Qur'anic Answers

When people claim that you cannot follow Islam without hadith, they always forget the one man who did exactly this: Abu Hanifa.  Today, the largest school in the Muslim world, the Hanafi school, keeps the name of its founder, but no longer follows his methodology. It has become 'hadithified' to the extent that modern Hanafi followers often use the methods of the people of hadith (hadith-first) instead of Abu Hanifa's methods.  We must note that our research has relied on reports which themselves have come through later hadith compilations. The hadith numbers are as referenced in the book 'Kitab-As-Sunnah' by Abu-Abdir-Rahman Abdullah ibn Ahmad ibn Hanbal - the son of Ahmed ibn Hanbal, the founder of the Hanbali school. We only use the reports to analyse the attitudes and cultures of the time and not as unquestionable historical truth in every detail.

To demonstrate that certain Qur'anic verses have been abrogated by other verses, some people show the example of the early Muslims facing Jerusalem before changing direction towards Mecca as abrogation.  They show that this is proof that a later verse instructing to face Mecca was revealed which abrogated the previous verse instructing to face Jerusalem. They usually  cite the verse " ...We did not make the focal point that you came on except that We may know who is following the messenger from those who will turn on their heels... " (2:143) to support their position.  We cover the concept of abrogation in detail in the Qur'an  here .