Stagnation and Decline: The Reformers

Though on one hand there was a stagnation and Madh’hab fanaticism reached its peak, where four prayers were going around the Ka’bah, there was a prohibition of marriage between Shafi’s and Hanafi’s, etc. they don’t represent the totality of what was happening with Fiqh in that era. From the beginning of that era (the fall of Baghdad) you had scholars like Ahmed ibn Taymiya who produced a generation of scholars in various fields of Islamic law producing very original works which were outside of the confines of the Madh'hab.

Ahmed ibn Taymiya (1263-1328CE)

Although Ibn Taymiya studied the Hanbali Madh’hab and is considered among its scholars, he didn’t restrict himself to it, and frequently went beyond it. He went so far as to study the religious writings of other major religions like Christianity and Judaism and refuted their ideas from Islamic sources. He was actively involved in Jihad against the Mongols, and his students became the great scholars of the next two generations after him, keeping up the banner of Ijtihad. Among them were Ibn Qayyim, AdhDhahabi, Ibn Kathir. Ibn Kathirs Tafseer was distinct in that era because it was based on authentic Hadith. He also produced a massive work on history and Adh-Dahabi produced a valuable set of works on Hadith criticism. Ibn Qayyim wrote on all fields.

The scholars of this era who utilized the texts of Ibn Taymiya did so without referencing it to him because they didn’t want to come under attack. Any one who would proclaim the ideas of Ibn Taymiya was looked at as some sort of a deviant.

 Muhammed ibn Ali Ash-Shawkani (1757-1835CE)

From the latter part of this era (about 200-300 years ago) we had Muhammed ibn Ali AshShawkani who was based in Yemen from the town Shawkan. He was originally from the Zaydi Madh’hab, but became so deep in his study of Hadith that he went beyond the borders of his Madh’hab such that he could no longer be considered a Zaydi scholar. He took a very strong position on blind following, ruling that it was Haraam. He wrote a book named, “The beneficial rulings regarding the law on blind following”. He also came under attack of the scholars of his time.

Ahmed ibn AbdulRaheem (1703-1762CE) 

In India there was a leading scholar by the name of Ahmed ibn AbdulRaheem although he came to know as Shah Waliullah Dihwali. He was born in an area where blind following was most rampant,  and having studied all the sciences available to him he called to open the door to Ijtihad. He revived the study of Hadeeth and though he didn’t reject the schools of Fiqh he basically promoted the idea that people were free to choose any they wished.

Jamul udDun AlAfghani (1839-1897CE) 

In the early 19^th Century, Jamal udDin AlAfghani traveled extensively throughout the Muslim world calling for reform and opening the door to Ijtihad. He got a position at Al-Azhar University and taught his ideas there. He affected his students who carried on his work. 

Many of his ideas, however, were extreme. He elevated human mind and logic and equated it to revelation, like the Mu'tazilites. In addition to that, there was information gathered which indicated that he was a free mason, but in that period basically everyone was involved in free masonry. His program wasn't really the Qur'an and Sunnah; he was caught up in other things. 

Muhammed Abdu (1849-1904CE) 

He was Jamal UdDin's most notable student. He systematically attacked blind following, however he was impressed by western education and became a leading promoter of what we call extreme modernism. This affected his interpretations of the Qur'an, in spite of the fact that he was originally promoting Ijtihad.  

 He went overboard due to the influence of western sciences which had more or less became the loudspeaker for knowledge. He had come up in a time where colonialism was at its peak and Muslims were weak. The wealth they had taken from the Muslims and the rest of the world fueled industrialization in Europe and put western powers in advance to the rest of the world; so you began talking about first world and third world countries. 

Muslims felt inferior and there was a tendency to look at western society and hold it up highly. As a result of that, a number of the scholars of this era became affected by modernist thinking; feeling Islam needed to be reformed to meet the challenges of western society.

The West basically rejected revelation and to them everything spiritual or  supernatural were mere legends and fables and were thus made fun of by modern science. Because of this influence, many were embarrassed by the idea of miracles and even went on to reinterpret verses in the Qur'an. Muhammed ibn Abdu was an example of this. 

E.g. In Surah AlFil, Allah says:

Muhammed Abdu claimed these birds referred to mosquitoes carrying microbes which bit the army of Abrahah and thus caused a plague to spread amongst them. 

He also made a Fatwa allowing Muslims to be involved in transactions based on interest, again, under the influence and impressionable effect of Western civilization that now dominated Muslim lands. He did this rather than trying to develop alternatives.

Since you have to have some sort of base to make your claims, he took the principle of dire necessity making allowable the forbidden (due to British colonialism). This is a weak ruling because when the Shari'ah talks about dire necessity it refers to things which threatens ones life or limbs. 

It should be noted that his main student, Muhamed Rasheed Rida, who died in 1935, carried on the attack of Muhammed Abdu on blind following. He rejected the excesses of Muhammed Abdu and wrote an excellent Tafseer called Tafseer Manar. He quotes the statements of his mentor while refuting them.

 His other students, however, embarked on a program of modernization, attacking polygamy, the veil, etc. We are still living the legacy of that era. They had the first march down the streets of Cairo where women threw their Niqab and set it on fire. Later on they began to take off headscarves and in the 30,'s, 40's, and 50's it became a standard in Egypt where women didn’t wear it. 

The popular movements of the 20^th century involved a variety of different forms, among them the movement known as the Ikhwan which was founded by Hasan AlBanna in Egypt. Among the big figures was Syed Qutb, a powerful journalist and his tafseer had a massive impact in society and remains banned in Egypt until today. He was hung for refusing to give up the call to the re-implementation of the Shari’ah.

There was a movement for going back to Hadith as the main focus (The Ahlal Hadeeth movement which was developed in Pakistan and India, and Ansar as-Sunnah in Egypt)

Because they didn’t have the support of the examples of the early generation, they developed into their own movements. You see violence being unleashed in society.  AlQaeda for example, take modern interpretations and use it to defend the killing of Muslims.

You then began to find a lot of political and military struggles developing in Syria, North Africa, Algeria, as the concept of bringing back the Shari’ah grew among them. But what they ended up forming is factionalism similar to the factionalism of the Madh’habs. We still experiences the remnants of it in our time. There’s a You're-either-with-us-or-against-us kind of mentality.

The effects of this movement didn’t really attribute to overcoming the Math’hab factionalism, it just split up the Ummah even more.

What did come out of this era, however, is that the idea of comparative Fiqh became a standard in most of the schools of higher learning across the various parts of the Muslim world. But what would happen is that even though it was available, the official Fiqh taught in the school would be the Madh’hab of that area.

Al-Azhar, because it brought students from all over the world, developed a system where once you signed up they would ask your Madh’hab and put you in a Maliki, for example, class. This just reinforced the Math’hab factionalism.

In the Islamic University of Madinah, Fiqh is taught without relying specifically on a Madh’hab.

This brings us to our own time:- The call to going back to the Qur’an and Sunnah  is increasing. Comparative Fiqh is also on the books in most of the schools.