Hadith and Sunnah have no religious significance

Hadith and Sunnah are sayings and deeds that are attributed to Prophet Muhammad. Some hadiths have indeed historical significance. For example, Saeed al-Khudri reported that the prophet said:

“Do not write from me anything except the Quran. And whoever has written anything from me other than the Quran should erase it.” (Ibn Hanbal & Muslim)

According to history, 82 or 83 days before the prophet died, the following last verse of the Quran was revealed to him:

“…Today, I have completed your religion, perfected My blessings upon you, and have decreed Submission as the religion for you….” (5:3)

On this day, the prophet had with him nothing except complete (6:115), perfect (18:2) and fully detailed (6:114, 7:52, 12:110) Quran.

It is well documented fact that the earlier caliphs known as Khulafa Rashidun did not accord any religious importance to Hadith and Sunnah:

“...because of the emphasis laid by Shiaism on the sayings and the sunnah of the prophet it is difficult for it to understand why the writing down of the text of hadith was completely banned and why, if a written hadith

were found, it would be burned. We know that this banned continued through the caliphate of the Khulafa Rashidun into the Umayyad period and did not cease until the period of Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz, who ruled from A.H 99/A.D.717 to A.H.101/A.D.719.” (Shiite Islam translated by Sayyid Hussain Nasr)

One of the early well known writers of hadiths is Abu Abdullah Muhammad b Ismail b Ibrahim b.al-Mughira al-Jafari, a non Arab from Bukhara, central Asia, who is also known as Bukhari. Historical records show that Bukhari learned Arabic from his mother. When he was sixteen, he went to Arabia, today’s Saudi Arabia.

He traveled extensively on foot or on a camel, the fastest transport in those days, in search of hadiths. Finally, he collected 6000,000 hadiths of which he remembered 200,000 by heart, and 400,000 he wrote down. Later on he learned that out of 40,000 people who were instrumental in the collection of hadith 38,000 were unreliable and forgers. He discarded 592,705 and kept only 7,295.

Some hadiths of Bukhari are very long while others are very short. Let us say that each hadith needed a minimum of one hour for its collection, which would mean that Bukhari needed at least 68 years to collect 600,000 hadiths. It is amazing to know that Bukhari not only

collected 600,000 hadiths but also went to Baghdad from Mecca or Medina eight times, lived at a time on the leaves of plants and also died at the age of 62.

Verdict of Muslim scholars on hadiths:

“Mutawatir is an appellation given to those hadiths only that have always been, from the time of the prophet, ever afterwards recognized and accepted by every associate of the prophet, and every learned individual, as authentic and genuine, and to which no one has raised any objection. All learned Muhammadan divines of every period have declared that the Quran only is the hadith Mutawatir; but some doctors have declared certain other hadith also to be Mutawatir, the number, however, of such hadiths not exceeding Five”. (Dictionary of Islam page 642)

In the Quran the words hadith and sunnah are mentioned in various forms 36 and 16 times respectively. Yet none of these words anywhere in the Quran refers to the hadith and sunnah of the prophet.

In conclusion, hadith and sunnah have no religious significance; following them is an invitation to disaster in this world and in the hereafter.

M.Y. [New Zealand]