64.12 – Obey God and obey the messenger!
The Quran associates “the messenger” with Allah at least eighty-five times and links the messenger with Allah for obedience and disobedience twenty-eight times (including this verse and 3.32, 132; 4.59; 5.92; 8.1, 20, 46; 24.54; 33.36; 47.33; 58.13). These several commands to obey both Allah and his messenger, as well as the many associations of the messenger with Allah (including for belief in 64.8), raise a question about one of the Quran’s prohibitions. The Quran speaks strongly against “associating” (ashraka) with Allah any person or created thing (e.g., 4.48, 116). The Quran seems to be especially critical of the shirk that it claims to be involved in the Christian confession of the deity of Jesus (e.g., 9.30–33). But how should one describe the extensive pairing of “the messenger” with Allah?
The Quran’s commands to obey the messenger became very important in the writings of the influential Muslim jurist al-Shāfi‘ī (d. 820), who insisted they gave divine authority to the words traditionally attributed to Muhammad in the hadith. Through this argument, made in his famous works Risāla and Umm, al-Shāfi‘ī cleared the way for Islamic Law to be based largely on what Muslims believe to be the words and life example of Muhammad – the sunna. This raises another important question: Does the Almighty Creator God intend for humanity to follow the sunna of Muhammad as it is portrayed in the Sīra, Maghāzī, Muslim histories, and hadith?
For readers who would like a taste of the reasoning that raised the authority of Muhammad, a translation of al-Shāfi‘ī’s treatise on Islamic Law by Majid Khadduri titled al-Shāfi‘ī’s Risāla is available. Also very helpful are books by Joseph Schacht and John Burton.