How Can The Hadith Be Separate From The Sunnah?
Actually it’s more reliable and preserved when it’s not written. Anyone can forge anything into writing/saying, but the true Sunnah (that Allah s.w.t. preserved) is through actions, passing down by generations. The repeated practice of (for example) Prayers seen, learnt, practiced, taught by multiple people in congregation can perfectly by replicated compared to performing rituals by reading instructions. Which is why we have the Law (Qur’an) and the Method (Sunnah). Even if you remove all written hadiths from existence, we would still know how to pray, how to perform Hajj etc. (probably with much lesser minor differences, which originated due to conflicts in early hadiths). Hadiths is not the source of Sunnah, rather hadiths was a human effort to recollect/record as much of Sunnah. Many Hadiths are not Sunnah, and many Sunnah are not found in Hadiths. Hadiths are also where/how we learn how to pray. Just like a surgeon doesn’t learn surgery from just reading, and a pilot cannot fly by just reading instructions. They all need to watch and learn. That’s why hadiths are not reliable when it comes to practicing the Qur’an, it’s the ongoing amaly tawatur (Sunnah) we need, which is going on since before hadith compilation.
Jazakh Allah! I only have two main problem here. First, there’s no way to confirm a corruption if whatever has been corrupted comes only through action. We can take the sign of the cross for example, which is a gesture commonly practiced by Christians. Nowhere in the bible is it mentioned to perform such an action, but they still do it. Their reasoning is that Jesus (AS) transmitted this through action which is similar to the Sunnah (without hadith of course). Same can be applied to Imam’s who have added biddah to the prayer. If I could only follow one single Imam because it was the only imam around, then I would be going into the same biddah because I would believe it was sunnah. Also, I do agree that, “A surgeon doesn’t learn surgery from just reading.” However, they cannot just do so by only watching either. A surgeon will watch the action but also read how to perform the action. I definitely wouldn’t want a surgeon who only watched others perform surgery without reading how to actually perform it.