The Manipulation of 3:31
"Follow me," says the messenger. To follow a man is to follow what he followed - and the Quran records, twice, exactly what that was.
I. The Verse and the Claim
"Proclaim: 'If you love GOD, you should follow me.' GOD will then love you, and forgive your sins. GOD is Forgiver, Most Merciful." (3:31)
From this command the hadith advocates conclude: to follow Muhammad is to follow the books of Bukhari, Muslim, and their companions - therefore the Quran alone is insufficient. The conclusion smuggles in an unstated premise: that what Muhammad himself followed, and left behind to be followed, was something besides the Quran. The Quran addresses that premise directly.
II. What Muhammad Followed
To follow anyone coherently, you follow what he followed. God commanded Muhammad to proclaim - publicly, so that no follower could mistake it - what his source was:
"Say, 'I am not different from other messengers. I have no idea what will happen to me or to you. I only follow what is revealed to me. I am no more than a profound warner.'" (46:9)
"...Say, 'I cannot possibly change it on my own. I simply follow what is revealed to me. I fear, if I disobey my Lord, the retribution of an awesome day.'" (10:15)
Muhammad followed the revelation and nothing else - by command, on pain of "an awesome day." It follows that he authored no rituals beside it and bequeathed no second source; to claim otherwise is to claim the prophet disobeyed the command he was ordered to proclaim. Whoever "follows Muhammad" therefore lands, necessarily, on the Quran - the very Book the claim was built to escape. God says the same through the description of the successful:
"...Those who believe in him, respect him, support him, and follow the light that came with him are the successful ones." (7:157)
And whenever the Quran speaks of a revealed light, it is a scripture: "A beacon has come to you from GOD, and a profound scripture" (5:15) - as the Torah and the Gospel are each called light. The light that came with Muhammad is the Quran; 7:157 names what following him means.
III. The Sources the Claim Requires Do Not Pass the Book
The Quran leaves no vacancy for a second literature. "These are GOD's revelations that we recite to you truthfully. In which Hadith other than GOD and His revelations do they believe?" (45:6). "Which Hadith, other than this, do they uphold?" (77:50). "Do you have another book to uphold?" (68:37). The only sunna the Quran ever names belongs to God: "This is GOD's eternal system, and you will find that GOD's system is unchangeable" (33:62; the Arabic reads sunnat Allah). And the religion was declared finished in the prophet's lifetime: "Today, I have completed your religion, perfected My blessing upon you, and I have decreed Submission as the religion for you..." (5:3). A complete religion has no missing volume for Bukhari to supply.
History agrees with the Book. The six collections called "sahih" were compiled roughly two centuries after the prophet's death - Bukhari, the earliest of their authors, was born in 194 AH. For two hundred years, the generations who loved the prophet most nearly had no such books to follow; on the traditional theory, the entire early community was cut off from half its religion. Even the tradition's own volumes preserve the prophet ordering: "Do not write down anything from me except the Quran" (Sahih Muslim) - an instruction his later collectors honored by disobeying.
IV. Conclusion
3:31 is real and binding: loving God means following His messenger. But the verse does not say "follow reports about me" - it says follow me, and the man himself, under divine command, followed only what was revealed to him. His footsteps lead into the Quran and nowhere else. The ones who truly follow Muhammad are those who follow the light that came with him; the ones who follow the hearsay of two centuries later are following, by the Quran's own question in 45:6, some other hadith - and by 33:62, some other sunna than God's.