Get thee behind me, Madhhab!

There is no current of thought more tragic than the one that says fiqh, or the science of Islamic jurisprudence, is easy. Unfortunately, the idea has gained momentum amongst Muslims, who typically dismiss the notion that in order to master the science, one has to immerse himself in deep study for a number of years and emerge an accredited professional. For a word that literally means "understanding", fiqh is certainly a misunderstood science. It has become a cheap commodity in the marketplace of Islamic ideas, facilitated by online forums where participants debate by quoting directly from both Koran and hadiths (transmitted reports on the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad) to prove or disprove one another’s positions. If a profession is this easy to master, any man or woman could dole out medical advise by having in their hands a book on common ailments and a compendium of all the drugs that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). It’s a simple matter of cross-referencing sicknesses and medicines. Or is it?

Part of the problem is how superficially (and negatively) Muslims view Madhhabs (schools of thought), from which an epic amount of fiqh rulings emanate. To accuse Muslims of having a superficial understanding of a particular aspect of Islam is of course different from the common ideological view that Muslims are practicing Islam wrongly. The latter has its roots in simple sectarianism, which in turn is fueled by the narcissistic need of all ideological movements to make themselves an exclusive club.

I would instead argue that Muslims today have too much information, but not enough tools to properly interpret, qualify and quantify it. Fiqh, in its most most basic sense, is the science of how rulings are derived from the valid sources of Islamic law, namely, the Koran, the Sunnah (the actions and practices of the Prophet Muhammad), the consensus of scholars (ijma) and analogical deduction (qiyas). Traditionally, it has been scholars aligning themselves to either one of four Madhhabs who have perused the sacred literature and attempted to develop laws from them.

However, three factors have conspired to foster a dramatic reversal. First, the burgeoning literacy amongst Muslims. Second, the enormous explosion in the printing of the Koran and hadiths. Third, the wide range of languages into which these primary sources have been translated.

All three factors in turn promote the belief that an individual has reached, or at least is in the vicinity of, a pinnacle of knowledge. If all this sounds suspiciously like the Enlightenment ideas of eighteenth-century Europe, you wouldn’t be that far off the track. Almost the entire Islamic world was once fair game for European colonialist ambitions, whose expansion came in the wake of policies that subjugated people, exploited natural resources and shattered unity. British colonial administrators were shrewd enough to focus on a critical pillar of society, namely education. Thus, one of the first things they did when they conquered a Muslim country was to supplant traditional Islamic education with one that had a western empirical bias. Colonized Muslims learnt from very early on that in order to obtain the best salaries, they had to get themselves employed by the civil service, and the only way to attain that was through schools run with an European setup.

More decisive than the three factors was perhaps the personality that was formed by the European schools. The mind lost its elasticity to think in in the vertical plane, directing itself toward more logical and discursive modes of thought. Instead of looking at physical phenomenon imaginatively, Muslims began to strip an object of all its emotive associations and concentrate on the thing itself. The legitimacy of traditional practices like visiting the Prophet’s grave in Medina, for example, began to be questioned, by some groups more than others. On hindsight, it is easy to see how such an environment had been fully anticipated by the colonial agenda. It is therefore no coincidence that the discrediting of Madhhabs and its traditions began in earnest at precisely the same point in time.

The main grouse was not aimed at Madhhabs per se, but the devotion that almost all Muslims had for their respective Madhhabs. Like Zionism was to Orthodox Judaism, this grouse at first belonged to a fringe group that was largely dismissed by the majority. As it became clearer that the traditionalists were unable to deal effectively with modernity’s onslaught, the fringe group grew in size and influence. Historical factors were beginning to stack up against the normative practice of Islam transmitted through the Four Schools.

Get thee behind me, Madhhab!
The call to abandon adherence to the Four Schools and instead return to the very sources of Islam is as simple as it is egalitarian. Its defenders do not explicitly disparage the Imams who founded the Madhhabs, but highlight the rhetorical fact they had merely been human beings prone to error. They like to quote the sayings of these Imams which went along the lines of, “If you find a hadith that contradicts my ruling, discard my ruling and follow the better hadith.” They also conclude that since Imams Malik, Abu Hanifa, Shafi’ie and Ahmad Hanbal had all formed their schools long after the deaths of the Prophet Muhammad and the al-salaf al-salihin (Pious Predecessors), the potential for error is compounded. Naturally, true religion is to be found from the primary sources and not mere mortals, regardless of their outstanding character, faith and intelligence.

I shall pause here to examine the logic of these arguments, a package I normally call the “prime shakedown” because of its sheer universality amongst anti-Madhhab groups.

Firstly, the rhetorical device that is found in bringing up the Imams’ human credentials (and its alleged propensity to err) is itself erroneous. The Madhhabs do not consist of the opinions of only one man, no matter how sterling his reputation and scholarship. Again, I hold up the superficiality of knowledge amongst Muslims as being the chief instigator of this device. Just because a particular Madhhab like Hanbal’s is named after an individual Imam named Ahmad Hanbal does not mean Ahmad Hanbal is the exclusive source of all that Madhhab’s wisdom. He was not even the first one to codify a set of rules, collectively and more accurately called a methodology, to approach the primary sources. What he did was gather and refine the best methods of his time into a framework that would be internally stable and transparent.

It is in this way that the four Madhhabs is said to exist in an unbroken chain to their origins for more than a thousand years, right up the Prophet himself. The scholars within each Madhhab thus number in the millions.

Naturally, to accuse a particular Madhhab of erring is really to accuse millions of scholars of erring. The implications are of course really quite horrifying and resembles somewhat the debates that early Christian scholars had on the status of men and women who were born before Jesus’ apparent crucifixion. Were they saved or not? Entire nations of people would theologically belong in hell if the matter was taken to its logical conclusion.

But the principle of finding a kind of orthodoxy in what the majority believes in was established from very early on. Shaykh Rabi’a, who was Imam Malik’s teacher, best summarized the principle in a comment he made on his famous student’s method of using the practices of the people of Medina as sources of fiqh rulings,

“A thousand from a thousand is better than one from one.”

What you see is what you get (WSIWYG)
This brings us quite nicely to the second facet of the “prime shakedown”, which is the implication that Madhhabs occasionally throw up wrong rulings. Putting aside the question of whether such and such a ruling is right or wrong, the logic behind such an implication deserves some scrutiny.

Fiqh rulings are but a tiny part of what makes up a Madhhab. More substantial and ironically more concealed are the methodologies used in deriving rulings. Too often, defenders of the “prime shakedown” pronounce a judgment of “false” or “wrong” on a particular ruling without first saying what is wrong about the methodology that produced the ruling. Since Madhhabs are primarily methodologies, it is more correct to refute the methodology behind the allegedly problematic ruling. After which, rather than swap rulings, proffer a better methodology.

Needless to say, this doesn’t happen a lot. Superficiality of knowledge has only intensified the flawed understanding of what a Madhhab really is. If taqleed is defined as “trust in qualified scholarship”, then it is not merely a case of ‘blindly following’ the fatwa, or opinions, coming out of a school, but adhering to the methodology that best avoids innovation in matters of faith. The greatest proof of a Madhhab’s ability to stand the rigors of time is its continued use and application through time. In this, more than anything else, nothing comes close to the Madhhabs in preserving the religion in its most pristine condition. Where dynasties and governments have gone, the Four Schools have yet to follow.

Because methodologies differ between schools, it is inevitable that they differ in rulings. What is striking is that this fact is not something that people recently stumbled upon. Differences have always been deemed a source of mercy from God, though this dogma arises from a hadith some scholars have classified as weak. However, a weak hadith does not necessarily mean the Prophet Muhammad did not utter those words. It simply means there is some doubt on either the chain of transmission or the individual quality of the narrators. Needless to say, to differ is human nature. Shaykh Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlawi (The Differences of the Imams) explains that.

This is one of the reasons why Abu Bakr, in his speech after the death of Allah’s Messenger, forbade the people from narrating hadiths, as this would have created differences and contention among the community.

We know that even the al-salaf al-salihin had keen disputes about matters of law. These contentions reached a peak during the lifetimes of many of the Imams who formulated Madhhabs, with only four surviving till this day; that of Imam Malik, Imam Shafi’ie, Imam Abu Hanifa and Imam Ahmad Hanbal.

Most orthodox teachers of Madhhabs teach that it is wrong to exploit these differences because of the potential for sectarianism. This is not saying that Madhhabs have never had their fair share of fanatical partisanship, but that it has never been an industry standard in the collective umbrella of Madhhabs known as Ahle-Sunnah-Waal-Jemaah.

Such an attitude must be contrasted with those who denounce judgments on rulings in the most superficial manner possible. At the heart of such denunciations is nothing but a reckless attempt at sectarianism; an exercise that continues to be unanimously condemned by scholars who teach from a Madhhab’s framework.

Who were they talking to?
But what of the Four Imams’ constant remonstrations not to take their words as law, and the call to abandon any opinion if it contrasts with a strong hadith? This question has several dimensions. Foremost in the misunderstanding of this scholarly injunction is the belief that Madhhabs are simply fatwa, rulings or opinions. The Four Imams had not intended to leave a legacy of fatwa, as evidenced by their reluctance to put their judgments down on paper, or in the case of Imam Malik, to spread his rulings beyond the borders of his hometown of Medina.

It should be noted that their true legacies lie in the methodologies they formulated in any approach to the primary sources of the Koran and hadith. This is to be differentiated from other kinds of approaches to the sacred literature. Ordinary Muslims read the Koran to obtain not only spiritual blessings, but also inspiration and knowledge. Fiqh scholars read it to obtain fiqh rulings. It is an entirely different enterprise and requires its own system of rules through which the scholars determine law. There are apparently contradictory passages in the vast body of hadith, for example, that need to be resolved through laws of abrogation. That means, a scholar must determine which passage ‘replaces’ the other passage. For such an activity, the scholar must acquaint himself with the historical background into which each phrase was uttered. He must also be completely proficient in the Arabic language of the Koran and also its colloquial forms, including a mastery of idioms and grammar. Yet, what I have mentioned is merely the tip of the iceberg of what any scholar who hopes to obtain fiqh from the primary sources requires. This intellectual effort- known as ijtihad- used to send the Imams into paroxysms of fear and anxiety. They knew that any judgment they make would be adhered to closely by their students and laymen.

Because Madhhabs are truly methodologies and not merely rulings, there is a certain amount of flexibility in the whole discipline. Opinions change, and should change according to the availability of hadith and the exigencies of various times and places. What remains are the methods through which these factors are subjected to, the tests and criteria. So, when the Imams left instructions to abandon a ruling if a strong hadith contradicts it, they could not have addressed it to people with no mastery of the methodologies. Fiqh is a tripartite relationship between Koran, hadith and methodology.

Actually, it has always been clear that the Imams were really admonishing their own students- who would themselves become scholars- not to abandon the quality of open-mindedness so essential to a sincere seeker of knowledge. Renewal arrives by way of an extraordinary custom that discourages any scholar who has reached the level of a mujtahid (those qualified to make ijtihad) to rely on Madhhabs and instead make his own judgments from the primary sources of the Koran and hadiths himself. However, the fact that towering intellects like Imam Nawawi and Imam Ghazali, who came far after the four Imams, chose to adhere to a Madhhab instead of forming schools of their own suggests that the mantle of the mujtahid is heavy and not often sought after.

A question of age
The last argument that defenders of the “prime shakedown” employ is that Madhhabs came long after the time of the Prophet, and consequently, should not be adhered to in place of the Prophet or the al-salaf-al-salih. The line of reasoning is disingenuous simply because of how many false things it presumes. It indirectly implies, for example, that the scholars of Madhhabs do not receive their religion from the Prophet himself, but from the Four Imams. If we take it a step further, we might even speculate on whether the Four Imams had actually based their whole corpus of rulings entirely on what is found in the Koran and the Sunnah. Again, this device can be traced to the superficial understanding that Madhhabs are just opinions. The device works because it is easy to argue that the Prophet’s opinions far outweigh the Four Imams.

Nonetheless, it is predicated on a flawed understanding of Madhhabs. It simply belies all bounds of rationality to say that one has an exclusive conduit to the Prophet and the salaf-al-salih based on an outward rejection of first, a conscious adherence to a Madhhab; and second, the claim that one takes his religion instead from a direct approach to the sacred sources. Why? Because there is no such thing as a direct approach. Which is why labels like Salafi (those who claim to be following the path of the salaf-al-salih) hold no real meaning. There can be no objective reality to calling oneself a Salafi unless it is applied on all Muslims. If however there is a willful attempt to portray both the founders and the scholars of Madhhabs as somehow not being particularly zealous about receiving their knowledge from the salaf-al-salih, then the word Salafi in its cultish sense would hold true.

Nonetheless, I have always found it amusing that Muslims would find the term “Mohammedan” offensive yet accept gladly to be called a “Salafi”.

Religion is essentially interpretative, even for those who are not content with just calling themselves Muslims. There can be no purpose in any framework that claims to represent most accurately the views and actions of the Prophet and his Companions without first offering an interpretative methodology.

Farid Esack (The Quran: Liberation and Pluralism) argues that,

A commonly supposed pre-suppositionless or innocent approach to understanding the Quran has no basis in the history of Tafsir or ‘ulum al-Quran for all non-Prophetic human experience is essentially interpretative and mediated by culture and personality- factors which cannot be transcended…

Obviously, one of the most important criterion that the methodology must fulfill is consistency.

Consistency is something that most modern groups who operate outside the Madhhabs consistently fail in. This is unsurprising since religion is as much interpretative for the Salafis as it is for the scholar who operates within a Madhhab. The often bitter rivalry between groups who claim themselves to be Salafist in outlook, for example, presents the most elegant defense for the existence of a methodology, and also for it to be internally consistent. In fact, the Salafist bickering is entirely reminiscent of the chaotic era before the Four Imams formulated their schools. It is striking that the Kharajite movement, a secessionist cult that saw themselves as true Muslims and others as false, flourished then as it does now in some respects.

It bears repeating that superficiality of knowledge is one of the most dangerous threats facing the Muslim community today. It endorses a reductionist form of Islam that inevitably takes on a predominantly literalist flavor. How else can a superficial mind deal with the primary sources without a coherent methodology but to reach simple solutions?

Olivier Roy (Globalised Islam) notes that such an attitude typically,

…discards philosophy, literature, Sufism and any sort of sophisticated theology. The scripuralist approach (which says that one must adhere to the word of the Koran and Sunnah) by definition nullifies centuries of interpretation and debates. It justifies the de facto shrinking of religious knowledge in relation to secular knowledge and relegating it to the purely technical sphere. Hence, in order to specialise in the religious sciences, religious schools have abandoned wider learning and left it entirely to secular schools…religious knowledge is based on a technical approach to religion (dos and don’ts) that presents ibadat and fiqh as a sort of code, not based on values and spirituality.

In a very real way, Madhhabs have been too successful for their own good. Not only did they manage to preserve the core tenets of the religion through rigorous methodologies, they have also fostered a unity amongst Muslims that is seldom seen outside Islam. Sectarianism was the exception rather than the rule. Religious inquisition was seldom imposed, with Madhhabs making the religion almost self-regulatory. Madhhabs made the Muslim world into such a coherent and easily-governed force that empires and governments have constantly tried to break down the walls separating the scholars- who traditionally depended on waqf (charitable) stipends- from political concerns. They also became, ironically enough, the first things to go when European powers took control of much of the Muslim world from the eighteenth century onwards. The colonialist agenda is complete in the splintering of the Muslim community. More insidious, perhaps, is the loss of spiritual direction of many of the youths living in ghettos of both Muslim and non-Muslim lands. The consistency and personal stability offered by Madhhabs were taken away, but Muslims today are continually instructed to look for answers elsewhere. Let old ghosts die, they are told. This is where suicidal ideologies like al-Qaida’s- breaking almost every single statute of the once self-regulating religion- come into the picture.

In spite of not possessing a central clergy like the Catholic Church, Madhhabs have preserved the ideal of ahle-sunnah-waal-jemaah through their acceptance of diversity. This feature is also its greatest weakness, as far as ideological attacks are concerned. The innate openness of the Madhhabs provide ideologues who want to undermine the position and authority of the Madhhabs with a rather unimaginative weapon. I say unimaginative because it does not take a genius to figure out the apparent "contradiction" of the Madhhabs’ position with regards to other Madhhabs, best encapsulated in the question, "…if this ruling on prayer from Imam Shafie is correct, how can the ruling from Imam Abu Hanifa also be correct?"

It is this fact that defenders of the "prime shakedown" constantly harp on. I discussed this charge in a previous post, but no answer can either be complete or satisfactory without examining precisely how the Four Imams derived their opinions from the primary sources, especially from the vast collections of hadiths and the manner in which their chains of transmissions were evaluated. I will deal with this matter in a later article and leave you instead with a story about Imam Abu Hanifa, which helps throw light on the single-most important feature of his methodology, and how easy it is to misunderstand the intentions of even the most brilliant of scholars.

Imam Abu Hanifa explains himself
Imam Abu Hanifa lived in the city of Kufa in Iraq, known as one of the two principal sources of fiqh in the Islamic world; the other being Medina. Because he was surrounded by Muslims from the Shia persuasion, he had a special affection for the family of the Prophet Muhammad, known as the ahle-bayt. One of these was Muhammad al-Baqir, whom Imam Abu Hanifa once met in Medina.

It is reported that al-Baqir remarked to him, "Are you the one who changes the deen of my grandfather and his hadiths by analogy?" Abu Hanifa replied, "I seek refuge with Allah!"

Muhammad (al-Baqir) said, "You have changed it. Abu Hanifa said, "Sit in your place as is your right until I sit by my right. I respect you as your grandfather, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was respected by his Companions when he was alive." He sat.

Then Abu Hanifa knelt before him and said, "I will present you with three things to answer. Who is weaker: a man of woman?"

"A woman," he (al-Baqir) replied. Abu Hanifa then asked; "What is the share of a woman?"

"A man has two shares and a woman one," he replied. Abu Hanifa said, "This is the statement of your grandfather. If I had changed the deen of your grandfather, by analogy a man would have one share and a woman two because the woman is weaker than the man."

Then he asked, "Which is better: the prayer or fasting?" "The prayer," al-Baqir replied. He said, "This is the statement of your grandfather. If I had changed the deen of your grandfather, my analogy would be that, because the prayer is better, when a woman is free of menstruation she should be commanded to make up the prayer and not make up the fast."

Then he asked, "Which is more impure: urine or sperm?" "Urine is more impure," he replied. He said, "If I had changed the deen of your grandfather by analogy, I would have ordered a ghusl for urine and wudu’ for sperm. I seek refuge with Allah from changing the deen of your grandfather by analogy." Muhammad rose and embraced him and kissed his face to honour him.

[source: The Four Imams, by Muhammad Abu Zahra]

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