Re: Mohammed the man vs Mohammed the prophet.
Hi Semi
Or is it enough to include things at will due to lack of knowledge?
Point taken. Such things are called Biddah in a broad sense and understanding. The contention is mostly about things from the Sunnah because they cannot be termed Biddah as they occured during the life of the Prophet SAW. For such things authentication and research is required and correlation with injunctions in the Quran.
What limits/rules/criteria did God set up to include post-Quranic teachings as part of Islam? The only form of revelation (divine wisdom) was the Quran. The practice of following hadith and sunnah is a man-made practice. Man decided which hadith, teachings, sunnah to include as part of the religion. No where in the Quran does it say in to follow a whole separate set of religoius teachings (revealed by someone other than God no less).
Hadith are historical narratives of the life of Muhammad SAW though the collections do include some accounts of the first four Caliphs. So Hadith are not post-Quranic literature though their compilation in the mainstream is.
Of course Muslims believe they only worship the one God - that's the most basic tenant of the faith - so it's understandable that a Muslim would say that it's ridulous to say they worship the prophet. Even insulting. But it has become such a built-in part of the way the faith is practiced that isn't seen a such. Even if it's not "worship", it's not treating the Quran as the sole, divine, untouched, unchangeable word of God. To follow the subjective teachings of hadith doesn't make Islam any different than what Muslims believe Christianity to be - following a religion that was not revealed by God.
I would not deny that in certain cases it has taken the extreme but not in that they following the Prophet SAW but using their dogmatic adherence to it to justify tactics used to propagate their motives. It is still different from how it is in Christianity. There is no academic debate with such people.