> If you say you are a mainstream Sunni Muslim (as in your other comment), why would you claim by my logic, the units of prayers and the method animal slaughter are innovations?

Because, unlike you, I don't think that their being somewhat reified and shaped by human decisions makes them invalid. You're the only one posting in this thread who wants to throw around the word like it's necessarily a bad thing and who seems to believe in the fantasy of "pure" religion versus religion that is necessarily at least partly the product of human hands.

Broadly:

This "Salafi" trend that is among the cornerstones of Wahhabism and that has infected the rest of Sunni Islam has a strict view of what counts as an invalid "innovation" in the religion. Yet at the same time, Salafis recognize they have no choice but to rely on the hadith literature and general practice because otherwise the religion as we know it would not exist. Of course, this is a problem and a contradiction because the hadith literature has weaknesses in the rigor of its methodology and had purposes that were related but still distinct from what modern Salafis are concerned with.

Ultimately, the very fact of their willingness to accept the literature is self-defeating and contradictory; this notion that there is some knowable, pristine, complete, etc., form of Islam (or religion in general) is of course silly in light of the fact that the hadith project needed to be undertaken by early Muslims in the first place. They did it because practices were disparate early on, certain clear moral and theological pronouncements were lacking, etc. We could go on and talk about the inception of the entire scholarly tradition of Islam, both Sunni and Shi'a, but I think the point is made.

Look at prayer for example. The Quran mentions 3. Muslims normatively believe 5 because of extra-Quranic material and practice. At the end of the day, believing 5 to be correct because of prophetic practice is an unquestionably human decision. If you look at hadith about how to pray, it's all piecemeal. Objectively, it's hardly confidence-inspiring. Could it have been that God didn't bother to set any clear pronouncement about how to pray even though He wanted it done in some super specific way? And do you honestly believe, any hadith notwithstanding, that the Prophet (SAW) prayed for peace and blessings upon himself and his family as part of ritual prayer? Or do you think it more likely that this developed as part of unending trend even within Sunni Islam, and which has been one of Wahhbism's most recurrent targets, to approach improper levels of veneration of the Prophet? (I actually agree with Wahhabis to a certain extent on this point, btw)

This leads me to the core issue (there are other more factual issues like the above, but they are all ancillary to the main point): what kind of view of God does one have? First of all, viewing God as rejecting any kind of devotion not specifically laid down in scripture is to ascribe to God a large degree of pettiness.

Secondly, viewing what we have in Islamic scripture and hadith literature as a wholly complete set of instructions that requires no further thought or supplementation is to ascribe to God practical incompetence because it clearly isn't. The fact that a lively and contentious intellectual tradition developed in both Sunni and Shi'a Islam in order to make further theological and philosophical inquiry, as well as address practical gaps, etc., is a testament to that fact, and the notion that they were all just merely applying the Quran to new situations in a rote and straight-forward manner is a fiction in which nobody who is familiar with the methods and output of the tradition can indulge, nor is that what the tradition itself claims or claimed (in fact, the latitude of human discretion was of course a subject of debate within the tradition). The view that this tradition is wrong to "add" things to some imaginary "pure" Islam is a) practically unworkable (as mentioned above w/r/t prayer, but the same goes for animal slaughter and a host of other things); b) factually ignorant and dismissive of the actual circumstances that led to the tradition's formation--i.e. why the tradition was necessary in the first place. I also think it's insulting to God, but I think that's too much to unpack here; c) is an insanely arrogant position w/r/t centuries of Islamic tradition, scholarship, and piety.

And again, the very notion that one way of praying, for example, is better than another, or that making x salutation upon the Prophet after prayer is invalid, or that saying x prayer as part of fasting during Ramadan is impermissible--all of that attributes to God a pettiness that is insulting to Him.

Those in the tradition who had to make judgment calls and attempt to develop the tradition were acting righteously if their effort was honest, even if their decisions ultimately led to "innovations". And it is proper to defer to their judgments and decisions as part of wanting to be among those who worship God not because they are necessarily objectively correct, but for reasons of humility and because this is the best we can do. So no, even though I genuinely don't believe the Prophet himself prayed salutations upon himself or his family during prayer, I don't think this part of the prayer is an "innovation" that needs to be discarded, and the same goes for a host of other things. And I think that a peasant in Pakistan who prays at a shrine for the intercession of a saint but who is otherwise pious is not hell-bound.

Moreover--and this is a major point--it mistakes the point of all of this. Moral judgment is to be exercised and developed. The world is a moral test, which requires not being an automaton who executes some prescribed set of rituals as if they are magic invocations to collect heaven points, but actually being a good person. What is the nature of the character of a person in, say, Saudi Arabia, where the social pressure to go to the masjid is massive so they go, and engaging in various manner of major sin is difficult and risky, so they refrain, versus the soul of a Muslim elsewhere in the world who may falter in their adherence because they live in a society where various things Islam considers sinful are more prevalent, so they occasionally slip up? It is likely to me the latter is in a superior position. For the former is a moral dunce whose moral and ethical acumen have never been developed, and whose moral muscles were never exercised. As a Muslim, one meets these kinds of people all the time. If their soul and consciousness were transplanted to a body and persona in a different time and place, they would just do whatever everyone else around them does all the same. There is no actual morality to speak of. Their is no discernment, no knowledge of ethical dilemmas, no ability to ponder them, no understanding of why an action is good or why another is bad, no actual discipline in restraining appetites, etc.

I've deviated from my major point here and given you an earful, but to reiterate: the line between an "innovation" and stuff you consider an "authentic" tradition is extremely blurry and to claim otherwise is indicative either of ignorance of the Islamic tradition and its history or plain self-deception/stubbornness.

That is not to say that there is no such thing as an invalid "innovation"--I too do not normatively support saint veneration of the kind of alluded to above. But I suppose I would say the line is at what is theologically definitely impermissible.