Unless you can produce a version of Islam that has no regard for Muhammad, I'm afraid your contention will never stand. It does - Islam requires the adoption of Muhammad, it is even in the shahada itself which every single Muslim must take (which is a false testimony contrary to the ten commandments).
Makes sense (though perhaps there could have been a different messenger)
Technically true. A Muslim needs to recognize Mohammad as the prophet for them to be a Muslim (I'm quite certain - correct me if I'm wrong)
Are you sure you're not reading the Hadiths? The Quran doesn't outline Mohammad's doings. It's not a journal.
No - the sunnah is called upon / invoked when something in the Qur'an requires further insight. You can not have a state of Islam that does not use the social (sunnah) and legal (hadith) components of Islam - specifically how to handle disputes and/or matters of warfare. This notion that true Islam is only Qur'an is fictitious - while there are many Muslims who claim and wish it were so, it simply does not reflect the reality. Muhammad is just as central to Islam (if not moreso) than Allah.
One would have to read through the works of people like John Wansborough, Gunter Luling, Luxenberg etc. who disseminate the Qur'an and reduce it back into what it originally read as: Christian strophic hymns. This essentially explains why we find so many non-Arabic words in the Qur'an - the contents used to compile the Qur'an were originally of Syriac origin.
Of course, if this is true (as it is) the shahada is necessarily a false testimony contrary to one of the ten commandments, which effectively severs Islam from whatever god (if it exists) delivered the Israelites out of Egypt. Of course, also knowing that this also didn't happen as described in the Bible, as well as Moses not having been a Hebrew, throws this entire mess into one giant ball of absurdity - which is precisely the state which would explain why there has been nothing but war in the middle east.
Now I see what you meant when you said "what don't I mean by it" - everything is idol worship to you. Have you ever conaidered studying the details with some sincerity?
That's actually what I do - I do sincerely search for what is actually true. Not "belief" but what actually happened and what fits the evidence we see. This requires diligence and detatchment - I don't care who is or is not right, or what others "believe", I care about what is actually true. I did not start with the assumption that the Abrahamic faiths were idol worship (quite the contrary) but this is where my pursuit naturally lead, because for me truth itself must serve as the ultimate authority, whether or not I like it is irrelevant.
That said, not everything is idol worship. Anything that is not grounded in reality is idol worship: imbuing man-made books with divine authority is idol worship, and bearing testimony of long-dead men and assuming their example to be superior to all others is idol worship. If Christians and Muslims did not adopt idols as the basis of life, this planet would be much, much closer to world peace. The problem is Islam is asserting itself as a solution when in fact it is a problem. The moment you make a problem a solution, you will manufacture misery, suffering and death, which is precisely what Islam (and Christianity before it) did, and still does. First there is idol worship, then there are idolatrous religious institutions. If people rejected idols entirely, these institutions would not stand.
Who are these people who know and are they kind?
Basically anyone/everyone on the pyramid that knows religion is man-made, which is essentially every single powerful family. Some are kind, most are not because they use religion to motivate war. If the people knew the truth about these religions, things would be much different on this planet.
So your problem starts from the human brain that is so built that we cannot not have beliefs unless we're brain dead.
The problem actually starts with how people manage their sexual energy: it is the first story in the first book of Moses. The brain and sex are a polarity: one works off the other. In other words, when you are sexually attracted to someone (or god forbid something), this energy manifests in the sex and rises into the brain. The brain then starts to become influenced by these energies. This is symbolically expressed in the Edenic scene of Eve giving the fruit to Adam. When the power of the sexual organ (in extreme cases: lust) hijacks the rationale of the brain, you have something called "evil" which is essentially a person that only uses their brain to find ways to satiate their sexual desire/lust. This is eating the forbidden fruits and manifesting death. Alternatively, one can preserve and transmute this energy, allowing it to nourish the brain instead of degenerate it. These two options produce two results: subjective reasoning (which leads to "belief"-based thinking) and objective reasoning (a product of having a basis in reality).
In this way, sex is actually the core mystery of being: abuse of it (fornication) degenerates the brain while learning how to use it yields the same benefit spoken to in Genesis: to become "like" Elohim which is to know good and evil: how the two polarities are actually producing only one thing.
This is what makes Muhammad an archetypal psychopathic warlord: many wives, sex slaves, nightly fornications, pedophilia etc. and like many corrupt politicians, involved in running human trafficking networks. The human trafficking networks on the planet are serving sexually degenerated wealthy business/politican types. Muhammad established a human trafficking network which is still running today, and the Clinton Foundation was the Western front for "access" to this network. This is why the entire DNC and Clinton/Islam idol worshipers are attacking Trump with everything they have: he is going after the human trafficking networks that are their main source of income.
So the problem starts with how the brain responds to the vital (sexual) energy - either it learns to control it, or it is controlled by it. This is Jacob's ladder: up or down. Unfortunately such mysteries are not explained in the religious institutions because these institutions are doing the opposite of what is actually written, especially in the books of Moses, and Islam is about as hypocritical as one can possibly get when it comes to the mysteries of even the first book/chapters of Moses.
It would be absurd if it wasn't.
Belief itself is absurd - and monstrously destructive. Millions of years to produce a human brain, and religions telling people not to use them but to "believe" and endure the test that god has given them. It is such a tragedy - especially considering most Christians/Muslims are good people, and the beauty of the soul is buried deep underneath layers of dogmatic conditioning since early childhood. Many of the Muslims I know are amazing people, but also suffer the most and are the most volatile. If this god-forsaken principle division of "believer" vs. "unbeliever" didn't exist (as it does as a barrier within Christianity/Islam) the world would be so much closer to a state of 'peace'.