The History of Legislation - Introduction - Unedited

Most Muslims were told that there are 4 Math’hab’s and everyone has to follow one. How they came about, why they are there, if they are divinely ordained, etc. are a mystery to most Muslims. And they don’t question it.

People deal with the Math’hab’s in different ways:

è Some people reject the Math’habs altogether and say that they are going to follow the Qur’an and Sunnah only. Though it sounds noble, it’s dangerous. Working with the Qur’an and Sunnah requires comprehensive knowledge of both which most people don’t have. One has to depend on scholars. Don’t follow blindly, but to say that you are going to strike off on your own without comprehension is a formula for deviation. This also promotes extreme views, because people will make judgments based on limited knowledge. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

And it involves rejecting the efforts of the people whom the Prophet said, “The Best of People are my generation, then those who follow them, then those who follow them”

è The other approach some people have is that these schools were divinely ordained, and you follow one based on faith. This is dangerous from the perspective that in doing so one then violates the second article of the Shahadah:-Muhammed is the Messenger of Allah.

This basically means that he is the only one who we would follow blindly. No one else has that right.

This position perpetuates division in the ranks of the Muslims.

è The correct approach the Muslims should take towards the Math’habs is that they follow the Math’hab of the Prophet. This is where we should end up. The Math’hab of the Imams was the Math’hab of the Prophet.

Imam Shafi’i studied under Imam Maliki but he was not a Maliki. Ahmed ibnHanbal studied under Shafi’I but he was not a Shafi’i.

If these great scholars were not followers of these schools as we name them, then we need to ask, What was their Madh’hab? It goes back to the first generations.

No one would claim Abu Huraira was a Hanafi, Maliki, etc. unless he had no idea about time frames.

When Abu Bakr was the Caliph people followed him and the decisions he made. But he made his decisions based on following the Prophet. And the same with Umar, Uthman, and Ali, etc. And the Prophet said you should stick firm to my Sunnahand  theSunnah of the rightly guided Caliphs after me.

They were not infallible. They made mistakes. So when Abdullah ibn Umar was teaching Hajj and he spoke about the preference for Hajj Tamatu’ (Hajj which includes Umrah but they are separate). He was asked how can he say that when his father and Abu Bakr,  taught that Hajj Qiraan was the best. He replied, “Destruction is about to fall on your heads. I am telling you what the Prophet said, and you are telling me what Umar and Abu Bakr said”

That was the approach of the Sahabah. What the Prophet said took precedence over what anyone else said.

The students of the Sahabah conveyed the same thing and they passed it down to the generations after them. The generations of the great Imams followed the same tradition.

Both Imam Shaf’I said, “If the Hadith is found to be authentic then that is my true Math’hab”

Blind following of the Math’hab split up the Ummah to the degree that we can have no doubt that it is harmful.

From the 13^th century onwards it was ruled in the HanafiMath’hab that it was not permissible for a Hanafi to marry a Shafi’i and this ruling stayed in place for hundreds of years, until one of the later Hanafi scholars ruled it was permissible, considering that we are allowed to marry women of the people of the book, they should at least give Shafi’I’s the status of the people of the book. That continued on for a few more hundred years.

There was the custom of having four different prayers conducted around the Ka’bah for each of the various prayer times. There were four canopies, each having a name: MaqamHanafi, Malaiki, etc.

It was ruled the Hanafi couldn’t pray behind a Shafi’I, vice versca, etc.

In 1925, when what was known as the “Wahhabi movement” at the time. When Saud took Makkah and tore around the canopies and other structures around the Ka’bah, the Muslim Ummah cried out. They thought they were desecrating the Ka’bah, when in fact they were purifying it with what had been added to it. They ruled that one person should lead and everyone follow.

It wasn’t a problem for the early generation to learn something and then learn that it was wrong and then change their opinion, and it shouldn’t be a problem for us.

The Math’hab’s in and of themselves aren’t evil, but how one views and deals with them can lead with evil results.

The Difference Between Fiqh and Sharee’ah

Fiqh is true understanding.

Islamically, it is the science of deducing Islamic laws from evidences found in the source of Islamic law (i.e. Qur’an, Sunnah, Ijmaa’, Qiyas)

UsoolAlFiqh is the deduction of the Principles from which the laws are deduced.

Fiqh is the product of human reasoning in applying the laws. We have to understand the foundation and work out how to apply it in the given circumstance.

Sharee’ah linguistically means a waterhole or a straight path. (Quran 45:18)

Islamically it refers to the sum total of Islamic laws which were revealed to the Prophet, recorded in the Qur’an and Sunnah. It is your foundation based on revelation.

The distinction between the two:

1)     Shariah is the body of revealed laws found both in the Qur’an and in the Sunnah, while Fiqh is a body of laws deduced from Shari’ah to cover specific situations not directly treated in Shari’ah law.

2)     Shari’ah is fixed and unchangeable, whereas Fiqh changes according to the circumstances under which it is applied.

3)     The laws of Shari’ah are, for the most part, general: they lay down basic principles. In contrast, the laws of Fiqh tend to be specific: they demonstrate how the basic principles of Shari’ah should be applied in given circumstances.

The Development of Fiqh:

*CE = Christian Era

Foundation: The Era of the Prophet (609 – 632 CE)

Establishment: The Era of the Righteous Caliphs, from the death of the Prophet, to the middle of the Seventh Century CE (632-661)

Building: From the founding of the Umayyad Dynasty (661 CE) until its decline in the middle of the 8^th Century CE

Flowering: From the rise of the Abbasid dynasty in the middle of the 8^th Century CE to the beginning of its decline around the middle of the 10^th century CE

Consolidation: The decline of the Abbasid dynasty from about 960 CE to the murder of the last Abbasid Caliph at the hands of the Mongols in the middle of the 14^th Century CE

Stagnation and Decline: From the sacking of Baghdad in 1258CE to the present.

When you read other books you might find they’re not the same, overlapping, this is just a given development by some scholars.