Who are the Quranists (hadith rejecters), and what is the Sunni position on them?

The Quranists (Qur'āniyyūn) claim that only the Qur'an is binding and that the Sunnah is not a source of religion. This contradicts the Qur'an itself, which commands obedience to the Messenger alongside Allah (Qur'an 4:59), orders us to take whatever he gives and abstain from whatever he forbids (59:7), and states that obeying the Messenger is obeying Allah (4:80) — and it leaves the Qur'an unworkable, since the number of rak'ahs, the amounts of zakāh, and the rites of Hajj are known only through the Sunnah. The Prophet ﷺ foretold this exact claim: 'Beware! I have been given the Qur'an and something like it with it; the time is coming when a man replete on his couch will say: Keep to the Qur'an — what you find in it permissible, treat as permissible, and what you find in it prohibited, treat as prohibited…' (Abū Dāwūd 4604, graded ṣaḥīḥ by al-Albānī and Shuʿayb al-Arna'ūṭ; a parallel narration from the same Companion, al-Miqdām ibn Maʿdīkarib, is in Ibn Mājah 12). Ahl al-Sunnah therefore regard wholesale rejection of the Sunnah as rejection of revelation itself, while distinguishing that from the sincere questions of someone confused about how hadith are authenticated — whose cure is knowledge, not takfīr of the individual.

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