More than a billion Muslims joined me in adherence to traditions, whether praying about whom to marry, determining the appropriate length of a beard, or deciding whether to wear gold. But these traditions did not come from the Quran. They are found in hadith. From marital rites to martial restrictions, commercial laws to civil suits, the vast majority of sharia and the Islamic way of life is derived from the hadith. There is no overestimating the importance of hadith in the Islamic world.
