Ismail Kamdar – Introduction to Usul al-Fiqh

AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss the importance of following the Sun statement and the use of various methods of learning in Islamic law. They also touch on the use of drugs and recreational drugs, as well as the importance of following the Sun statement in interpreting the holy grail. The speakers also discuss the differences in interpretation of various people and the importance of following the Sun statement.
AI: Summary ©
As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu Alhamdulillahi
rabbil alameen wassalatu wassalamu ala nabiyyil kareem Welcome
back to our third lesson in the series
An Introduction to Islamic Law Just a couple
of points before we get into today's class
You'll notice I changed the name of this
class from Introduction to Sharia to Introduction to
Islamic Law because as I am developing the
curriculum I realized a lot of what we're
going to cover is Fiqh, not Sharia And
in the English world, Islamic Law is a
catch-all term that refers to both Fiqh
and Sharia As we go deeper, it'll become
clear to you what the difference between Fiqh
and Sharia is But I decided to use
the English term, Islamic Law because it'll be
easier for people to understand that this course
covers both Fiqh and Sharia that work hand
-in-hand You can't study one without the
other They go together This does not mean
that this is going to be a Fiqh
class I'm not going to be teaching you
specific Fiqh rulings like the Fiqh of Worship
or the Fiqh of Transactions I'm not going
to be teaching the Fiqh of a specific
Madhhab I'm simply going to explain how Fiqh
works and how that fits in with how
Sharia works and how the two of them
work together to create a cohesive society for
the bulk of Muslim history and how we
can revive that in our times as well
The other announcement I wanted to make before
we continue is I don't know if you
noticed but I added mini-lectures to the
series separate from the main videos and there's
two main differences between the mini-lectures and
the main videos The main videos will be
around one hour long lectures in which we
will do deep dives into various topics related
to Islamic law but the mini-videos will
be between 10-20 minutes focusing on some
other issues to help you understand the main
issues The other difference is that the shorter
videos the 10-20 minute videos will actually
be publicly available on my YouTube channel while
these longer videos like this one will be
exclusively available to the students of this course
and that's for a number of reasons Number
one, in these videos we're going to go
into a lot more details it's going to
be a lot more advanced this is essentially
what you're paying for while the shorter videos
are topics that I want to reach as
many people as possible so I made them
publicly available because I believe that knowledge is
essential for the average Muslim to have while
what we're covering in this course may be
a bit more advanced that they don't need
to necessarily know so just be aware of
these two things as you move forward with
the course the name of the course was
adjusted from an introduction to Sharia to an
introduction to Islamic law because it's covering both
Fiqh and Sharia and we've added short videos
two of them are already up to help
supplement these lectures so that people can understand
Islamic law better and also those shorter lectures
are publicly available they're not just available to
the students of this course unlike these longer
lectures With that, let's get into today's topic
Today I want to share with you an
overview and introduction to the science of Usul
-ul-Fiqh the methodology of Fiqh because you
cannot really understand how the Muslim world worked
and how Sharia worked and how Sharia courts
worked if you don't understand how did scholars
decide on Fiqh rulings in the first place
right?
and that's essentially what we're going to cover
today how did they do it?
There are some notes you can read through
I'm not going to go through the notes
in this video I would highly recommend that
you read through the opening chapters of Dr.
Bilal Philip's Evolution of Fiqh as well as
chapter 2 of Dr. Wael Halak's Introduction to
Islamic Law because they do explain this topic
in a good amount of details as does
some of the opening chapters of Nuruddin Lembu's
book Sharia Intelligence they all explain this concept
quite well but today's discussion is basically how
do scholars form their opinions?
why are there differences of opinion?
how do we deal with differences of opinion?
and why can't anyone just have opinions on
Fiqh?
right?
so I think I'll start with the last
question first I think it's understood in most
fields that every field or science has its
experts and that you trust the experts when
it comes to the knowledge in that field
now in our times this is a bit
more difficult for people to accept for a
number of reasons number one a lot of
people have lost faith in Islamic scholarship and
we'll come to that later in the course
when we explain how things went downhill in
the past 200 years that makes some people
mistrust Islamic scholars right?
and we'll deal with that later the other
thing is in the age of post-modernism
there's a lot of skepticism towards any kind
of expert right?
so see with the younger generation people are
skeptical about medical experts about economic experts about
anything so to tell them to trust the
experts when it comes to Islamic law is
difficult but nonetheless this is the way Islamic
law has existed since the first generation even
amongst the Sahaba there were certain Sahaba who
understood the law better than others and the
other Sahaba would defer to them for judgements
on fixed issues on issues related to Islamic
law so for example scholars like Abdullah ibn
Abbas Abdullah ibn Mas'ud Aisha binti Abi
Bakr and the four Khalifas Abu Bakr, Umar,
Uthman and Ali these were scholars that other
Sahaba would turn to for advice who would
seek an opinion from the majority of the
Sahaba would not try to arrive at their
own conclusions on matters of Fiqh they would
rather ask somebody who understands the text better
because Fiqh is a science and there's a
methodology to it there's a way of arriving
at a conclusion and if you don't have
a clear set methodology you can be all
over the place and this is what we're
seeing happening in our times people who don't
have a methodology to Fiqh and who are
approaching the text directly mostly through translations end
up with extremely bizarre misinterpretations of the text
and this is because they're not following the
proper process of doing this there is a
science to understanding Islamic law let's take another
step back I'm talking about Fiqh now you
may be wondering what's the difference between Fiqh
and Sharia for that I highly recommend seeing
the opening chapter of Dr. Bilal Philip's book
The Evolution of Fiqh but just to summarize
the Sharia refers to the primary laws of
Islam that which is definitive, clear cut, agreed
upon there's no room for difference of opinion
it's very clear what the Quran says these
are very few there are actually very few
laws that are that clear and that we
follow that strictly and these are things that
are known of the religion by necessity those
things that are known of the religion by
necessity like there's five daily Salah there's no
difference of opinion about that praying five times
a day is following the Sharia fasting the
month of Ramadan being an obligation that is
following the Sharia the fact of fornication alcohol
gambling stealing homosexuality all of these things are
haram is again known of the religion by
necessity this is the Sharia what is Fiqh?
Fiqh means to understand Fiqh is an interpretation
of the Sharia because the Sharia laid down
the primary laws and principles for applying those
laws but the Sharia was left open to
interpretation and flexible enough that it could be
applied in every era and could be applied
to new topics and this is where Usul
-ul-Fiqh comes in the role of the
scholars is to master Usul-ul-Fiqh and
then to use Usul-ul-Fiqh to derive
rulings for their times so Usul-ul-Fiqh
means your methodology of interpreting the law you
need a methodology to figure things out right
and there are essentially over time four methodologies
of Fiqh that became the standard the Hanafi,
Shafi, Maliki and Hambali methodologies became the standard
in the early years of Islam there were
many other methodologies of Fiqh there were many
other scholars who had their own approaches to
Fiqh and they had their own students and
their own followers but over time it was
streamlined to four because these four became the
most practical the most observed the ones that
had the most political power behind them and
the ones that gained the most students you
may be wondering but why not just one
why is there more than one this is
a question a lot of young people have
why is there more than one Madhhab of
Fiqh why is there more than one Madhhab
of Waqidah why are there differences of opinion
in the first place Islam is clear there
is only one God and one Quran shouldn't
there be one opinion on every issue and
the best answer is this is the way
Allah wanted it to be this is how
Allah wanted it to be Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala out of His perfect mercy and
wisdom left a lot of things open to
interpretation so that the religion does not become
unnecessarily strict and difficult to follow and this
was the answer of the great Khalifa Umar
ibn Abdul Aziz rahimahu Allah when he was
asked this question when he was asked about
why were there differences of opinion amongst the
Sahaba he said that this is from Allah's
mercy so that the religion does not become
difficult and he said that I am happy
that they had differences otherwise Islam would have
been very difficult to follow so it's Allah's
mercy Allah knows that He created humans diverse
we are diverse in the ways we think
we are diverse in the way we interpret
a text we are diverse in how we
understand a specific topic we are diverse in
our cultures our languages and the Sharia is
designed to encompass this diversity to in a
way celebrate this diversity that under Sharia you
can have a variety of cultures a variety
of languages a variety of civilizations a variety
of fiqh opinions a variety of Aqidah opinions
and all of it would be acceptable because
the Sharia is encompassing enough to include all
of this but there are limits there are
limits to what is acceptable there are red
lines that cannot be crossed this is in
general those things that are known of the
religion by necessity those things that are agreed
upon there is no room for difference of
opinion but the main topic we are going
to talk about today is what is Usul
al-Fiqh and how does it work now
Usul al-Fiqh is actually a very advanced
science and it is something that you only
study late into your scholarly career meaning if
you had to embark on a journey of
seeking Islamic knowledge to become a scholar you
would start with studying Arabic and basic fiqh
and some other basic subjects and then you
build upon that and it is only later
on in your third or fourth year that
you actually start to dive deep into Usul
al-Fiqh there are some universities that teach
Usul al-Fiqh in the first year but
it is generally agreed upon that people's minds
aren't ready to understand it yet at that
level right that you really need a lot
more training and familiarity with the text and
with the terminology of fiqh before you do
a deep dive into Usul al-Fiqh so
it is a very advanced scholarly field that
is meant for training mujtahids for training people
who are capable of deriving Islamic law of
interpreting Islamic law and so it is not
taught to the layman it is not taught
to the earlier students it is taught at
a much more advanced level so then what
are we doing now?
well we are not doing that I am
not teaching you Usul al-Fiqh it would
take a whole 45 hours to teach you
Usul al-Fiqh or more right I do
have attached to this course some introductory level
lectures to all of the main Usul al
-Fiqh that you can watch but that doesn't
give you the ability to do fiqh it
just explains to you how the scholars do
fiqh what we are doing with this session
is I am simply explaining to you what
Usul al-Fiqh is what the basics of
it are and why the scholars need this
to interpret the law so Usul al-Fiqh
simply means that a scholar has a methodology
that he follows to arrive at fiqh conclusions
he has a methodology and as I said
over time these methodologies became streamlined to just
4 Hanafi Maliki Shafi and Hanbali a lot
of people misunderstand they think it's just following
4 scholars no it's following 4 methodologies and
within these methodologies there are hundreds and perhaps
thousands of scholars who use these methodologies and
sometimes arrive at different conclusions from each other
but the methodology was consistent now having a
set methodology is important because this means your
conclusions will be consistent they will not contradict
each other because if you are following the
Maliki method in some issues and the Hanafi
method in other issues you are going to
end up with opinions that contradict each other
right you are not going to have any
consistency in the conclusions that you come to
so very early on scholars developed methodologies of
fiqh and they used these to be consistent
in how they handled and interpreted Islamic law
we can trace the first examples of a
split in methodology to the sahaba amongst the
sahaba the best examples of a split in
methodology is Abdullah ibn Umar and Abdullah ibn
Mas'ud may Allah be pleased with both
of them Abdullah ibn Umar the son of
Umar ibn Khattab was one of the greatest
scholars of fiqh and he his approach to
fiqh was more literalist meaning if the hadith
said it he followed it whatever the prophet
s.a.w. said he would follow it
to the letter Abdullah ibn Mas'ud was
one of the first sahaba one of the
first Muslims he spent a lot more time
with Rasulullah s.a.w. than Abdullah ibn
Umar did and he developed a very different
methodology towards fiqh his methodology towards fiqh was
more rational in that he would study the
hadith try to understand the rational behind the
hadith the reasoning behind it was there a
reason for him to say this was there
a context between it happened and he had
a very different approach to the hadith so
what happens is within the very first generation
of Islam we end up with this split
where some scholars would see a hadith and
say the prophet said this this is what
we are following others ended up with the
approach of the prophet said this but he
meant that and they would follow what they
believed he meant and so this shows now
two methodologies of interpreting the text which led
to differences of opinion in fiqh we see
this play out in real time during the
lifetime of the prophet s.a.w. in
the famous incident of Banu Quraida where the
prophet s.a.w. after the victory at
the battle of the trench he told the
army to march towards Banu Quraida because they
had betrayed the Muslims in this battle and
they needed to be doubted for their betrayal
and so he told them none of you
should pray salatul asr until you get to
Banu Quraida so what happens is the army
leaves and they march towards Banu Quraida and
asr time is about to end so one
half says the prophet said don't pray asr
until you get to Banu Quraida so we
are going to follow what the prophet said
and they delayed asr it became qada and
they prayed till the embargo time in Banu
Quraida another group said the prophet said that
but that's not what he meant he simply
meant hurry up get there as quickly as
possible he didn't mean we must miss our
salat and make it qada so they stopped
and they prayed salatul asr and they continued
their journey interestingly the prophet did not chastise
either group he did not say that either
group were wrong setting the precedence from the
first generation that there will be differences of
opinion in fiqh there will be different methodologies
in fiqh and both methods are valid both
approaches are valid those who take the law
very literally and those who look at what
did the prophet mean by this both methods
are valid and so we see this in
the second generation it becomes a bit more
systemized so in the second generation it now
becomes known as two separate groups in the
approach to fiqh in the first generation it's
named after specific sahaba but now in the
second generation they're now known as separate groups
so now we have the emergence of what's
known as Ahlul Hadith and Ahlul Roy Ahlul
Hadith those who follow the letter of the
law Ahlul Roy those who follow rationality now
again don't take these terms too literally they
simply meant to define two different groups one
group would take the law very literally and
they would follow whatever the hadith said in
a literal manner the other group would look
more at what did the prophet mean by
this and follow the interpretation of the hadith
and so now we see it starting to
evolve and it's really in the third and
fourth generations of Islam that concrete methodologies were
developed that would be followed by the scholars
until today and about twenty different methodologies were
developed in this time four of which became
mainstream right and those four being the Hanafi
Maliki Shafi and Hanbali in fact it was
Imam Ashafi who was the first person to
write a book on this topic Imam Ashafi
wrote his book the Risala which is the
first book on methodology of fiqh and he
wrote this because he realised that in his
time a lot of people were not being
consistent in how they interpreted the law so
to create a sense of consistency he codified
his methodology and set it in writing and
this set a new precedence in the ummah
which is that scholars would now write on
this topic so this now became a field
to write about and many hundreds of books
have been written over the centuries by scholars
across all of the different madhabs so one
of the differences in these methodologies I've already
mentioned one difference which is that some methodologies
are more literalist than others while others are
more they focus more on the meaning of
what was said let me give you some
examples of that before we jump into other
differences between fiqh methodologies so an example of
where some scholars take something more literally while
others look at what did he mean is
the hadith that where the prophet said whoever's
pants is below their ankles it will be
in the hellfire so some scholars take the
hadith literally and they say it's haram to
have your pants below your ankles right other
scholars say no he didn't mean that he
meant don't dress in an arrogant way because
the way to show arrogance in that generation
was that people will wear these long flowing
robes that will drag on the ground to
show that they can afford more clothing than
everybody else so one group said the prophet
said this therefore this is haram the other
group said no he didn't mean that this
is what he meant and so this is
haram so here's the point neither group is
denying the hadith neither group is rejecting the
hadith this is a point that's lost on
a lot of people these days a lot
of people these days when they hear that
somebody believes it's fine for the pants below
their ankles they say oh you're rejecting the
hadith no they're not rejecting the hadith they
interpret the hadith differently from how you do
it takes a bit of maturity to understand
this and accept this people in general most
Muslims in general especially ulama do not reject
hadith they simply interpret it differently from how
you interpreting it that they are looking at
it from a different perspective from how you
are looking at it right and there are
many examples of this in the hadith there
are many hadiths where the prophet s.a
.w. said something some people took it literally
others took it in a hyperbolic manner others
took it as a metaphor others took it
contextually and you end up with a variety
of interpretations it is from the mercy of
Allah that all of these methodologies are acceptable
and all of these interpretations will be acceptable
on the day of judgement as long as
they conform within the spectrum of what is
orthodox Islam so when you look at the
context we look at the concept of usul
ul fiqh the first and the most obvious
difference is when you see something in the
text the Quran or the hadith do you
take it literally or do you look at
what was meant look at an example of
this from the Quran is the verse of
the Quran where Allah says that if you
touch a woman and you cannot find water
you should make tayammum touch a woman Imam
Shafi'i took it literally so in the
Shafi'i madhhab touching a woman literally just
touching like that breaks the wudu the malikis
and humblies added some context to it they
said touching here means touching with desire so
they considered kissing and things like that to
break the wudu and the Hanafis took this
completely metaphorically they said touching a woman means
having * right and so they said that
breaks ghusl and that this verse has nothing
to do with wudu so nobody is rejecting
this verse but there is a spectrum of
interpretation of this verse and whichever of those
opinions you are following you are safe and
you are within the realm of what is
acceptable and Allah will have mercy on you
regardless of which of these opinions you are
following so what are the other differences between
the various methodologies of fiqh first let's talk
about what they agree upon within Sunni Islam
there are certain aspects of the methodologies of
fiqh that all Sunni Muslims agree upon right
and the differences are normally in the subtleties
the nuances of it but the essentials are
agreed upon so what are these essentials well
Dr. Wael Halak divides them into the rational
and revelation forms of sources of law right
as do many others the revealed sources of
law agreed upon by all of the madhab
are the Quran and Sunnah we have a
lot of people today who say they follow
the Quran and Sunnah and they don't follow
a madhab because the madhabs contradict the Quran
and Sunnah this is a very naive approach
to fiqh there is no madhab that contradicts
the Quran and Sunnah by the very definition
of the Usul every madhab follows the Quran
and Sunnah the difference is in how they
interpret the Quran and Sunnah and also what
they consider to be acceptable sources of the
Sunnah we'll get to that in a bit
so let's start with this all Sunni Muslims
regardless of what madhab they follow agree that
the revealed sources of Islamic law are the
Quran and the Sunnah and the bulk of
our laws come from the Sunnah not the
Quran because the Quran does not discuss a
lot of rulings the Quran focuses more on
our beliefs on our morality on our spirituality
on guidance on stories of the past there's
not much in the Quran related to law
the bulk of the law comes from the
Sunnah now they will defer on what the
Sunnah is and how to interpret it but
every madhab agrees we follow Quran and Sunnah
what else do we follow every madhab to
some extent or the other also agrees that
we follow Ijma Ijma means the consensus of
the Ummah now they have differences of opinion
on what is Ijma and what level of
Ijma do we follow and what counts as
Ijma but they all agree on the concept
of Ijma so we all agree that if
the Ummah the Muslim collectively as a whole
believe something it must be true right but
some of them say this applies only to
the first generation some say it can apply
to any generation in history but in terms
of actual practice we tend to follow it
only with the first generation so for example
the entire Ummah in the first generation right
until recently agreed that homosexuality is a major
sin to act on those desires is a
major sin this is a matter of Ijma
so whichever madhab you follow you're going to
believe this you have to follow this because
this is now an agreed upon ruling in
the Sharia there's no room for difference of
opinion right there's no room for difference of
opinion on things where the Ijma is established
so a couple of points here number one
there's disagreements of what counts as Ijma number
two a lot of things today that people
claim Ijma is actually no Ijma right it's
just it's become like a a card that
people use when they're trying to silence debate
you know that there's a genuine Ijma on
a topic when all of the Muslims of
the past give you the exact same opinion
on that topic that's when you know there's
a genuine Ijma so for example the prohibition
of Zina there's Ijma the prohibition of alcohol
there's Ijma that there are five daily solar
there's Ijma right so this is the third
principle of Ijma which means consensus which means
consensus in Islam means there are no disagreements
there are no disagreements amongst the senior scholars
of that generation maybe in later times there
may have been one or two dissenting voices
but that does not contradict Ijma we're talking
about the senior scholars of the first few
generations linked to Ijma most of the Madhhabs
also agree that we can take fiqh from
the opinions of the Sahaba so if a
scholar is dealing with a fiqh issue that's
not mentioned in the Quran it's not mentioned
in the Hadith and there's no Ijma on
it the next step would be to look
at did the Sahaba discuss it and if
the Sahaba discussed it then they would consider
it part of the religion to follow the
opinions of the Sahaba because the Sahaba understood
Islam better than we did now again there's
a difference of opinion on what level of
following the Sahaba is necessary and does this
mean only the consensus of the Sahaba or
the individual opinions as well and the individual
opinions if it's something that the majority of
the Sahaba held or only one Sahabi held
right but in general Ahlul Sunnah wal Jamaah
the people of the Sunnah and the community
follow the Quran follow the Sunnah follow the
consensus and follow the Sahaba a fifth principle
that they all agree upon is the rational
source of Islamic law called Qiyas Qiyas or
logical deduction rational deduction and Qiyas simply means
that when dealing with a new case you
find something similar in the Quran and Sunnah
and you apply a similar ruling for example
when drugs were invented in modern day recreational
drugs that made people intoxicated or high scholars
would do Qiyas and they would say ok
recreational drugs are not mentioned in the Quran
and Sunnah the Sahaba never discussed them but
Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala prohibited all intoxicants
and the Prophet said anything that intoxicates in
large quantities is prohibited in small quantities and
even though we know that this verse of
the Quran and this hadith are referring to
drinks to alcohol to wine but we can
do Qiyas and say that just as wine
is prohibited because it intoxicates recreational drugs are
also prohibited because they intoxicate so this is
Qiyas you are taking the ruling of something
that is established in the Quran and Sunnah
and applying it to something new because they
share the reason of prohibition this is the
key point they share the reason for prohibition
why is alcohol prohibited because it intoxicates you
do drugs intoxicate you yes they do therefore
it's also prohibited this is called Qiyas this
is called a a rational deduction based on
Quran and Sunnah and I would argue that
the bulk of fiqh today comes from Qiyas
and this is the area where you are
going to find most differences of opinion the
majority of differences of opinion on modern day
fiqh come from the area of Qiyas why
because people's brains work in different ways so
people have different methods of rational deduction and
so if three people are doing rational deduction
on one issue you're going to end up
with three different opinions and that's just the
nature of fiqh and that's how it's always
been from the very first generation now whenever
they were introduced to something new that was
not explicitly mentioned in the Quran or in
the Sunnah they would do Qiyas and based
on that Qiyas they would they would come
to a conclusion now it's also important to
note that Qiyas is completely is considered zonni
speculative meaning whatever result you arrive at through
your Qiyas you have to be open to
the possibility that I'm wrong you have to
be open to the possibility that somebody else's
Qiyas is right and your Qiyas is wrong
as long as there's no consensus on the
issue and by the way it is possible
although not very common to arrive at a
consensus through Qiyas because normally Qiyas leads to
different conclusions but it is possible to arrive
at a consensus so for example I don't
know of any difference of opinion on recreational
drugs being haram unless it's medical usage or
emergencies so even though one can say that
that's Qiyas but that's also a matter of
Ijma that all intoxicants are prohibited so that
is possible as well so all of the
scholars of Fiqh from across all from Madhabs
and even those who don't follow a Madhab
they all agree upon these points that we
derive our laws from the Quran from the
Sunnah from the consensus of early Muslims from
the opinions of the Sahaba and if none
of that is available through rational deduction Qiyas
so why are there so many differences of
opinion for a number of reasons number one
there are other Usul of Fiqh that some
Madhabs follow and other Madhabs don't number two
there are different approaches to each of these
topics that I just mentioned so what are
the different approaches to these topics let's look
at the Quran when it comes to the
Quran the scholars may differ on how to
interpret a specific verse that sometimes something is
mentioned in the Quran and scholars understand it
differently from each other for example Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala tells us in the Quran
to wash our arms up to our elbows
in wudu some scholars would say that means
up to and including the elbows others say
no it's only up to it doesn't include
the elbows this is a difference in interpretation
both interpretations are valid Allah knows best which
one is correct you follow your Madhab and
you be open to the idea that it's
possible that the other opinion was correct instead
and so we have a difference in how
people interpret the Quran we saw that earlier
with the verse about not touching women there
is a difference of opinion in how we
interpret that verse it's the same with Hadith
scholars not only have a difference of opinion
in how to interpret Hadith but also on
other things like what level of authenticity is
needed for a Hadith to be valid in
Fiqh right so there is different levels of
authenticity in Hadith some Hadith are Sahih they
are very authentic others are Hassan they are
acceptable you can still use them but they
are not on the same level as Sahih
some are Da'if they are but weak
some are Da'if Jinnah they are very
weak some are Modu they are fabricated but
there are other ways of measuring Hadith as
well in terms of the number of narrators
now the scholars would look at all of
this so for example in the Hanafi Madhab
a Hadith needs to be narrated from a
variety of people for it to be considered
valid for Fiqh if it's coming from just
one person then it wouldn't be considered strong
enough to build upon what's in the Quran
because the Quran is narrated from so many
people and this Hadith is coming from just
one person furthermore the Hanafi scholars would also
look at is the narrator a scholar or
not if the narrator is a scholar they
would give it more strength and more preference
over a Hadith that's narrated by a non
-scholar because the scholars know more what they're
talking about when it comes to Fiqh the
other Madhabs didn't do this they had their
own methods so in the Humbly Madhab even
if a Hadith was slightly weak but still
acceptable they would still use it in Fiqh
right because they viewed it as we rather
follow the Hadith than following Qiyas so they
had very different approaches to what Hadith can
we follow in Fiqh another example of this
is the Maliki Madhab because I said all
the Madhabs agree upon following Quran and Sunnah
they differed on what to be considered the
Sunnah so until now when we're talking about
Sunnah we're only talking about Hadith but in
the Maliki Madhab there was a different source
for the Sunnah the Maliki's because Imam Malik
lived in Medina and the people around him
were the descendants of the Sahaba he looked
at what they did and he considered it
to be Sunnah why?
I mean if you think about it it
makes a lot of sense right if you
are living in Medina at the time in
which the Sahaba's children are living in Medina
you would assume that whatever methodology they have
in practicing Islam is what they learned from
their parents who were the Sahaba who learned
it from the Prophet and so in the
Maliki Madhab the practice of the people of
Medina at the time of Imam Malik is
considered to be Sunnah a Sunnah passed along
through deeds rather than through words and so
very often he would give preference to the
practice of the people of Medina over a
singular Hadith because a singular Hadith is what
one person is saying the Prophet said but
this is the practice of an entire community
that they learned from their parents that they
learned from the Prophet so Imam Malik considered
the practice of the people of Medina to
be Sunnah the other Madhabs did not so
you're starting to see why there's differences of
opinion right?
firstly they differ on how to interpret Quran
and Sunnah number two they differ on what
is the definition of Sunnah number three they
differ on what level of Hadith is acceptable
in Fiqh right?
even when it comes to for example if
it seems like a Hadith is building upon
or contradicting a verse of the Quran then
in some Madhabs you would follow the Hadith
in other Madhabs you would follow the Quran
right?
I wouldn't think contradicting is the wrong word
there but basically if it's modifying what the
Quran is saying so for example what's the
best example of this?
the prohibition of meat in the Maliki Madhab
in the Maliki Madhab the only type of
meat that is prohibited is what's mentioned in
the Quran because the Hadith prohibiting for example
birds of prey is not considered by Imam
Malik to be strong enough to override the
verse of the Quran and the Quran says
that pork is Haram and carrying is Haram
and anything else is Halal so he's saying
Quran is saying anything else is Halal this
Hadith is singular it doesn't reach that same
level so we're going to go with the
Quran so this Hadith is actually not considered
something that you apply in the Maliki Madhab
because it's not considered strong enough to override
that verse of the Quran so again now
you're starting to see the nuances of Fiqh
and how complex it is as a science
and like I said it's not something that
you can teach in an hour or teach
on the side it's something that's an advanced
science that you have to study with teachers
at a high level after learning Arabic after
learning Fiqh after learning all the basics it's
a very advanced field and in the early
years of Islam the people who went into
Fiqh the people who became the ones who
interpreted the Sharia and gave people the methodologies
of interpretation they were the geniuses of the
community the most intelligent people of the community
and again this is a point that's lost
on many people today because the sad reality
is many people today come from cultures or
communities where the only people who become scholars
of Islam are those who are failing at
school so we end up with a number
one negative attitude towards Islamic scholars but also
we end up with a misreading of history
that we assume that always throughout history that
was the case but it's actually a very
recent phenomenon it's only been for the past
200 years since the Okaf governing Islamic scholarships
were dismantled by the British and after that
there was no money involved in funding Islamic
scholarship that it became a secondary thing that
only those who couldn't manage in other fields
went into for the bulk of our history
for over 1200 years it was the best
of the best who became scholars people like
Imam Bukhari Imam Ashrafi Imam Abu Hanifa Imam
Malik these were all geniuses these were absolute
geniuses in their memory in their intellect in
their ability to understand things I'm mentioning this
because some of us have this myth in
our mind that all scholars are not intelligent
this is a myth based on a modern
problem and we should not be back projecting
that myth onto history the reality is the
bulk of our scholars in history were geniuses
and even today in every community you will
find scholars like that as well they may
not be the majority but Alhamdulillah wherever I've
been in the world I've met amazing intellectual
scholars who are really able to understand the
religion on a deep level ok so where
were we with our main topic we're talking
about Usul Ul Fiqh and we mentioned why
there's differences of opinion you said all the
scholars of Ahlul Sunnah agree in following the
Quran the Sunnah Ijma and Qiyas but again
Qiyas will lead to different conclusions people differ
in how they interpret Quran and Sunnah people
differ in what counts as Sunnah right again
a lot of people don't know this there's
a difference between Hadith and Sunnah and not
every Hadith counts as the Sunnah right so
the Hadith is the text in which the
information is stored what is derived from that
text could be the Sunnah but not always
because again every Madhab has their own methodology
of looking at the text and extracting the
Sunnah from it so when we say we
follow Quran and Sunnah that doesn't mean we
follow every single Hadith no every scholar you
meet will have some Hadith that they don't
follow because they consider Hadith to be weak
or to be abrogated or to be misunderstood
or to be contextual it doesn't mean that
they are rejecting Hadith it simply means they
have a different definition of Sunnah from the
scholars that you are following you see the
more you understand of this the more tolerant
you become to other people's opinions because now
you understand where they're coming from so what
else led to differences of opinion amongst the
scholars of Fiqh the other thing that leads
to differences of opinion amongst scholars of Fiqh
is that they had secondary sources of Islamic
law where they deferred over whether these are
acceptable or not right so for example the
Hanafi Madhab had something called Istihsan and Istihsan
basically means that if the rational deduction is
leading to a conclusion that is too difficult
to apply in society then you can go
with a different opinion which simply means the
Hanafi Madhab looked at Fiqh as a very
practical thing right and they looked at it
from the perspective of making life easy for
the people I know in certain Hanafi communities
this may sound strange but that was what
the original Hanafi Madhab was making things easy
for the people so if a scholar did
Qiyas and his conclusion would make life too
difficult for his community he would ignore his
own Qiyas and follow somebody else's opinion if
it was more practical for society right so
this is a very practical tool for ensuring
that Islamic law is never well overburdensome for
the people and this is again a concept
that I think has been lost in our
times it seems like people in the West
today and English speaking Muslims today seem to
seek out ways to make the religion overburdensome
on themselves and others it's as if we
have this mindset that this religion needs to
be difficult but that's not the case this
religion is meant to be very simple and
practical and so we shouldn't be looking for
ways to complicate things we should be looking
for ways to simplify things so the Hanafi
Madhhab did that through Istihsan the Maliki Madhhab
did that through Maslaha right that they would
look at the concept of the greater good
of the community what would benefit the community
they call this Maslaha and they would derive
a lot of rulings through Maslaha so they
would look at okay is this in the
greater benefit of society and if it is
and there's nothing explicitly prohibiting it in the
Quran and Sunnah they would allow it as
something or they would encourage it right so
they would look at the Maslaha of the
community when deriving secondary rulings now please note
these principles like Istihsan and Maslaha they apply
to secondary rulings normally things that are derived
from Qiyas not from primary rulings meaning you
can't use them to overwrite Quran and Sunnah
with very few exceptions like matters of life
and death and things like that another example
of a principle that was initially disputed and
later became acknowledged by almost all the Madhabs
is the concept of Urf of local culture
and we're going to spend a whole lecture
on this concept separately because understanding the role
of local culture in Fiqh will help you
to appreciate how vast and diverse and flexible
Fiqh is and the vision of what this
Ummah should look like you see many of
us have a misunderstanding that this Ummah needs
to be monocultural that it should be like
one culture for the entire Ummah and we
see this when people try to Arabicize other
cultures or in my context Indianize other cultures
right when they take their culture and they
try to force it on others assuming that
this is Islamic culture this is problematic because
the religion of Islam is meant to accommodate
the good of every culture that it is
built into our Sharia that humans are diverse
in their cultures they are diverse in how
they handle their social dealings and how they
live their lives and the Sharia is designed
to encompass this diversity as long as it's
not harmful as long as it's not Haram
and so when you travel to the Muslim
world today you will find that a lot
of things are very diverse in terms of
culture in Malaysia in Turkey in Saudi Arabia
in Morocco you will find that the way
Islam is practiced in all of these cultures
is very diverse yet all of it fits
within Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah why?
because our religion has built into it a
concept of cultural diversity in Fiqh in Usulul
Fiqh this is called Urf Urf means local
culture and in the maxims of Fiqh it's
called Al-Adat Muhakkamat local culture is the
deciding factor and what this means is when
there is a clash of cultures then the
local culture will be the deciding factor on
a Fiqh issue so for example if you
are living in a culture where the business
arrangement is that if you buy something like
you buy some furniture you need to provide
transportation to take the furniture home that becomes
the default if you move to a country
where the culture is that the person selling
it has to provide transport then you have
to adapt because on these issues of business
the Quran and Sunnah are silent and it's
left up to the local culture and whatever
the local culture is that's what you follow
that's the ruling it's the same for example
with the Jummah Khutbah so some people misunderstand
this because the Khutbah of Rasulullah was in
Arabic they assume the Khutbah has to be
in Arabic all over the world but I've
traveled around the world and I found Khutbahs
to be in every language whatever was the
language of the people there's very few who
hold this opinion by the way I'm not
saying the opinion is outside of acceptability this
is an opinion within Ahlul Sunnah wal Jamaah
it has to be in Arabic but it's
not the majority of opinion the majority opinion
is that the Khutbah must be in the
local language so this can solve some big
problems so for example just say a group
of Muslims migrated to a small town in
Canada some of these Muslims speak Arabic some
speak Urdu some speak Turkish and they're all
sharing a Masjid and they're arguing over what
the language of the Khutbah should be in
but the majority of them all understand English
right that's the language the majority of people
in that community understand therefore the Khutbah should
be in English so the majority understand it
this is the local culture being the deciding
factor it's the same with how men dress
right ah this is again this idea of
like if you're living in the west you
have to dress in Arab clothing or in
Indian clothing to be Islamic but the reality
is that you can follow the local culture
in dressing as long as you're not violating
any of the Islamic laws right so for
a man that means you're unable to your
knees must be covered you must be modest
it shouldn't be see through it shouldn't be
feminine it shouldn't be silk right it shouldn't
be part of another religion so if you're
wearing a loose fitting shirt and pants Alhamdulillah
you are following the Sharia right you're just
fitting in with your local culture which is
fine it's a bit more strict for women
because women have to cover up more right
but even there there's cultural flexibility that the
colors the design the format of a woman's
ah what we call in modern terms hijab
later I'll explain the word hijab hijab is
a very modern term for it but nonetheless
this concept of a woman covers everything is
from the Sharia but how she covers it
the designs the colors the styles this you
will find differs from region to region that
there's cultural diversity in how a woman's dressing
is as long as it meets the minimum
requirements of covering her aura in a modest
and loose fitting manner and so this is
an important principle of fiqh or local culture
and this is one of the reasons why
it is highly recommended that you take your
fiqh from your local scholar this is something
that will pop up over and over again
in this course stick to local scholarship because
people in other regions even if they are
pious even if they are geniuses they may
not always understand the cultural nuance of the
community you are living in but somebody who
grew up in that community and who is
a part of that community and who grew
up in that culture and understands that culture
he is able to understand all of the
cultural considerations when giving away fatwa and this
is why fiqh has to be localized fiqh
has to be based on the local culture
and it goes back to what was covered
in chapter 1 of Dr. Wael Halab's book
that the scholar was always a member of
the community who understood the community and its
culture just as well as he understood the
Quran and the Sunnah and the methodology of
fiqh and he would consider all of this
when making a judgment for the people one
of the big mistakes we have today is
that we try to take our fiqh from
people in far and distant lands who do
not understand our circumstances our cultures or our
way of life and sometimes that fiqh becomes
impractical it's even worse nowadays with fatwa websites
because as we covered in the previous video
fatwas are meant to be personal it's meant
to be one on one thing that someone
asks you a question and you give them
a fatwa for their personal circumstances now we
have people posting fatwas online and people in
a completely different part of the world a
different context a different culture is leading that
fatwa and thinking this is the Quran and
I have to follow this and that makes
the religion impractical it makes the religion difficult
and it's not how fiqh was meant to
be so put this now in context of
what we covered in the first video that
the sharia was interpreted not by the government
but by the local scholars the local scholars
were not as some people think you know
these high school dropouts who couldn't cut it
and were not intelligent no that's a modern
phenomenon that's not our history that's not our
history Muhammad Ghazali was a genius Ibn Taymiyyah
was a genius Abu Hanifa was a genius
we have to let go of that mindset
that these were people who were not intelligent
this is back projecting modernity onto history no
the local scholars for the bulk of our
history were intelligent pious and diligent in how
they handled things and the people trusted them
and they had methodologies so that they were
consistent in what rulings they came to and
they were not self contradictory so if you
lived in that time and you wanted to
know if something was halal or haram if
something was an obligation upon you or what
to do in a specific situation you would
go to your local Mufti your local Mufti
would be someone who studied under a righteous
scholar or a series of righteous scholars who
received a certificate of permission to continue teaching
or to start teaching from his teachers after
years of study who mastered the Quran
would listen and they would be just and
they would be wise and they would give
people the rulings that they needed for their
situation and the government stayed out of it
completely the government the only thing that they
would do for the most part was either
stay out of it completely or they would
pay the salaries of the scholars so they
could just focus on their work and not
need to worry about money again it depends
on which kingdom we are looking at and
which point in time we are looking at
but you would find in certain parts of
the world the government completely stayed out of
it and the laws was in the hands
of the scholars there were no lawyers there
were no government lawmakers everything was handled by
the ulama and the people trusted their ulama
more than they trusted their governments and people
looked up to their ulama more than they
looked up to the government and the governments
would try to win the favour of the
ulama because that would make them be legitimate
in the eyes of people that if the
ulama trust this government they must be doing
something right and so one of the biggest
difference between sharia and modernity is that in
modernity we have these secular lawyers making up
laws and interpreting laws in a very by
the book manner right but in sharia we
have pious intellectual scholars who are interpreting the
Quran and sunnah and in the interpretation they
are focusing on justice they are focusing on
society they are focusing on family they are
focusing on what's best for their people it's
not a matter of trying to enforce a
law on people but it's more about ensuring
that people live together in harmony and that
they are growing closer to Allah and their
society functions well and one of the most
unique features of that time is just how
separate law making was from the leadership besides
in the first generation because the first generation
Abu Bakr Umar Usman Ali Hassan Muawiyah may
Allah be pleased with all of them the
six sahaba who held positions of khilafat they
were all ulama they were all people of
scholarly knowledge right they all knew how to
interpret the law and it was after that
when Yazid came into power that people stopped
treating their rulers as sources of law and
they started taking their law from the local
scholars instead and that's when you actually see
that break away that on one hand we
have the scholars where we learn our religion
from and we get our laws from and
we have the government who handle jihad and
the protecting of the border and stuff like
that and that separation existed for the bulk
of our history because very few kings in
the history of Islam were actually scholars I
would say 99% were not 99%
I can barely think of any leader in
our history who was a scholar after the
time of the sahaba besides maybe Umar ibn
Abdul Aziz and Abdul Malik ibn Marwan it's
really hard to think of anyone who was
a scholar after their time and so because
of the split between scholarship and kingship for
the bulk of our history laws were taken
from the scholars and the scholars had methodologies
the scholars were consistent in how they applied
and the scholars feared Allah so they did
the best job that they could and this
is how Muslim society functions that if you
need to know something ask your local scholar
and Alhamdulillah the benefit of this today is
that even though we currently don't have a
khilafat we currently don't have a land that
is ruled by sharia in our personal lives
we can still try our best to live
a sharia lifestyle by following our local scholars
and by living a life that is pleasing
to Allah and by staying away from that
which is haram in that way the sharia
continues to thrive and continues to grow even
in an era where it's not being applied
on a government level but inshallah that will
end soon and perhaps we will see the
revival of the Islamic khilafat in our lifetime
so that's it for today we discussed the
concept of usulul fiqh we're going to build
upon this a bit more in the next
video where we discuss what are the madhhabs
why do madhhabs exist why do we need
madhhabs how do they evolve over time and
we're going to talk about the importance of
scholarly diversity in Islam and how that plays
an important and crucial role in how we
understand the sharia that we understand the sharia
to be a system of a law that
accommodates a lot of differences of opinion and
different cultures and different viewpoints we didn't touch
upon it today but we'll go into more
details about it in the next video because
it's very important that if we are studying
sharia that we understand that there are a
lot of differences of opinion and that this
system is flexible and broad enough to encompass
all of these different opinions and approaches hope
you found this beneficial ...
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