Thread on the unreliability of hadith and Zoroastrian influence on early Islam

While the Quran is the central text in Islam, the religion would be massively different without the hadith. The hadith informs sunnis of the 5 pillars of Islam, how to pray salah, sharia law etc

Heck without the hadith, Muslims would have NO IDEA who Muhammad was, as he is barely mentioned in the Quran, and when he is its very vague mentions to things that happened during his life, which without the hadith we would have no idea what the quran was saying.

With this in mind we should ask ourselves is this collection of narrations historically accurate? The answer is No. First of all, the earliest text we have dates to a Persian (not even arab) scholar called bukhari nearly 200 years after Muhammad's alleged prophet hood

Before bukhari Muslims will tell you that the hadith were preserved in oral chains for 200 years. Basically this guy heard from this guy who heard it from this guy who heard it from that other guy who was sitting around Muhammad.

Now does this seem reliable to you?

No. But even aside that, this concept of oral tradition is actually also practiced by the Jews in the Talmud. We all know Jews had a direct presence in Arabia during early Islam and we know this concept of preserving the words of the prophet is no where in the quran.

From these two we can formulate that perhaps early Muslims took this idea of oral transmission of laws and sayings to the prophet from the rabbinical oral practice of the Talmud going back to moses.

It certainly didn't come from the Quran that's for sure.

Moving on, since this is an oral transmission, it's quite hard to gauge what is accurate if anything. As not long after Muhammad died, the sunni-shia split happened with both having hadith's that supported their version of events. So which is right? Both have oral transmissions

Let's move on to the interesting fact that the 5 daily prayers are no where to be found in the Quran. 114 chapters full of 6,236 verses and not a single mention of the number "5". Such an important aspect of Islam as you see it, yet God didn't think to add it in the Quran?

That's because Muslims took the 5 prayers from Zoroastrian persians they conquered not from Muhammad. Rav Yehudai, a Jewish scholar from 757 before bukhari is quoted as remarking that Zoroastrian converts to Islam retained some aspect of their previous religion:

"The hearts of those mowbeds [Zoroastrian priests] who had ‘converted to the religion of the Ishmaelites,’ so he reported, were still not entirely clear the trace of their former beliefs, even down to the third generation: ‘for part of their religion still remains within them.’"

Another interesting fact is that the murder of apostates is also done in Zoroastrian and is not present in the Quran but gotten from the hadith.

Did these early Zoroastrian converts bring in salat and the capital punishment of apostasy from Zoroastrianism into Islam?

I suspect so heavily. The chains of narration are unreliable "he said she said" that conflict depending on the sect and the earliest text we have is 200 years after Muhammad from a Persian scholar.

It seems like Islam developed over time after the prophet's death.

If that's the case it's not divine in the slightest.

Muslims stop praying 5 times a day and killing apostates, you're following pagan rules.

Thanks for reading.