Reformist Movements in the Indian Subcontinent and Their Views on the Quran

The Indian subcontinent, witnessing many historical ups and downs, especially after the British colonialism, created the ground for the formation of various religious and political movements. New Islamic thoughts came to existence in India with the modernism doctrine, intended to correct and challenge the imported thoughts remaining from the colonialism era. The new schools of thought came with special interpretation of the Islamic religious beliefs, in particular concerning the Quran. One of these movements was Quranism whose followers believed the Quran was the only source of Sharia. It was formed upon two main ignoring the value of hadith, and resorting to the Quran as the only source for religious interpretation. Quranism movement created the ground for the formation of a fundamentalist group called Ahl al-Quran, both bearing many shortcomings. The focus of the present study is on the Quranism school of thinking.This article used the descriptive-analytical method to search through history and hadith resources as well as the Quran itself to find the underlying reasons for the formation of the Quranism school of thinking, concluding that Quranism was an extreme form of Ahl al-Hadith school of thinking.