Yes I am familiar with some of this literature, the reason I find it very difficult to overlook the hadith is because without it 90% of rituals practised in Islam collapse like a wall made of sand. I wonder why people in the past never questioned this.
Practice and fard order of 5 daily prayers is only found in hadith.
Well the question you have to ask yourself is whether to follow something which is without a doubt the one true book from Allah and the only one he promised to protect, or to follow books written by men centuries after the prophet passed away, something they had no authorization to do from either the prophet or from Allah, and books which have such sketchy and unreliable foundations.
As for the rituals, Quran says its a detailed book and contains everything you need to know in it ( religion wise ) if these rituals were so important why is no detailed account on how to perform them? The Quran talks about many thing is the minutest detail but then somehow Allah forgot to mention how to perform these rituals forget perform doesn't even mention all their times!
For arguments sake lets say there are or were some kind of rituals to be performed or the Prophet performed them how do we know what those rituals were? I know some will say they were preserved by "tawattur" as in handed down generation to generation en masse, you think Allah would leave such an important piece of worship if we are to believe todays mullahs that the ritual prayer is the first thing Allah will ask you when the day comes and literally could mean an eternity in heaven or hell, to mass transmission? Just in todays world you can see every sect has its own way of praying, so which one right?
And you bring up a very good point about hadith, I always ask people to answer a hypothetical question of mine ( and no one has yet answered it ) imagine if today there was no Quran in the world and only hadith, how much of a difference would it make to the Muslim worlds belief and practices, also on the flip side, imagine if there was no hadith and only the Quran, how much of difference would it make to the Muslim worlds belief and practices?
When you truthfully answer these questions you'll realize what todays Muslims are actually following is not the Quran but man made hadith. And so many practices which if you really think about it are shirk have creeped in, like the so called 1st kalima and darood. Quran clearly states do not that do not call out to anyone besides Allah in your prayers and duas and yet Muslims call out to Mohammad and Ibrahim AND their families (??!!??) 5 times a day! Why do we call out to these two prophets when Quran clearly says all prophets are equal, ok through some verbal gymnastic we justify that then why are we calling out to their families????
They say there is no god but Alllah AND Mohammad is his messenger meaning you are putting Allah and his messenger on the same level, you go to their mosques and you see Allah written there and right next to it Muhammad and people bow to it all day long?
No wonders the early westerners in the first contact with Muslims never called them Muslims but rather Mohammadens, because thats what they saw, a bunch of people worshipping God and Muhammad.
And I know you find it difficult because even today I do, because it was the hardest things I've probably done in my life. And I still question myself regularly. You see just like everyone else I grew up in a traditional sunni Muslim house and followed the traditional ways learnt prayer, Quran, went on hajj into my mid 40s, I'm probably one of the few people here who has actually read the entire Sahih Bhukari cover to cover and chunks of the other sahih sitta.
But then this little pesky bugger started to make all sorts of outlandish claims that hadith is fake and we don't follow the Quran etc etc what blasphemy! Astaghfirullah I had never heard such preposterous claims in my life before and worse was I really didn't have any good arguments to get at him. That really ticked me off, so I said the only way to "defeat" this guy is arm myself with real knowledge and beat him down with it.
So I went into this deep dive research into hadith and the more I read the more of his claims started to sound true, and I would say over a period of anywhere between 1.5 to 2 years of researching hadith it had become clear to me that I was on the wrong path and had been following some perverted version of Islam. Heart breaking, which gave me this huge lump in my gut feeling so wronged.
But I also was also scared and constantly questioned myself, this can't be right, its not possible so many people for so many centuries are following something so crooked! What makes me so special and smarter than all the millions of "scholars" over time who have devoted every waking moment to the deen, that I was able to realize something so obvious and they weren't. WHAT IF I'm wrong! I'll surely burn in hell for this.
So in a nutshell it was far from easy.
Also people have always questioned hadith from day 1 of Islam, this is not something new as some might want to you believe, some western conspiracy to create division among the Muslims!!!
Here read this thread of mine on the history of hadith. You might find it useful
www.siasat.pk
P.S : Sorry for the long post! If you find them difficult to read let me know.
en.wikipedia.org
Just typing it out I couldn't help myself LOL and how ridiculous that sounds!
