The Neglected Sunnah Sunnat Allah (The Sunnah of God)

Abstract

The present article is a contribution to the continuing discussion of
sunnah. I hope to show the scholar who deals with texts referring to
sunnah that he or she is not, when interpreting a text containing the word,
confined to a choice between the sunnah of the Prophet, local sunnah,
and the sunnah of the Companions and the early community. It is quite
possible that the sunnah referred to is the sunnah mentioned in the
Qur'an, namely, the sunnah of God.
We must remember certain characteristics of Sunnah. a) it is set
intentionally by one having the authority to do so-the imam; b) it is
meant to be imitated and not changed, and c) the imam who sets the
sunnah shares responsibility for the deeds of thcse who imitate him.
What seems to be missing from most discussions of sunnah is the fact
that it is a Qur'anic notion as well. Joseph Schacht, for example, quotes
no Qur'anic occurrences, not even in his 1963 article that asserts that the
sunnah of the Prophet was precisely to follow the Qur'an. Bravmann's
citation of Q 8:38 at the end of his discussion of the phrase madat sunnat
al awwalin is the only Qur7anic instance of the word that he cites in his
own voice; the othem are in quotations from al Shafi'i, Ibn Hisham, and
al Baydawi. Apparently neither Mustafa al Siba'i nor Muhammad al
Khatib’ refer to the sunnah of God.
The sunnah that God sets for Himself is certainly authoritative, unchanging,
and meant to be imitated. But it is more important to note that
God’s sunnah is also what God Himself does, what He has prescribed for
Himself. Human beings know that God will inevitably do a certain thing
because He has always done the same thing in the past. These are universal
and unchanging rules and, as such, can form the basis for logical
arguments. The branch of modem legal logic called rule-based reasoning
holds that such reasoning is prior to all other forms, since no communication
using the word in the concrete and not the metaphorical
sense can even take place until the interlocutors agree on certain rules,
such as the rules of language ...