It is well-known that the traditions (hadith) going back to - or ascribed to - the Prophet Muhammad were not only of paramount importance for the development of Islamic law but also for the unfolding of Muslim piety in many fields. Islam as a world religion is not conceivable without the normative role model of its founding figure, and a large number of controversies in the Muslim world and beyond in recent years bear witness that this statement is valid until this very day. Nevertheless, Muslim attitude towards the hadith has always been far from unanimous, both within Sunnism and with regard to the clashes between Sunnites and Shiites. The present paper will focus on some recent controversies in the Sunnite (mostly Egyptian) public sphere which reveal two main features. On the one hand, there is the continuation, often with sectarian undertones, of more or less traditional conflicts over the status of certain figures of early Islam. This was the case in a heated confrontation in the Egyptian press in 2006/07 which was only ended after the then rector of al-Azhar University, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, issued a fatwa to the effect that the veneration of all companions of the Prophet constituted the sixth pillar of Islamic faith. On the other hand, there are the activities of a number of religious intellectuals directed against the scholarly establishment of the 'ulama' and their power to interpret the legacy of the Prophet and to make it obligatory for the believers. Some radical protagonists - such as the so-called Quranists centered around the former Azhar scholar Ahmad Subhi Mansur, or the Lebanese author Zakariya Uzun - go so far as to completely do away with the authority of the hadith and to concentrate on the Quran instead as the sole guideline for Muslim individual and social life. Others, like the Egyptian Jamal al-Banna or the Syrian Muhammad Shahrur, call for a far-reaching revision of the traditions and their restriction to matters of ritual and piety. By doing so, they primarily aim at driving back the 'ulama's influence over contemporary society, but also at promoting an understanding of religion that puts more emphasis on the individual responsibility of the believer. As such, these controversies are an integral part of the larger conflict between traditional scholarship and modernist intellectualism which has been a hallmark of Islamic reformism throughout the 20th century.