People are free to organize their religious life however they choose: around local tradition, around hadith collections, around later jurists. I am not here to judge anyone’s choices. But freedom includes the right to name things honestly. In practice, many Muslims live under a second canon that routinely settles disputes and manufactures obligations above the Qur’an. I call this “Bukhari-ism,” not as mockery, but as an accurate label for a real authority structure.

My objection begins when this historical corpus is presented as scientific certainty.

Defenders do not merely say “we believe.” They say “we have a method.” Narrator biographies, chains of transmission, grading systems, and the claim that these tools deliver reliable knowledge about events transmitted across two centuries. That is a strong claim. Strong claims belong in the public realm of epistemology, not behind the shield of reverence.

A method is not validated by confidence, prestige, or specialized vocabulary. It is validated by how it handles error, by what would count against it, and by whether conclusions can be revised. When doubt is treated as deviance, when skepticism is punished as heresy, we are not dealing with science. We are dealing with authority wearing the costume of science. The stamp sahih (authentic) does not change this. It is a label, not a proof.

Once you accept that label as certainty, a second effect follows. The archive becomes not only something you consult, but something that controls. It becomes a factory of obligations.

Even if we grant that some reports are accurate, the system still faces a basic signal problem. A few solid insights are packaged inside mountains of trivialities, contradictions, and claims that fail ordinary standards of testimony. A method is judged by what it produces in bulk, not by a few successful hits. When the output is that noisy, the claim of absolute certainty is not humility. It is discipline.

This is also where the theology bends. The Qur’an presents itself as correction. Revelation was needed because human transmission is fragile. But then we are told that a human methodology can reconstruct the Prophet’s world with near certainty from long chains of narration. You cannot argue that transmission is unreliable enough to require revelation, and reliable enough to generate quasi-revelation.

Once that certainty is granted, Bukhari becomes the curator of Muhammad. He decides what is included, what is excluded, which traits define the Prophet in the public mind, which stories get repeated, and which details become obligations. Over time, that curation becomes the lens through which many people read the Qur’an itself.

This is why the question is not only “What did the Prophet do?” The deeper question is “Who decided what counts as the Prophet?” In practice, the community does not follow Muhammad directly. It follows Muhammad as filtered by Bukhari.

And when that filter is treated as binding, the result is not just a library. It becomes a program that can be applied in real life. That is where Salafism fits. It is the practical implementation of Bukhari-ism, taking the curated archive as enforceable religion and expanding mandatory detail far beyond what Islam itself makes mandatory.