Muslims here - how can you justify the following of the hadith? Please provide verses to back yourself up from the Quran.

Before Prophet Muhammad PBUH, Abraham and Ishmael PBUT prayed to God as they built the Meccan temple with the following supplication:

2:129 - Our Lord, and send among them a messenger from themselves who will recite to them Your verses and teach them the Book and wisdom and purify them. Indeed, You are the Exalted in Might, the Wise."

So Allah SWT has distinguished between the Book (revelation, the Qur'an) and the wisdom (the explanation, the applicability/practical use of the revelation), and does so in many places in the Qur'an. The Prophet therefore has a role to play in teaching what the Qur'an means correctly, in practice.

The love of Allah is through following the Prophet PBUH:

3:31 - Say, [O Muhammad], "If you should love Allah, then follow me, [so] Allah will love you and forgive you your sins. And Allah is Forgiving and Merciful."

Those given the role of "messenger" are sent by Allah SWT to be obeyed by their community:

4:64 - And We did not send any messenger except to be obeyed by permission of Allah. And if, when they wronged themselves, they had come to you, [O Muhammad], and asked forgiveness of Allah and the Messenger had asked forgiveness for them, they would have found Allah Accepting of repentance and Merciful.

The Messenger has authority to teach and give rulings to the people who believe in Allah:

59:7 - And what Allah restored to His Messenger from the people of the towns - it is for Allah and for the Messenger and for [his] near relatives and orphans and the [stranded] traveler - so that it will not be a perpetual distribution among the rich from among you. And whatever the Messenger has given you - take; and what he has forbidden you - refrain from. And fear Allah ; indeed, Allah is severe in penalty.

The prophet has been given authority to judge matters and we are only true believers if we obey his judgements:

4:65 - But no, by your Lord, they will not [truly] believe until they make you, [O Muhammad], judge concerning that over which they dispute among themselves and then find within themselves no discomfort from what you have judged and submit in [full, willing] submission.

The Messenger is the perfect role model for Muslims, which means everything he says and does is important according to Allah:

33:21 - There has certainly been for you in the Messenger of Allah an excellent pattern for anyone whose hope is in Allah and the Last Day and [who] remembers Allah often.

The Prophet PBUH and those in authority (the scholars) are to be referred to whenever a disagreement about the religion or about the Law arises:

4:59 - O you who have believed, obey Allah and obey the Messenger and those in authority among you. And if you disagree over anything, refer it to Allah and the Messenger, if you should believe in Allah and the Last Day. That is the best [way] and best in result.

People who reject Ahadith attempt to explain that when Allah SWT commands us to obey the Prophet PBUH, He means to obey the Qur'an, which makes no sense whatsoever, because the Qur'an is entirely the word and commands of Allah SWT which the prophet PBUH himself obeyed and has no part in:

46:2 - The revelation of the Book is from Allah, the Exalted in Might, the Wise.

Many chapters of the Qur'an start with similar declarations that revelation is Allah's alone. Furthermore, Allah SWT commands the Prophet PBUH to explain that he has not constructed the Qur'an:

46:8 - Or do they say, "He has invented it?" Say, "If I have invented it, you will not possess for me [the power of protection] from Allah at all. He is most knowing of that in which you are involved. Sufficient is He as Witness between me and you, and He is the Forgiving the Merciful."

The prophet is not allowed to change the Qur'an because it is Allah's, not his:

10:15 - And when Our verses are recited to them as clear evidences, those who do not expect the meeting with Us say, "Bring us a Qur'an other than this or change it." Say, [O Muhammad], "It is not for me to change it on my own accord. I only follow what is revealed to me. Indeed I fear, if I should disobey my Lord, the punishment of a tremendous Day."

Therefore in order to specifically obey or refer to the Messenger's teachings and judgments, and to understand him as a role model as per Allah's instructions, we have to look outside the Qur'an, otherwise we would just be obeying Allah SWT alone and ignoring when Allah SWT commands us obey the Prophet PBUH. It would be contradictory.

The authorities on religious matters (scholars) are also to be paid attention according to Allah SWT, and it is they (the Companions RAA) who first collected and preserved the Qur'an, as well as all of the sayings and traditions of the Prophet PBUH in the Ahadith corpus, and they are the most knowledgeable about the truth of Islam's teachings.

Allah also says he loves the friends, family and helpers of the Prophet PBUH:

9:100 - And the first forerunners [in the faith] among the Muhajireen and the Ansar and those who followed them with good conduct - Allah is pleased with them and they are pleased with Him, and He has prepared for them gardens beneath which rivers flow, wherein they will abide forever. That is the great attainment.

Condemned are those who pick what to believe from the revelation:

2:85 - Then, you are those [same ones who are] killing one another and evicting a party of your people from their homes, cooperating against them in sin and aggression. And if they come to you as captives, you ransom them, although their eviction was forbidden to you. So do you believe in part of the Scripture and disbelieve in part? Then what is the recompense for those who do that among you except disgrace in worldly life; and on the Day of Resurrection they will be sent back to the severest of punishment. And Allah is not unaware of what you do.

Therefore, it is hypocritical to pick and choose what you want to follow from what has been preserved from the Prophet PBUH, especially from the people whom Allah SWT has blessed.

People disregard Ahadith because they don't know the origin, history, compilation, authentication or applicability of the Ahadith within the Islamic framework, built first and foremost upon the Qur'an. Qur'anists underestimate the work of the scholars, and they don't understand that even the Islam they believe in is only that way because of Ahadith, scholars, Companions, among many other things they push back on. They believe that the Ahadith were constructed or made up centuries after the Prophet PBUH despite the Ahadith being things that the Prophet PBUH said and did (the Ahadith describe his Sunnah), which means they existed from the moment he spoke/did them. The Sunnah existed alongside the Qur'an during the Prophet's lifetime, since from the beginning the Companions RAA were "following" the prophet as per Allah's command in the Qur'an - they were doing what he commanded them to do and taught them the wisdom as per the revelation. To disregard the Sunnah is to consider yourself more intelligent, more learned, more Muslim than almost all people who have considered themselves followers of the Prophet PBUH throughout the last 14 centuries, including the greatest scholars and Companions RAA, who have done more for the religion than could be encompassed by the imagination, may Allah SWT grant them the highest of Paradise. I can't imagine justifying this level of arrogance.

A person who denies the Sunnah should consider the fact that throughout history there have been so few people who have disregarded the Sunnah, not because of the control that scholars had over people (otherwise places like Egypt would have become entirely Shiite when their rulers were Shiites preaching Shiism, instead they remained majority Sunni), but because Allah SWT has given success to the majority. There are no Qur'an-only scholars, certainly none that can match any real Islamic scholar in erudition, and lay-Qur'ranists are almost always ignorant people or young people with misplaced anger coupled with a closed mind and (sometimes wilful) ignorance.

For anyone who is beginning to understand the importance of the Sunnah, it is scary to learn that there are Ahadith where the Prophet PBUH specifically condemns disregarding his teachings because they aren't found in the Qur'an. In any science, one must always question their own understanding before they start accusing others of not understanding; for verses like where Allah SWT says that the Qur'an is complete, where Allah SWT uses the word "hadith," or says that a messenger's role is only to clearly inform the people, what does He actually mean within the entire context of Islam, even within just the Qur'anic context itself? For the Ahadith which Qur'anists consider problematic, how can Muslims who care about the Sunnah and the Qur'an justify and follow for centuries upon centuries such Ahadith? It is a legitimate question, but unfortunately, Qur'anists do not study with an open mind (if at all) in order to reach an answer and attempt to determine what is "true." They don't even acknowledge that they know deeper study is important or indicate that they know what this kind of study entails, otherwise they wouldn't be Qur'anists. Simply, disregarding Sunnah is the clearest sign of ignorance about the teachings of the Qur'an.

/r/religion Thread