A critical analysis of Sunni Qur’anists’s view on the difference between the terms rasoul and nabie and their consequent rejection of Hadith validity

The terms rasoul and nabie have widely been used in the Qur’an and the Islamic culture, but there is no consensus on the exact meanings of these two concepts yet. This is due to the lack of deep and objective scrutiny of the meanings and the contextual instances of those words in the Qur’an. The present study is conducted on the purpose of analyzing and evaluating the Qur’anists’ views about the disparity of rasoul and nabie, which has resulted in the rejection of Hadiths. Since their view is based on the non-necessity and non-validity of the prophet’s quotations for the understanding and interpretation of the Qur’an, this study seeks to come up with new definitions of the two words through a comparative analysis of the Qur’anic contexts in which they appear. Once the findings are compared to the viewpoints of Qur’anists, it emerges that those scholars are wrong. According to what is understood from the verses, rasoul and nabie are denotatively different but functionally and referentially the same. Because there is no congruence between this linguistic finding and what the Qur’anists believe, their idea about the invalidity of the prophet’s Hadiths is rejected.