A Message Every Hadith Rejector Needs to Hear

The Quran Alone Is Not Enough

You have people on TikTok, online, just because of a hadith they don't like it — they say, "Well, am I gonna let a man tell me what to do? The Quran is enough. The Quran suffices me."

When Allah created this universe, he did not create it in such a way that he would leave it and abandon it with no guidance. And this is why Allah says: did human beings think that they would just be left to their own devices, to do whatever they wanted? No. There has to be guidance. Without guidance, without following Allah's guidance — look at the fracking of the ocean, look at the wars that are waged, look at the insanity, look at the prostitution. This is what happens when Allah's guidance does not reach human beings, when they don't act on it. This is the world. This is what happens to the world.

There must be guidance. Now, in what form does that guidance take? Why didn't Allah just send a book from the sky? Why did he have to send messengers with the book?

And Allah addresses this in the Quran — people would say, if he had just sent a book, just dropped a book from the sky, they would have found some excuse not to follow it. "It's just a scripture, it's just a book, could have been anything, could have been an accident." But not just that.

The Messenger Is the Message

The revelation itself — let me give you an analogy. Imagine I give you a set of instructions: I want you to make me a painting, I want you to draw a human being, I want him to look this way, I want you to do this — and I give you this paper and I say go and do it. A lot of what I've written on the paper is up for your interpretation. I'm going to get a hundred different paintings. But what if I came and I drew the painting for you and said "make this"? I'd get a hundred identical paintings.

And that's why it is very important — extremely important — to understand: the messenger is as important as the message. Or I can say it a different way: the messenger is the message. There is no Quran without Sunnah. There is no wahi without Nabi. There is no way a text is going to launch from the sky and we were just going to figure it out.

Allah says "be good to your family." How? What happens when there's an argument? What if my family is horrible? What if someone tries to kill me from my family? These are human and specific cases for which you need specific examples. And this is why Allah sent the Prophet ﷺ — and all the prophets before him — to model the revelation. Because people don't follow instructions on a paper. They follow a human model, a real model that they can copy, that they can understand the details from.

This is the logical reason why the messenger is the message. And he is not a salesman. He is not a postman. Some people think that the Anbiya, the Rasul, the prophets, are postmen — they just come, knock on your door, "here you go, I'm gone." No. The messenger is the embodiment, the actualization. He is the message.

The Purpose of the Sunnah

What was the purpose of the Sunnah? The Prophet ﷺ's behavior, his speech, his approvals, his actions — what was the purpose of this? Allah says:

"O Muhammad ﷺ, I have sent you the dhikr, the reminder, to clarify to people what was revealed to them in the Quran."

So the Quran needs clarification, it needs elaboration, it needs an example. Otherwise the Quran cannot be implemented on this earth. Does that mean the Quran is imperfect? Does that mean the Quran is corrupted? Absolutely not. But the messenger and the message cannot be separated. They are interlinked. This is the way Allah designed guidance.

The Example of Salah

For example, Allah in the Quran says to pray. Okay — how are you going to pray though? In which way? In which direction? With what movements? Billions of people are praying Salah, but the details of how to pray are not in the Quran. However, the principles have been established in the Quran. The details are modeled by Rasulullah ﷺ.

Some people say, "Oh, the Quran talks about Qiyam — standing — and it talks about Sujood and Ruku." So what are you gonna do? You're gonna do Qiyam, Sujood, Ruku. You know what that's called? That's called aerobics. You know when we were small there used to be this thing in the nursery, in the primary school — "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes." That's what you're gonna do.

When you don't have the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ, you're just gonna be moving about with no clue. What do you say? What do you not say? There's no detail. The Sunnah is the detail. It's the clarification.

Three Examples That Prove the Sunnah Is Indispensable

I'm going to give three very simple examples — for those who think the Quran is sufficient and the Sunnah is not needed, to think about; and for those of you who already believe in the hadith of Rasulullah, to increase in your certainty. Life cannot be lived without the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ.

Example One: The Change of the Qibla

The first — in Surah Al-Baqarah, Allah says to the Prophet ﷺ: "O Muhammad, I've seen you looking up at the sky. I'm going to change the direction of prayer to a direction you are happy with. So from today, turn towards al-Masjid al-Haram, turn toward the Sacred House."

Fine. But where did the instruction for the first Qibla come from? The Quran is saying — Allah is saying in the Quran — "O Muhammad, I see you keep looking up at the sky, you seem to want to change the direction of prayer; change it — the new place is going to be al-Masjid al-Haram." Where did the first instruction come? The first instruction, which is for the Prophet ﷺ to pray towards Masjid al-Aqsa — where is that? It's not in the Quran. The only thing that came in the Quran is episode 2: "You can change, you can switch."

You can't make sense of this instruction in the Quran unless you have the Sunnah. Imagine you come to my house, you knock the door, you come inside, and I said, "JazakAllahu khayr — remember last time I told you, when you come to my house you should leave your shoes at the door?" And you say, "Last time? There was no last time." You'd be confused. I'm referring to some incident in the past that in your memory never existed. This is an example of what's happening. Allah is saying, "Remember that Qibla I told you to pray to? Now — don't worry about it, I'm going to change the Qibla." All right — where's the first one? Where's that instruction? It's not in the Quran. It's only in the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ.

Example Two: The Conquest of Mecca

The second question. In the Quran, Allah says that Mecca is a place in which war cannot be waged — it is sacred. You cannot bring weapons there. He says الْبَلْدَةَ الَّتِي حَرَّمَهَا — it is haram, you can't enter this place with weapons. It's sacred. No war. No weapons. Nothing.

But elsewhere in the Quran, Allah talks about the conquest of Mecca. He says it is forbidden to enter Mecca with weapons — and then he says, "Congratulations, you just entered Mecca with weapons." So where did he make the exception? Where did he say, "Go on then, you can go in — no worries, you can go in today"? Where did he make that exception? It's not in the Quran.

The Quran cannot make complete sense without the elaboration, the clarification, the modeling, and the examples of the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ.