Is it possible to disprove Bukhari's claim in less than 15 minutes?

We are all very familiar with the catch-all "obey the messenger" call. Equally familiar is the call of those who want Muslims to "believe" in their respective sect's version of every Hadith stamped "Sahih". Whenever a Muslim gathers enough courage to challenge the clearly out of sorts reports ascribed to the Prophet of God, he or she is quickly silenced with references to the magic of deceptively coined "science of Hadith", Shaan e Nuzool or the trump card abrogation. In addition, they are made to feel small because either they don't happen to know Arabic or they are not " muhaddith" (Hadith expert), a made up qualification with no basis in the Quran the primary document. Ironically the very Quran which the Hadith is supposed to explain uses the very word Hadith in reference to the Quran itself and never once as a secondary source of Deen..

So what is an individual Muslim supposed to do when routinely pressed to either accept these reports blindly or decide to become a "muhaddith" and hope to make sense out of them. God's solution is to repeatedly remind us to use our power of observation, reason, and logic to the point that doesn't invoke a God unless you have proof Quran 23:117 and there is great wisdom in this insistence. The principles of sound reasoning and correct inference are universal. The big advantage of the rational route as opposed to the taqleedy order (the teacher is always right) is that irrespective of the material at hand, the conclusions reached are repeatable and verifiable independent of an additional specialist knowledge or "titles" earned. Even if we lack expertise in a particular domain, one can rationally test the premises upon which a particular discipline is based.

One of the most basic tools available to us is a simple time and motion study. If someone were to claim that he or she just ran around the world unaided in 24 hours one can very easily calculate and prove that it is an impossibility, given the length of distance traveled and the speed a human being can generate while running unaided. Similarly, if the "science of Hadith" is so thorough as claimed then why is it that the claims don't match the ground reality. Hence when science is applied to the claim of 600,000 Ahadith vetting in a mere 16 years period by Bukhari, the results are at best comical. Not to mention the fact that earlier another superstar Muslim disputes the authenticity of hundreds of Ahadith declared authentic by Bukhari and refuse to declare them authentic and the other way around. Where is the science in it?

But we are going to focus on the claim of the 600,000 Ghusls and the two rakat that Bukhari performed before embarking on every new Hadith evaluation. The question we are going to ask is; how do you fit 600,000 Ghusls and an equal number of Istikhara prayers into a 16 years time frame? We are not even counting the countless interviews he supposedly did with the narrators and their family and friends, not to mention the traveling. Do the math as they say, please.

Just to help with the math here are the details extracted from Bukhari's compilation for a Ghusl;

1. Start by making niyyah (intention) to perform Ghusl and cleanse thy self of impurities.
2. Wash the right hand up to and including the wrist (and between the fingers) three times, then similarly for the left hand.
3. Wash the private parts and remove dirt or filth from the body.
4. Perform Wudu.

· Reciting bismillah.
· Intention of performing wudu.
· Washing both the hands up to the wrists.
· Rinsing the inner mouth.
· Sniffing water and blowing it out
· Passing of wet fingers between the fingers of the hand and feet.
· Passing of wet fingers into the beard.
· Brushing the teeth, preferably with a miswak.
· Wudu is done systematically.
· Washing of each part one after the other without pause, so no part dries up before wudu is completed.
· Washing each limb thrice.
· Performing wudu towards the Qiblah

5. Water should be poured over the head three times so that it flows all over the body.
6. Pour water over both the shoulders three times each. Hands should be passed all over the body when water is poured so that no part of the body is left dry.
7. Move to a clean spot and wash the feet if not washed during Wudu

I don't know about you but if I were to do a thorough job I will need at least 20 minutes to get it done and when you add taking clothes off and putting them back on then perhaps 25 minutes. I guess it will vary from individual to individual but I think this would be a reasonable average. When you add to it the Istikhara.prayer itself, say another five minutes, the total bumps up to 30 minutes. So we now have a grand total of 30x600000=18000000 minutes, which translates into a shade over 34 years. Twice as much as the claim of 16 years famously associated with Bukhari. Of course if you were paying attention, let's say our estimates are off by a full 15 minutes because Bukhari happened to be a Speedy Gonzales and he managed to do, the above Ghusl with embedded Wudu, undressing, dressing and the Istikhara prayer all in a mere 15 minutes, even then he would have used up every minute of the available 16 years. Hence no time left for the Istikhara dream let alone eating, sleeping, traveling or conduct interviews.

Realistically if we were to take him up on his word, it would have taken him hundreds of years.

Mind you I kept the argument to easily verifiable numbers, I did not question the integrity of the narrators, did not analyze the matn of the reports, did not question the methodology employed because all of them can be buried by subjective calls however illogical as is done by the traditionalist. Anybody who can count can verify these numbers for themselves and they don't add up.

So the real question is what else doesn’t add up.

On the other hand if you still "believe" in Bukhari's claims then I am sure you also believe in fairy tales, the unbelievable kind ;)

Note; Some of his followers also did the math and amateurishly tried to push a new claim that he only performed the Ghusl and Istikhara for the ones that he had already vetted but then he would have lost the claimed Divine hand in rejecting the remaining 593,000 reports hence losing the premise of the claim on which this obvious falsehood is based.