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the sunna of the prophet 81The truth is that after the prophet’s death in 632 his companionswere preoccupied only with the task of producing an authoritativecollection of divine revelations. They did not bother at all aboutprophetic ÈadÊths. They started collecting the divine §y§t under thecaliph Abå Bakr and completed the task under the caliph #Uthm§nb. ‘Aff§n, who eventually compiled the written mußÈaf, the copy wehold in our hands today. This is what has become known as thecodex of #Uthm§n. It is said to have abrogated all other codices thatexisted at that time and which were subsequently all destroyed. TheProphet’s (ß) companions had realised that whatever MuÈammad (ß)said or did as a human being could not have originated from a divinesource and thus was strictly related to the politic al-historical contextin which he lived. Even though they could have started to collectÈadÊths they continued to rely exclusively on the divine text. Knowingthe Book very well they realised that to collect ÈadÊths in order tocomplete divine revelation would have contradicted Allah’s words inverse 3 of Sårat al-M§"ida:This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favourupon you, and have chosen for you al-isl§m as your religion… ( Al-M§"ida5:3)It was clear to them that the religion of al-isl§m was perfected evenwithout the existence of a single ÈadÊth. It was indeed inconceivableto think that Allah has given them an incomplete religion of whichhalf, the ÈadÊths, was still missing. And it would also be inconceivableto think that they, after having successfully collected all existingdivine revelations, could have been so neglectful of not havingexhaustively collected all existing ÈadÊths (a process that lasted severalcenturies), therefore embarrassing generations of future Muslims byhaving secured only half of al-isl§m.The collection of ÈadÊths and the process of turning them intosacrosanct texts is undoubtedly a later development. The followingaspects have triggered this fateful turn towards the sanctification ofthe Prophet’s sunna. We have identified six major errors which alloccurred because of a wrong interpretation of a verse in the Book. Indealing with these errors, we quote the verse first, highlight the mistakesmade, and then introduce our own reading of the text.The first one concerns the belief that Mu1. Èammad’s (ß) wordswere inspired by God: