Detox the orthodox

Men have always differed and because religion through the vehicle of revelation has largely been an interpretative enterprise, lots of problems can arise. Early in the history of Islam, caliph Uthman (the third leader after Prophet Muhammad) appointed a commission whose sole task was to compile the Koran into a book. Before this, the main method of transmitting the Koran had been oral, much as the early Hebrew scriptures had been. The destruction of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 587 BCE and the subsequent deportation of many of its inhabitants to Babylon had made it necessary for the early Jews to preserve their scriptures in the more or less permanent form of writing. Caliph Uthman was faced with a different predicament, however. War and simply time conspired to drain the Ummah (Muslim community) of its hafiz, or those who memorized the Koran in its entirety. Furthermore, deviant readings of the Koran were cropping up in various parts of the Muslim world.

Knowledge thus coalesced on the sacred text, and came to be known as ilm, from which the term alim and the plural ulema (scholars) were derived. Even with the Koran in book form, Muslims increasingly engaged in bitter debates on matters of religious law. This problem arose mostly because of arbitrary interpretations of the Koran and the existence of Hadiths that hopelessly contradicted one another. Scholars, worried that the dissension would
lead to schisms, attempted to establish methodologies from which they could alleviate the prevailing confusion. From the outset, these methodologies would be rooted in deep study, an exquisite memory, a profound understanding of the Koran’s Arabic language and a tireless patience to sieve through the millions of Hadiths that were in circulation.

Here, the question of orthodoxy in the Islamic sense must be examined. Orthodoxy means correctness in belief; and orthopraxy, the correct manner of practicing and reaching the truth. Like Judaism, Islam emphasizes the importance of orthopraxy over orthodoxy. The mantle of orthodoxy has generally been bestowed on anyone who professes the principle of tawhid (divine unity) and the status of Muhammad as Rasul (messenger), while the criterion for determining the legitimacy of orthopraxy, or method, has been somewhat more rigorous.

Over time, these methodologies crystallized into four distinctive legal schools of thought known as Madhhabs. The Madhhabs differed on many issues, but these variations were on matters of detail rather than questions of principle. Imam Malik, Imam Shafi’i, Imam Hanifa and Imam Hanbal were the earliest scholars to codify their efforts, making it easier for later scholars to reuse and refine the respective methodologies of the Four Imams.

Imam	Birth	Death	Age
Abu Hanifa	699	767	70
Malik	713	795	84
Shafi’i	767	819	54
Ibn Hanbal	780	855	77

Scholars on their own do not necessarily create history, but at certain times, they manage to set up institutions through which historical changes are realized. In the Islamic context, this grants them a power as great as that of rulers or their generals.

An orthodoxy eventually built up around these schools that became known as the Ahle Sunnah Waal Jemaah.

Malise Ruthven (Islam in the World) attests that,

…Without this accommodation of the different schools within a single framework, it is difficult to see how, after the collapse of the caliphal state, the divine law could have avoided falling into the kind of politico-religious fragmentation which produced the wars of religion in Europe…

This tolerance over difference of opinion was such that according to Sir Hamilton Gibb (Mohammedanism- An Historical Survey),

"…no body of religious sectarians has ever been excluded from the orthodox community but those who desired such an exclusion and as it were excluded themselves."

No other organized religion has managed to accomplish what the early scholars of Islam did for their religion; that is, create a framework of unity amidst diversity. So resilient has this idea been that for more than a thousand years of Islamic history, there has been no significant sectarian split outside the Sunni-Shia schism. Compare this with the Christian condition, in which three major schisms use three different versions of the Bible. This was because the Fathers of Catholicism, representing the first orthodoxy in Christianity, were more intent on imposing the impossible ideal of uniformity rather than unity. You don’t have to venture too far afield to find examples of such regimes in the Islamic world. The short-lived Taliban in Afghanistan precisely mirrors early Catholicism’s rabid fear of diversity. A culture of uniformity that is taken to its logical conclusion ensures a totalitarian regime with an arm dedicated solely to theological inquisition.

Corrupt scholars
The complaint that frequently materializes is that Madhhabs are relics of an obsolete past. The reason for their continued survival is thus demythologized and reduced to a combination of luck and shrewd political maneuvering. After all, there had not been four Maddhabs, but more that gradually died out. Key to this line of reasoning is the implication that scholars had only managed to seal their status and authority by colluding with what was considered to be the profane world of politics.

This is a dangerous generalization that expediently buries the genuine ability of the four Madhhabs to survive on their own merits. It is striking that where dynasties and governments have gone, the Madhhabs have yet to follow. Even an accord as recent as the Jordan Initiative in 2005 places the four Madhhabs at the pinnacle of a list that specifies "true Islam".

Taqlid makes no sense
On the surface, its seems contradictory that the four schools, with their differing positions, could be reconciled into any kind of institution. It is a question that bothers even contemporary Muslims, who sometimes use it to highlight the so-called irrationality of taqlid, or the practice of adhering to the jurisprudence of a single Madhhab. After all, if Imam Malik says that praying with arms down is okay and Imam Shafi’i says it is not, both conclusions cannot be correct at the same time.

The argument only makes sense if one conveniently forgets the basic fact about revealed religions; that it is essentially interpretative. Variations in thought must be a given and is borne out by the fact that Islamic scholarship has always invested more attention on methodology rather than conclusions. If the methodology is correct, there is a reliably high chance that the conclusion too is sound.

All Imams have a specific set of rules for assessing whether a Hadith should be practiced upon and this has greatly contributed to the difference of opinion amongst them. One Hadith may be accepted because it fulfills the standards set by them, or it might be dismissed because it falls short of standards set by other mujtahid Imams. There is absolutely no reason to say that the Four Imams had acted contrary to the Hadiths when all had based their conclusions on the same primary sources of the Koran and the Hadiths. Because these conclusions may differ from one another and it is dangerous to pick  rulings based solely on conclusions instead of methodology, taqlid plays an important role in maintaining consistency.

Madhhab melting pot
An alternative that has been proposed is the mixing of conclusions between different schools. After all, if it is an attribute of the Ahle Sunnah Waal Jemaah to say that all four schools are valid, then a framework made up of rulings drawn from Imam Malik, Imam Shafi’i, Imam Hanifa and Imam Hanbal is, by extension, also valid. Again, such a proposal emerges from a fascination of settling with conclusions rather than methodologies. Both Isaac Newton’s and Albert Einstein’s theories on gravitation deal with essentially the same phenomenon, yet the equations behind the two theories possess critical incompatibilities. Combining both methods would result in skewed solutions. Similarly, a pieced-together edifice with no methodology outside the perception that such and such a ruling sounds about right would only lead to inconsistencies.

MB Hooker (Perspectives on Sharia and the State: The Indonesian Debates) warns,

…the danger with talfiq, as the ulema widely recognized, is that it allows or even encourages recourse to the lowest common denominator of that which is socially and politically acceptable.

It is thus premature to accuse the dual framework of Madhhab and taqlid of being irrational since rationalism is merely a method applied to get from principles to conclusions. Even though the method in one school differs from that of another school’s, both methods can still be rational. Too many critics condemn the client side of Madhhabs without attempting to say what is wrong with the methodology of the Madhhab in the first place.

The tawdriness of the argument against taqlid is best demonstrated by the fact that the same people who dispute this practice promote instead a direct approach to the Koran and Hadiths. As Sheikh Muhamad Zakariyya Kandhlawi (The Differences of the Imams) candidly explains,

…Today, after thirteen hundred years, it is not possible for us to determine whether the narrations that we have before us have exactly the same chain of narrators as the narrations of the people of the past. Nor is it possible for us to verify whether the reasons for the rejection of a certain hadith which we are aware of, or which Imam Bukhari or Imam Muslim mention, are the only reasons for the rejection of that hadith…

In short, when we quote Hadiths, we already surrender the fact that they possess a sound chain of transmission that has already been accredited by either the Four Imams, or the two most famous hadith-compilers, Imam Bukhari (809-869 ACE) and Imam Muslim (819-874 ACE). Accreditation, however, entails a method, and different Imams used different methods to categorize Hadiths. Muslims today have little choice but to trust that these methods were correct, and that the Imams had traveled widely enough to gather the most statistically objective number of Hadiths. When we say Hadiths, we refer not to the almost entire corpus of literature that confronted the early Imams, but a series that has been considerably tidied by human hands. Using a present compendium of Hadiths to derive any kind of rulings hence already entails a trust very much akin to the process of taqlid.

Does taqlid to a particular school necessarily mean that Muslims are giving Madhhabs an absolute character? The question assumes several problematic notions which should be dealt with. First is the fact that Madhhabs are not the opinions of a single Imam, but of several who work within the "agreed-upon" framework of that school, including the use of established methodologies to derive laws for new circumstances. Nevertheless, I have heard arguments that,

…While it is true to say that a majority of wise men should be correct, it is just as true to say that they could also be incorrect.

Sounds good, but it puts forth a dishonest comparison. The likelihood of a majority of wise men being correct is NOT equal to the likelihood of them being incorrect. Also, given the extremely complex nature of Islamic studies and the highly interpretative nature of religion, any kind of consensus that is reached by the majority should not be so underrated and dismissed.

From here, it is easy to ascertain that Madhhabs are not primarily "opinions", or even "absolute opinions", but rigorous methodologies that are best insulated from error and the need for innovation, which though permitted under exceptional circumstances, are generally discouraged.

Detox the orthodox
What then is orthodoxy? To the traditional ulema who accept the classical definition of Ahle Sunnah Waal Jemaah, it is the group collectivity and its acceptance that all four methods, while occasionally arriving at different conclusions, are all valid. Orthodoxy in Ahle Sunnah Waal Jemaah is the macro view incorporating macro-principles. The principle of tolerance, for example, revolts against the idea of "blind following"- which is the pet definition of taqlid that opponents of taqlid subscribe to.

The result of blind following is however exceedingly clear, enjoining as it does fanatical devotion to the opinions of a particular stream or individual, with the almost perverse exclusion of other streams. Albert Hourani (A History of the Arab Peoples) comments,

…relations between followers of the different Madhhabs had been stormy at times; in Baghdad during the Abbasid period, Shafi’ism and Hanifism had given their names to urban factions which fought one another.

But it is important to understand that ‘exclusivism’ has seldom, if ever, been an industry standard in orthodox Islam, anymore than it is within individual Madhhabs.

The best example of this is found in the words of the eighteenth-century Sheikh Muhammad Ibn Sulayman Effendi who responded to Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahhab’s charge that the majority of the Ummah were apostates,

It is more correct to call you, a single person, kafir, than calling millions of Muslims kuffar."

Sheikh Muhammad Ibn Sulayman Effendi was not defending his own particular Madhhab but the macro-ideal that continues to be Ahle Sunnah Waal Jemaah.

From here, it is easy to argue against trusting whims and desires when approaching religious law, no matter how well adorned it is in intellectual dress. The paradigm of the Madhhabs offers a path of consistency that is hard to overcome. This is evidenced by the proliferation of extremist movements whose origins can often be traced to the core principles of a particularly modern movement. From the outset, it eschews the very authority of the Madhhabs and assumes a self-proclaimed right to regulate how ordinary Muslims should regard them.

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