth qudsī'', sunnah was not revealed and transmitted verbatim, as was the Quran; it was often transmitted giving the sense or gist of what was said (known as ''bi'l-maʿnā'');<ref name="DWBRTMIT1996:52-3">[[#DWBRTMIT1996|D. W. Brown, ''Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought'', 1996]]: pp. 52–53</ref>
#the process of revelation was not "external, entirely independent of the influence of the messenger"; it bares the "personality" or "mentality" (''baṣīrat'') of Muhammad;<ref name="DWBRTMIT1996:52-3" />
#unlike the Quran, it was not "preserved in writing" until over a century after Muhammad's death, which opens the question of how much corruption and/or error entered the writings and why, if it was divinely revealed, eternal truth, orders were not given to the earliest Muslims to write it down as they were for the Quran.<ref name=44-Mawdudi>Abu al-ʿAlā Mawdūdī, ''Tarjumaān al-Qurʾān'' 56, 6 Manṣib-i-risālat nambar (1961): 193; quoted in [[#DWBRTMIT1996|D. W. Brown, ''Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought'', 1996]]: p. 53</ref><ref name="DWBRTMIT1996:52-3" />