Khizr Khan, the Muslim father of a slain American soldier, is an attorney who has previously written in a law journal about Islamic law. He specifically wrote about the purity of the Quran and the Sunnah over all other texts and interpretations.
Khan rose to fame after speaking at the Democratic National Convention Thursday and pulling out a pocket U.S. Constitution imploring if Donald Trump had even read it.
Khan wrote “Juristic Classification Of Islamic Law” in the Houston Journal of International Law in 1983. In it he breaks down different levels of Islamic law. Khan writes that the Quran and the Sunnah which were both directly created by the Muslim prophet Muhammad were the only sources in Muhammad’s lifetime that “were recognized as binding.”
“The Shari’ah-was completed during the lifetime of Prophet Muhammed, in the Quran and Sunnah. This brings up an important fact which is generally overlooked, that the invariable and basic rules of Islamic Law are only those prescribed in the Shari’ah (Quran and Sunnah), which are few and limited,” Khan continues to write. “All other juridical works which have been written during more than thirteen centuries are very rich and indispensable, but they must always be subordinated to the Shari’ah and open to reconsideration by all Muslims.”
In the journal article, Khan goes on to explain the importance of Islamic laws and interpretations to Muslim followers. He writes that: “The present form of the Quran is one and the same in every part of the Muslim world, and it has been so all through the centuries. This, Muslims believe, is due to the fact that the compilation and arrangement of chapters was completed-under divine instructions-by the Prophet himself.”
It is due to this that Khan writes, “to Muslims, the Quran being the very word of God, it is the absolute authority from which springs the very conception of legality and every legal obligation.”
The Muslim attorney writes that, “it has to be admitted, however, that the Quran, being basically a book of religious guidance, is not an easy reference for legal studies. It is more particularly an appeal to faith and the human soul rather than a classification of legal prescriptions.” Khan added that, “the major portion of the Quran is, as with every Holy Book, a code of divine exhortation and moral principals.”
