- Welcome back. Now we answer questions we've
received from you our viewers. If you have a question visit
our website quranspeaks.com. Dr Shabir, this is the question about the Sunday
Sunni of thought. What are the
specific differences and practices of each
Sunni school of thought, and what is the
history behind them, specifically praying practices? What events led to these
individual schools? - So there are
four major schools of a Islamic jurisprudence is what we call them
within the Sunni realm. The first one in terms of
the historical emergence is that of this Imam Abu Hanifa. He was born about
80 years of his era which means several decades after the prophet Muhammad
peace be upon him. He lived in Iraq and
he developed his school with many students there. And when I speak of a school, I don't mean like
a school building. I mean that there is
a body of scholarship that he marches with
teacher and student, many students having
their students and so on. So there's a way of thinking and way of summarizing
all of the information and distilling the the final
rulings on issues that emerge, and that's called a school. That's running
throughout history. And following that there
was a School of Imam Malik who was based in Medina
in the place where the Prophet Muhammad
peace be upon him spent the last years of his life. Imam Malik was born
in the year '93. So 13 years younger
than Imam Hanifa. Now, if stick with these
two for the moment, we will get to understand
how differences emerged. So in Iraq, some people say, well, because that
was far from the scene of where the companions of the
Prophet peace be upon them, mostly lived, there was not that
much information about the details of
the prophet's practice. So there was more room
for interpretation. Because, you know, when when you have something
reported from the prophet, you feel obliged to follow
that and you feel reticent to offer your own
opinion on the matter. But in Iraq, they had little
bit more of leverage this way, because they had less reports and they exercise more opinion and they emphasize
the Quranic texts. So if something
was clearly derived from the text of the Quran, even if somebody came and said, well, we have a report from the prophet saying
something different, they would prefer to
go with what is clear from the Quran rather than to
with what somebody reporting because they have a suspicion
that when people report things that the reports could change
from one person to another, especially in the early days when these reports were given
by word of mouth rather than to be put into a writing
or carved in stone. Now, for Imam Malik
on the other hand, he was right there in Medina, where many of the companions of the Prophet peace
be upon them lived with the prophet himself lived
the last years of his life and where the practices of Islam were demonstrated
for all and Sundry. So for Imam Malik what
was being done in Medina, the practices there, the way of praying the details and so on, all of this must be
real way of the prophet, peace be upon him. And so he preferred that. So differences naturally arose because of the two different
methods that were followed, one in Iraq and other in Medina. - Did they ever interact
at a very early time? - Yes, they did. Of course, there was
a lot of interaction between Muslims especially
like those who are in Iraq would come to Mecca and Medina to Mecca to perform the Hajj. To Medina to visit the
mosque of the prophet, peace be upon him. And so they're were
aware of what is going on but they have a different lenses through which they are looking
at the same information. So from the lens of Imam Malik, it looks like whatever's
done in Medina this was it. But from the lens of the Iraqis, like they're not
so much committed to the situation in Medina, they were a little bit
freer to think more globally in terms of the
objectives behind things the spirit behind
things and so on. And so they take a slightly
more rational approach rather than a traditional
approach of saying, this is the tradition
just follow it. So the two different approaches you have two different
ways emerging. Now, from the way of Imam Malik, following the
tradition basically, we have another leader scholar, Imam Ali mama Shafi
who took this method, but he he wanted
to emphasize more, not just simply the generally
non-practice of Medina but he wanted to make sure
that somebody can attest to a specific
practice being done by the prophet peace
be upon him himself. It's not just for him sufficient that a large number of
people from that generation that is close to the
time of the prophet are following a particular thing or doing something in one way. He wants to know is
there a specific report that can be a tested
and that could be traced all the way back to the prophet
Peace be upon him. For example, did the prophets
say specifically do this. Or is there a report saying
that he did specifically this. So Imam Shafi could
have this luxury of looking at the
information this way, because at his time, people have started to
develop this into a science. So, a person born in that milio, such as Al Imam Shafi what
would have the feeling that we are dealing here
with an exact science. You know, if we say that
the is graded authentic then we have full confidence
that it really is so. Whereas a person born
in an earlier time when the science
was not so exact would not have that confidence. So is Imam Shafi
has that confidence. And so he emerges with
a system of thought that is more clearly dependent
on the specific reports, rather than the
general practice. Coming later the new Imam
Shafi is Ahmad ibn Hanbal. And he becomes the eponym of
what we might describe now as the fourth school. And in his time the
Hadith have even more blossomed to fruition. And so he compiled a
book of 30,000 Hadith. Whereas by comparison on the
Imam Malik compiled a book that has only about 500 Hadith, from the prophet peace
be upon him himself, and then other
reports from others. Ahmad ibn hanbal been
humble has 30,000. She can see the vast
difference if we wanna know what did the prophet
peace be upon him said on subjects from A to Z
in Imam Malik Muwatta, you wont' find so
many Hadith dealing with the various subjects. But in Imam Ahmed's collection
you find Hadith's galore. So what difference does it make? It means that when you're armed with Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal
had been humbled collection, of 30,000 Hadiths, there's less room for opinions and for you to
think about things because you have
specific instructions now almost on everything
from A to Z. And so, the faith and
the practice emerged that way to become
very literalistic. And some people took it
even further than this. Dawud Ibn Hazm, emerged with what is referred
to as the Zahiri's School, and that took things
even ultra literally. A lot of that
literalism is there in the Hanbali
methodology as well, and it has to become
in modern times actually somewhat fused with
the Hanbali methodology. And so we find that
in some places like for example in Saudi Arabia
where the Hanbali school has become the school by default
that is known and practiced and whose laws are
implemented in the country. And there we find a more
literalistic application of certain laws. Whereas for example, in some of the
parts of the world where you have
the Hanafi school, in practice you will
find more of a sort of, liberal is not the right term but a more rational approach
where people might be looking at the objectives behind the law and the spirit behind things rather than the
literal application. - So what does this mean? You know, you've mentioned
these four different schools. What does that mean for the diversity of
the practice of Islam? - It means that Muslims have
to accept the diversity. And in fact Muslims
have generally learned to live with this diversity. Maybe the common
people are surprised if they've only been
accustomed to one thing and then they go into
another area and they find that people are practicing
things to slightly differently. It'll be kind of odd for them. But the scholars know
of this diversity. They just have
implemented one system in one area of the world because that's easier
to teach people. It's easier to teach the
common folks one system than to tell them theoretically, you know, it could be any
one of these four systems. - So does it just affect, you know little things
like the details of prayer or does it affect wider
theological issues as well? - The theological
issues not so much although there are
some theological issues which are are
scratched you can say by these different
approaches and so on. But more so it's the practices. And even with the practices it's not the core
of the practice. So among these four
schools for example, all of them agree that we are to
have five prayers. All of them agree that... What they found or the
obligatory components of the prayers are these much. Two rakat of fajr
in the morning, four for the afternoon prayer, four for the late afternoon, three for the prayer
right after sunset and four late at night. But then, around this we
have other prayers like what are we to say
about the Witr prayer? How many rakats is that? Is it three? Or is it just any
other odd number, one to seven, for example. And does it have to be
prayed this way or that way? And then what about
the other prayers which might be called
Sumner for the Zuhr prayer for the afternoon Prayer. Is it two rakat before the fard or is it four rakats
before the fard? And so on, so we have some
differences around the core. So there was a core that
is agreed upon by all. And then the differences around. - Does it matter
which of these schools of thought a person follows? - Well, generally there
is an agreement among the scholars of
these four schools that you can follow
any one of these four and on your rightly guided. So, even though it
may so happen that in one school may rule
something to be permissible, let's say to eat. So one school says this
food is permissible to eat but the other school says, "No this is haram
You can't eat that." So you might have two
Muslim side by side and one is eating it
because his school says this is permitted. The other the one is avoiding it because his school says
it is impermissible haram. It is a sin to eat. But he while avoiding
it for himself, he has to accept that his
brother or sister in faith is following a system. Here we are looking at
the system of thought. It is a system of
thought that guided the followers of that school
to a certain conclusion the conclusion could be wrong because you can't have
both conclusions right. This thing is halal and
haram at the same time. Or God rule this to be
halal for the Shafi's, but haram for for the Hanafi's. No, it's a God
rule to one thing. But we don't know what
that one thing is. And two different
opinions arose. Some people said,
it's this thing. And some people said,
it's this thing. So we have to accept
that in principle because they're following
a good methodology, they're just trying
to find the right way. But they were looking at
it through different lenses and we have different lenses. And we can't have all
of the same lenses just like we can't take the
lenses from our own eyes and put it in the
other person's eye. We're gonna see
things differently, and it was seen
differently in one school, faithfully they have
arrived at this conclusion. So we leave them
to their conclusion and we know that God is
not gonna penalize them for reaching that conclusion
because they reached that conclusion through
good scholarship. It just so happens
that, you know there are some things which
are so obscure in the tradition that the best of our
scholars are gonna arrive at two different
opinions about it. - So Dr.Shabir,
one last question, is it possible for a
Muslim to pick and choose between the schools
of thought in terms of the way they practice Islam? - Yeah. Well generally,
for the common folks, the choices not
available generally because what happens
in practice is that school becomes
widespread in a certain area. I mean, before... Let's think about before the
schools became widespread. There were just
these colours around. So one might go to Iraq and finding Imam
Hanifi teaching there. One might go to Medina and find that Imam Malik
is teaching there. And you asked me
about interactions. So one of the primary students
of the Imam Abu Hanifa, Mohammad bin Hassan
Shaybani went to Medina and he studied Imam
Malik's book the Muwatta and he compiled his own
edition of the Muwatta. So they know the same
information there's students of each other and so on. There is this kind
of interaction but now some people may go to Iraq and following
Imam Abu Hanifa there. Some people who may
be living in Medina they following Imam Malik. It will be difficult for them in Medina to
follow Imam Abu Hanifa because he's far away and
they don't have the telephone to call each other every day and find out what's
the new thinking about new issues arising. So people tend to follow the
scholarship in their area. Now this scholarship
becomes well entrenched in a certain area, people who are born in that area naturally
tend to follow that. So that's why you
will find people from the Enerpac
sub-continent naturally they mostly follow
the Hanafi School. People in Saudi Arabia
mostly the Hanbali School because that's what
is prevalent there. So the common people do not
generally have this kind of luxury following
one or another- - But do in Canada, right? Because they are-
- In Canada are all mixed up. But I wanted to
make the distinction that the scholars have
the responsibility to know what is right, and to follow what is right. So if scholar may be convinced
of a particular school and follow that, they may be convinced that a particular school
is more to the point but they may continue to abide by the school that is popularly
followed in their area. And then a good example of this was Shah Waliullah of Delhi, because he lived in Delhi, he abided by the
Hanafi School because that was widespread there. But by conviction, he thought that the Shafii School
is more to the point. But of course he didn't wanna
confuse the common folks. Because the common folks
are not gonna be able to absorb two schools at once. It's enough to learn one
with all of his details and to do it right. Now, in our
cosmopolitan situation. Here we are in the Toronto area with people from all
around the world, following wide
variety of schools- - You grew in mosque and the person beside you might
be praying differently. - Yeah. - Person in front of you might be praying completely different. - Yeah, so first
we have to come to that position of
tolerance to recognize that these are a variety
of practices that are known in Muslim scholarship, widely acclaimed,
and acknowledged and verified to be the
products of sound methodology. So, they're all acceptable. But acceptable for the person
who has been taught that way. We're not gonna do something
without being taught. We don't invent by ourselves. And we don't say, "Ah, that
looks like something nice, let me just try
that for a change." Now you should be following
sounds scholarship. You should be you know... Because ultimately,
you wanna follow what God and His messenger said You wanna follow what
God said in the Quran, what the messenger
depicted in his life. And because common folks do
not have the acumen to... I mean, not that we don't
have the intelligence we do, but we have devoted
our intelligence to other areas of study. Somebody has become
an accountant, somebody has become an engineer, somebody has to become
a medical doctor and they're experts in
all of these fields. But there are experts
also in the field of interpreting the Quran, and getting a sense
of the life example of the Prophet, Muhammad
peace be upon him and distilling all
of that information into the finer points of
Islamic Law and Practice. So we have to consult
those people to know what is the Islamic Law and Practice. So, so long as you're learning
from a qualified teacher, then you're fine because
you're doing what that qualified teacher is
distilling from God's book. And from the life example of
the Prophet peace be upon him. So, we don't have the luxury of mixing and
matching in this way, but so the first level is
the tolerance to accept that there is this variety but the second level
is to go deeper and to think about
these differences. How they arose and to realize that we
can insist on these points because not only do
we have to be tolerant for the other person who is
doing something different, but we also have to be flexible
with our own tradition. Knowing that if these
points are so obscure that scholars can
not really be sure. What is the point? Some arrive at at A and some arrive at not
A at the same time. And knowing that they
cannot both be true, and that means we have a sort of gentlemanly
agreement that says, "Let's agree that
you're gonna do A, and I'm gonna do not A, and we're both fine." And so this is the
kind of gentleman, the agreement that says, "Let's not argue the point, let's just do our own thing." But it means that we cannot
be sure either about A or about its opposite. And so we cannot be sure and
insist upon these practices. It means that we should
have a greater degree of flexibility in
the application of Islamic law when it
comes to these details because the details
are not so far. - Thank you, Dr. Shabir. That was really insightful
and interesting. - You're welcome
- I appreciate your thoughts.
