Obey The Messenger ≠ Obey Hadith

As shown in the previous article, the statement, “obey God and His messenger,” means to follow the Quran alone for today’s time and place. The purpose of this article is to address the specific claim that traditionalists make that this statement means believers are to uphold the Hadith. This article explains the problem with such a conclusion.

False Equivalence

The first problem with this understanding is that it creates a false equivalence between obeying the messenger and obeying the supposed narrations attributed to the messenger.

For example, suppose you tell your child they must obey any command you give them. Then tomorrow, someone you never met tells your child that they heard you command the child to go to the neighbor’s house. Does that child have any obligation to that command? At face value, the simple answer is no.

But naturally, followers of Hadith will argue that if it could be proven that the command did really come from you, then the child would be obligated to follow the command.

Hadith Lack Context

Let’s say the person was reliable and even articulated what you said verbatim but could not provide context to the command they shared with your child. Such that they are not able to tell your child when you made the command, what were the circumstances of the command, or even if that command was meant for your child. Let’s say they tell your child that you told them that they are to go to the store and pick up milk, except your command was for the week before and no longer applied at the time when they gave this command to your child. If your child acts up on this, they may be going against your wishes if this is not what you want them to do at the moment.

This is also the problem with Hadith, as the vast majority of Hadith lack context. Hadith do not specify an exact date when the event occurred. Most Hadith are even unclear regarding the rough timeframe to when in the prophet’s life the narration is to be attributed, let alone the circumstances or conditions as to why the statement or action was made. This is a frequent problem in Hadith, so much so that entire sects have been formed, debating how or when to apply the various laws extracted from the Hadith corpus, such as the debate regarding the prohibition of camel meat.