Mohammad Elshinawy – Shariah Fiqh & The 4 Madhabs

AI: Summary ©
The transcript discusses the meaning of today's message, including the sharia and its elements, including the importance of finding a guru or teacher. The speakers also touch on the confusion surrounding the concept of "fit and not fit" in sharia law, and the importance of understanding the concept of "fit and not fit" in sharia law. The discussion also touches on the use of "monarch" in Islam and how it can be used to dismiss disagreements among studying.
AI: Summary ©
So what is the meaning of the word
Sharia?
Obviously, the is in front of you.
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la says,
istajibu lillahi walirrasuli itha da'akum lima yuhyiikum
Respond to Allah and his messenger when they
invite you to that which gives you life.
That's what Sharia is all about.
Sharia in the Arabic language to the Arabs
originally, it meant the path to the waterway.
And you know, in desert life, water is
even more so, even more central to survival,
right?
And so the Sharia, Islam now, the revelation,
the Quran and Sunnah, adopt that term for
the revelation, for the religion.
That the religion is the path to survival.
The religion is the path to nourishment, to
sustenance, to thriving.
So just as water is the source of
life, the complete life here and the eternal
life there are only made possible through the
revelation of Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A
'la.
Already you're noticing two things.
Sharia is not just specific to Islamic law
in its original usage.
It's not just the exterior or external physical
practices of Islamic law.
All of Islam, theology, the creed, the belief
system, the ethics, the morals, the laws, the
legal regulations, everything would fall under Sharia.
And the other thing that becomes clear from
this definition is that the Sharia is not
a subset of Islamic law.
That's the other extreme.
In some people's minds that have been watching
too much Fox News, too much Islamophobic rhetoric,
Sharia equals the prescribed punishments, the hudud, the
penal code in Islam.
And there's an excellent paper, if you're interested
in the subject, published by Yaqeen Institute, authored
by Dr. Jonathan Brown from Georgetown University about
the hudud punishments.
And in a nutshell, the AI summary of
it is that if you look at any
of the standard legal encyclopedias today, any of
the four major schools, you go to their
10, 20 page encyclopedia on Sharia as Islamic
law, less than 2% of it will
be dedicated to the punishments.
And most of that 2% is actually
about when not to apply these punishments.
Because the Prophet, Alayhis Salaatu Was Salaam, said,
Idra ul hududa bish shubuhat.
Avert, do not apply the prescribed punishments within
any reasonable doubt.
You always err on the side of caution.
So Sharia can't mean this.
And it originally doesn't just mean that which
is practiced in the ritual or legal sense,
it's wider than that.
You know, one of the earliest scholars who
wrote a book called Kitab al-Sharia, The
Book of Sharia, Al-Imam al-Ajurri, Rahimahullah.
It's a book on theology.
It's a book on sort of the Islamic
beliefs, the Islamic doctrine, creed, creedal matters.
This is also why the inseparability of creed
from law is why the term non-practicing
Muslim is actually a little bit oxymoronic.
Like it's self-contradicting.
Like because if you're a Muslim, that means
you've sort of embarked on Allah's path.
So what does it mean that you're a
non-submitting submitter?
The belief and the practice are a little
bit inseparable.
And that was the original usage of the
term Sharia.
Keep that in mind, Inshallah.
We'll come back and qualify it later.
What are the sources of the Sharia?
So where does the Sharia come from?
Where does our creed, where does our law,
where are our ethics, where do they come
from?
Of course, the primary source is the Quran,
the Book of Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala,
the literal word of Allah that He revealed
to this world and ensured would be preserved
fresh and perfect until this very day and
until the end times.
And of course, the Sunnah.
The Sunnah is the example of our Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, his statements, his actions, his
approvals, in some cases, even his description, Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam.
And that too was preserved for us.
Let me stop for a second and speak
about the authority of the Sunnah because the
Quran being a source, a reference point, an
authoritative reference point is something any Muslim who
calls himself Muslim would agree on.
Whereas there are people who may be skeptical
regarding the Sunnah.
How do I know these Ahadith are reliable,
for instance, are authoritative?
And I don't mean that's fair, meaning it's
justified per se, but it's understandable considering the
amount of misinformation in the information age.
Information overload also includes a lot of misinformation
overload.
So the first thing you do when you
find someone who denies the authority of the
Sunnah is you say, Sallallahu Alaihi Muhammad.
May the peace and blessings be upon the
Prophet Muhammad because he foretold us, Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam, that people will continue to doubt the
Sunnah.
Hear one of my statements and say, if
it's in the book of God, tell me,
if it's not in the book of God,
I don't wanna know about it.
And then he said in that Hadith, Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam, the authentic Hadith, أَلَا إِنِّي أُتِيتُ
الْكِتَابَ أَوِ الْقُرْآنَ وَمِثْلَهُ مَعَهُ I have certainly
been given this Qur'an and the likes
of it with it.
What does that mean?
That means in the legal sense, in sort
of the applicability sense.
They apply just the same.
They have the same authority in a sense.
It doesn't mean that the Qur'an doesn't
have miraculous words that the Sunnah doesn't.
The Sunnah is the words of the Prophet,
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, who Allah protected him, right?
And his lifestyle and his decisions and all
of that.
But the wording of the Qur'an is
special in its language.
But in authority, they are the same.
And this is a matter that is essentially
agreed upon by the scholars.
You know, even as early as the Sahaba,
there were a few dissenting individuals that would
arise here and there that were Sunnah skeptics.
They were a little bit resistant to the
Sunnah.
Imran ibn Hussain radiyallahu anhu, who's a companion
of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, one time
was narrating to them a hadith.
And a man kept objecting.
He was being obnoxious in the class.
And he was saying, tell us about God's
words.
We don't wanna hear anything but God's words.
Even notice how it's framed as a sense
of piety, right?
I want God and God only.
So Imran ibn Hussain radiyallahu anhu said to
him, la narda bi kitabi Allahi badala.
We would never accept an equivalent for God's
book.
God's book is supreme.
But we simply seek the one that understood
God's book better than anyone, right?
There still is an element of understanding that
needs to be explored.
Then he said to him, do you find
the amounts, the designations of zakah to be
in God's books?
To be in God's book?
No, you find zakah must be paid.
But how much do I pay?
It's not there.
Do you find that going around the Kaaba
happened seven times in God's book?
It's not there.
Do you find the rakah count in God's
book?
No, you don't, right?
And so God's book actually directs us, persuades
us to pursue the sunnah because he's the
one applying, modeling for us how to live
up God's book.
And of the clearest ayat, by the way,
in the book, in the Quran, that point
to the sunnah, as Imam al-Shafi'i
rahimahullah said, is the ayah in Surah al
-Ahzab, wherein Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A
'la says to the wives of the Prophet
Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, Wadhkurna ma yutla fee buyuti
kunna min ayati Allahi wal hikmah inna Allaha
kana latifan khabira And proclaim, proclaim what is
recited, oh wives, what is recited in your
houses of the verses of God and the
wisdom.
What is recited in their house that's not
the verses of God.
The words of his Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
And why are they being cautioned about withholding
any of it?
Because this is revelation for the world.
It must be proclaimed.
Mention it, it would be a crime to
not mention it.
Why?
Because that means you are burying a part
of the religion.
So his words are an integral part of
the religion, as are his practices Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam.
And of course, our scholars understanding the value
of this also went to such great lengths
to verify his words.
So like they don't just accept hearsay that
the Prophet said or did.
They developed an extremely sophisticated system to vet
a rigorous authentication process to vet what can
be called sunnah.
Without taking a deep dive into it here
and now, they said it has to at
least fulfill five conditions.
It has to come through a chain of
narrators that is connected, right?
And they all have to be people of
precision, right?
People of integrity, that's two, right?
There should not be any hidden defects in
the chain.
I'm not going to be able to unpack
all of these words here and now.
And it should not be conflicting other more
authentic narrations.
Connected chain, people that are accurate, people that
have like an FBI file on them, the
Hadith scholars had FBI files on people, right?
So connected chain, accurate, precise, integrity, uprightness, and
there's no conflict with more authentic reports.
There's like a cross-referencing and there's no
hidden defects.
There's also no other reasons to doubt the
chain.
And they would even layer them.
More authentic means there's less authentic.
It was extremely nuanced, extremely sophisticated.
So that's the sunnah.
Ijma' means scholarly agreement.
When the scholars all agree on something, there
is no way that is incorrect.
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la would
not leave this ummah misguided, would not leave
the ummah in the dark, would not leave
the truth absent for the blink of an
eye because the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said
in a Hadith that is mutawatir, massly transmitted,
abundantly corroborated, highly authentic Hadith.
He said, لَا تَزَالُ طَائِفَةٌ مِّنْ أُمَّتِي عَلَى
الحَقِّ ظَاهِرِينَ There will never cease to be
a group of my ummah visibly on the
truth.
So when they all say something, no one
showed up visibly, right?
That said this is wrong, then that must
be right.
Does that make sense?
That's the notion of ijma' the doctrine of
scholarly unanimous agreement or scholarly consensus.
ijma' I know consensus can be 51%.
That's why I don't like the word consensus.
But ijma' unanimous scholarly agreement.
Then there's qiyas.
Qiyas means analogy that we compare things that
are in fact comparable.
They are similar to each other.
So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam made tawaf
on camelback so I can make tawaf from
the second floor.
That sort of thing, right?
To infer from an original case a ruling
for a new case.
These are essentially agreed upon sources of our
understanding of Islam.
Quran, sunnah, ijma' and qiyas.
Any question on this?
Okay, we're moving.
These are all also the five agreed upon
objectives of the sharia.
So when the scholars read through all of
the teachings of Islam, they notice five objectives,
five goals that are very obviously sought out
by the sharia.
You know, some people, when they speak about
the five objectives of the sharia, you may
see this list in many places.
They say that sharia came to preserve these
five objectives.
It didn't just come to preserve the five
objectives.
It came to preserve and promote them as
well, to proliferate them, to grow them in
a healthy way.
What's interesting about these five objectives is what,
and it hopefully will help us remember the
meaning of the word sharia, is that anyone,
Muslim or not, even atheist might agree on
these five, right?
Is anyone gonna disagree with family?
Anyone disagree with intellect, protecting the intellect, intellectual
property rights, right?
Property, like wealth and property.
People have a sort of a right to
private ownership.
Life, the sanctity of life, sort of the
heinousness of taking innocent life, murder, right, and
religion.
I said atheist.
Atheist might not tell you religion.
He may not use the word religion, but
he does agree with us.
He's gonna tell us you should do some
sort of like new age spirituality or something.
Get some energy crystals.
You should have a spiritual element to your
life.
Go find yourself a guru or something, or
horoscopes.
And so what is so special about the
sharia then?
If these are agreed upon by all people,
the sharia provides us the path to actually
achieve these.
It's the system to make these possible.
So for instance, I often say, do people
really think they will ever be able to
get rid of domestic violence?
Even though they all agree domestic violence is
a bad thing, we should purge it from
the human experience.
But how?
Do you think you'll ever be able to
get rid of domestic violence without getting rid
of alcohol?
Do you think you'll ever be able to
get rid of alcohol without God consciousness?
This is the idea.
It's the entire system.
Do you think you'll ever be able to
get rid of racism also without submission and
humility in front of God?
All of you are from Adam and Adam
is from dust, right?
Allah created him from dust.
That's why no one but the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam was ever able to purge racism
from society.
It's the path to these.
It's where to find that equilibrium.
Do you think you'll ever be able to
get rid of fornication without promoting marriage?
Impossible, right?
So not just preservation, but promotion of these
five primary objectives.
One more five, even though this one is
kind of six, but we're gonna say five
just to keep our streak going.
These are what are called the al-qawa
'id al-fiqhiyah al-kulliyah, the universal legal
maxims.
So these are five rules that are found
all throughout Islamic teachings.
Okay?
They're universal.
They have no exceptions, right?
Sometimes there'll be a dispute.
Do we use this one or that one?
But these rules always apply.
That's the idea.
So the subsets of these rules may be
disputed, but these are unanimously agreed upon.
One of them is al-umuru bimaqasadiha innama
al-'amalu binniyat.
Intentions always matter.
Intentions always matter.
There's countless chapters of Islamic law that will
hinge on what?
The intention.
Intention of the statement, the intention of the
transaction, whatever it's going to be.
So it's not just, you know, do we
forgive him for uttering something he accidentally said?
It's also what if they have an evil
intention?
Like let's say a man divorces his wife
as he's breathing his last, so she doesn't
inherit anything from him.
Sorry, tough guy, she's inheriting.
Because barring her in this way would not
be allowed in the Sharia, right?
It's obvious that you're trying to withhold from
her her right in an unethical way.
So intentions, for instance.
Certainty always overrules doubt.
So was it three rak'ahs or four?
It was three.
Did I pay my zakah or not?
I didn't.
Because I know, I'm certain I owe zakah,
not certain if I paid it, right?
Six or seven tawafir on the Kaaba.
It was six.
Certainty always overrules doubt.
The no harm principle.
The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, la dharra
wa la dharar.
There should be no harm, meaning initiated, nor
any harm reciprocated.
You don't bring harm back on yourself, nor
do you initiate harm on others.
Of course, unless justified, like in the Sharia.
If a person's at war, he's gonna say,
la dharra wa la dharar.
Sorry guys, I just learned something new.
I'm going home.
Then you leave your brothers and sisters on
your right and left stranded.
When justified, right?
But the idea is there's no initiation or
reciprocation of harm without enough Sharia-sanctioned justifications.
And then hardships warrant ease.
Whenever there's a hardship, whenever things tighten, the
Sharia has a built-in flexibility.
It's not like from my head arbitrarily, I'm
gonna say, okay, I don't have to follow
that one.
It's too hard.
No, the Sharia has definitions for this, that
whenever it gets tight, this is how you
loosen it.
This is how you loosen it.
And these concessions, these eases are to be
dispensed by qualified scholars who understand how the
Sharia does that.
The last of them is that customs are
authoritative.
So what Allah did not speak on, he
did not leave out due to being forgetful.
He left them out by design because he
knew humanity would continue to be diverse and
they would benefit from that flexibility.
So whenever the Sharia didn't speak on something
and two people in a transaction didn't stipulate
something, then we move on to customs being
binding.
So let's say, this actually happens a lot.
A brother marries a sister.
The sister doesn't know that she's entitled to
mahr.
She's entitled to a bridal dowry.
This happens quite a bit in the convert
community.
Then they come like, Sheikh, I heard he
owes me money.
I'm like, yes, he does.
And so if there was no, the Sharia
does not determine.
It doesn't say like, you know, 10%
of his monthly income.
It doesn't say that.
And they didn't stipulate on each other.
Like she didn't ask and he agreed, that
would be finished.
Then what do we do?
We look at the norms in her time
and place, in her sort of socioeconomic status.
What's the average a sister gets?
She becomes entitled to that.
Let's make believe, I go to brother Rashid's
restaurant, inshallah.
And like, I tell him, I hear good
things about your, what's expensive steak?
What kind of steak is expensive?
See, I don't understand.
Wagyu works, wagyu.
So I sort of, I order a wagyu
steak.
I don't ask for the price, nothing.
Okay?
I finished the meal, I ask him for
a check.
He tells me the check says $2,000
for my steak.
In the eyes of the Sharia, that's him
pulling a fast one on me, right?
I would not have to pay that in
an Islamic court.
I would pay the max of the norm
perhaps, but that's it.
Because I said, give me a steak.
I didn't ask because I know norms are,
the steak is gonna be from 20 to
200 maybe.
So you charge me 2,000 or 20
,000?
No, that was your job to tell me
there's an abnormal price tag on this one,
right?
This is the way it would work.
Okay, these are the five legal maxims that
are universal.
They apply all throughout Islamic injunctions.
All right, we're done with Sharia, let's move
to Fiqh now.
Hopefully I can tie them together in a
minute, inshallah.
What is Fiqh?
We hear the term Fiqh a lot and
the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he said, for
instance, and the Qur'an uses the term
as well with the same lexical or linguistic
meaning, which means comprehension, basic comprehension or deep
comprehension.
For instance, this famous Hadith in Bukhari and
Muslim, agreed upon means agreed upon by Bukhari
and Muslim.
من يرد الله به خيرا يفقهه في الدين
Whomever Allah wishes well for, he deepens their
understanding of the religion.
So فقه means to understand, فقه means to
deeply understand, but the term Fiqh means comprehension
or deep comprehension, depending on how you use
it.
And so to take note of things on
a deep level is what Fiqh is all
about, subtleties.
This is why when they said to al
-Hassan al-Basri, رحمه الله, when he shared
with them something, they told him the Fiqh
scholars, the Fiqh experts, don't say what you're
saying.
He said to them, have you ever met
a Fiqh in your life?
A Fiqh is someone that is disinterested in
this world and interested in the next world
and upholding the words of Allah Azza wa
Jal, and he says his peace and he
walks away.
And he mentioned what spiritual refinement, why?
Because that takes a lot of understanding, to
understand the inner crevices of your soul, to
be focused on refining that unseen element of
you, the metaphysical, the ghaibi element, the soul.
So they would even use Fiqh to speak
about spirituality, as Abu Hanifah, rahimahullah, once did
and others.
But deep understanding is the original meaning and
they would use it in spirituality, they would
use it in law, they would even use
it in creed once again.
There's a famous book by Imam Abu Hanifah,
rahimahullah, called Al-Fiqh Al-Akbar, Major Fiqh.
And it's about aqeedah, it's creed, the most
important things you need to understand about the
fundamentals of Islam, the foundational creedal elements of
Islam.
So that's what it means linguistically, all of
that was just to establish the linguistic meaning.
But as history progressed, Fiqh got assigned to
the study of law, a technical discipline of
practiced law.
So this is the definition of Fiqh now,
meaning what's commonly meant by the term Fiqh
or faqih.
It is juristic reasoning, juristic means legal, jurisprudence,
juristic.
So it's the discipline of extracting and understanding
about what Allah's laws are for our practice,
make sense?
So sharia and fiqh, are they the same
or not?
Somebody answer it now, yes or no?
Sisters, are they the same or not?
I said sisters.
So fiqh is the understanding of human beings.
If it is right, then it winds up
being God's religion, it's sharia.
When it's wrong, it's not the sharia, okay?
You know Ibn Qayyim in his famous book
on Asul Fiqh, he says, the sharia is
entirely about mercy, justice, and the welfare of
human beings in this world and the next.
And so whatever departs from justice to injustice,
and from compassion to cruelty, and from benefit
to harm, then it is not part of
the sharia, even if someone claims it is
according to their misinterpretation.
This is the quote of Ibn Qayyim.
So sometimes we may misinterpret the law.
And in that case, it wouldn't be sharia.
We'll find out in the day of judgment,
maybe I'm excused for my misunderstanding.
But the idea is fiqh is an attempt
to identify God's law, an attempt to identify
God's sharia, make sense?
Because the sharia is the religion, remember?
And the religion can't be mistaken, the sharia
is infallible, can't be flawed.
But the fiqh is our understanding.
So it might overlap and it might not.
This actually shows us a little bit about
why the scholars of law settled on the
word fiqh.
It's as if they were highlighting, announcing to
the world, by the way, everybody, this is
my understanding, please take it with a grain
of salt.
The agreed upon matters are not called fiqh.
You don't say sort of like pork is
haram in my fiqh.
No, it's case closed sharia, everyone understands that.
Backbiting is haram, or like salah is mandatory.
No, it's not fiqh.
Fiqh is when there's like an issue that
is derived, understood, and it's understood in different
ways.
They call it fiqh to say, this was
my conclusion in my understanding.
This is what I extrapolated, deduced, derived of
law from the evidences, clear?
And it does say Islamic rulings on practice.
So they don't touch anything else.
They're not talking about the creedal, they're not
talking about the spiritual refinement, the tazkiyah, tasawwuf,
or sort of aqeedah, and ilahiyat, none of
that, just practice.
So qiyas is a big part of fiqh,
for sure.
Okay, now, let's talk a little bit about
differences of opinion in fiqh.
Where they come from, and some of the
wisdom behind it.
Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la says,
huwa allathee anzala AAalayka alkitab.
Allah is the one who revealed to you
this book.
minhu aayatun muhkamatun hunna ummul kitab.
Of which, this book, of which some verses
are muhkamat, definitive, meaning cannot be understood any
other way.
wa ukharu mutashabihat.
And others, other verses are speculative, can be
understood one way, a second way, maybe a
third, maybe 10 way, speculative.
wa ukharu mutashabihat.
fa amma allatheena fee qulubihim zayghun fayattabi'oona
maa tashabaha minhu.
As for those in whose hearts is deviance,
is misguidance, is a disease, spiritual disease, they
follow the speculative.
What do they mean?
They reach for it, they like it, they
pursue it, right?
They lay claim to it without justification.
So this ayah is telling us something very
important, which is that Allah Azzawajal could have
certainly, it was absolutely in His power to
make all of Islam equally clear, right?
All of the Quran, He could have made
the Quran impossible to be defined any other
way.
He could have done that, wouldn't be hard
for Him.
Subhanahu wa ta'ala.
But He chose to leave some things open
to interpretation or presume the interpretation to test
us because life's a test.
It's not just a test of whether you
will do right and wrong, it's a test
of what do I do with people making
contrary claims?
This is right, this is right.
That is wrong, that is wrong.
And there's layers to this, of course.
It's not all about those that have deviance
in their heart.
This ayah was speaking about those who deviated
in their understandings of scripture and Jesus peace
be upon Him and the likes.
So what the scholars all agree on, if
you try to say, no, I think we
can explain it a different way, that is
deviance, that is misguidance, that is blasphemy, that
could overturn your Islam.
So if Tawheed, for example, Tawheed is crystal
clear, the oneness of God, nothing clearer.
If someone were to come and say, I've
heard someone say this, by the way, someone
were to come and say, actually, Islam validates
the Trinity.
Like how in the world does Islam validate
Trinity?
Like, have you read the Quran?
It says, look, Bismillahirrahmanirrahim at every surah.
So that's like an indirect, you know, like,
I don't know what do you call it,
fist bump?
Like, we're with you.
Sheer misguidance, right?
If someone were to say, there is another
prophet after Muhammad, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
Can we say, oh, yeah, it's the difference
depending on this.
And then I'll tell you, look, the ayah
says, khataman nabiyyin, the seal of the prophets.
The seal is like, you know, when you
seal something after you finished with it, like
icing on the cake, it means he's the
best of the prophets.
It doesn't mean he's the last of the
prophets.
They actually said this, by the way.
Some people have said this.
And then they will argue now that Mirza
Ghulam Ahmad was a prophet or Elijah Muhammad
was a prophet.
No, I'm sorry.
Like, this is not up for discussion.
Because if these are not clear, then nothing
is clear.
Okay.
So I'll get there in a second, inshallah.
So these are examples of five prayers.
If someone says, no, the five prayers are
not necessary.
The Quran only mentions three.
Some have said this.
If I tell you sort of same-*
marriages are haram, say no, the Quran is
only against *.
People have said this.
So long as there's consent, we're good.
People have argued this from the Quran, by
the way.
But the problem is what?
There's no way the ummah was in the
dark until you showed up, until God's gift
to the world came and told us his
unique interpretation, right?
And started speculating.
So the matters that are agreed upon, to
depart from them is the primary meaning of
this ayah.
They reach for the supposedly speculative.
They try to twist the verses out of
their meanings.
This can now happen on a lesser level
with valid differences.
So differences in fiqh, when the scholars differ,
it's a little bit of a test for
us.
Like me as a lay person, will I
be dismissive of what the scholars say as
if they're all insincere or they're all unqualified
or otherwise?
Look, they're disagreeing among themselves.
You're in no place to refer between them
to begin with.
You cherry picking is not the solution even
if they were all wrong, right?
They have more of a likelihood to be
correct than you.
So don't try to play with that wiggle
room.
Allah could have made it clearer.
He's testing you.
Will you follow the scholar who you assume
to be most correct between you and Allah?
Will you do it or not?
That's what it's for.
He's testing what's in here.
And likewise for the scholar.
Will the scholar follow his conviction or will
he follow his group?
Will he start becoming cultish, sectarian, right?
For a sense of belonging, his madhhab membership
or whatever else it will be.
And this is why the earliest scholars by
the way and the purest scholars were always
the most impartial, always ready to say, our
Shaykh said this, but honest to God, I'm
more convinced with that.
And as the centuries progressed, this sentiment became
harder and harder to find, right?
The bandwagoning became more.
It's all a test.
That's part of the wisdom of why Allah
allowed some things to be open to interpretation.
Is this clear?
We're good?
There were fiqh schools.
Some people say, what are the madhhabs, right?
The madhhabs are schools.
Think of them like universities in different parts
of the Muslim world that had different approaches
to how to understand the ayat and ahadith.
So there's like the Kuffin school, Kuffa is
in Iraq, famous city in Iraq.
These were known as the Ahl al-Ra
'i.
Ahl al-Ra'i are the rationalists, if
you will, the rationalist jurists.
Ra'i means opinion, right?
And this was most famously attributed to Abu
Hanifa, rahimahullah, and his two disciples, Muhammad ibn
Hassan al-Shaybani and Abu Yusuf al-Qadi,
rahimahullah.
And then there's the Madinah school, which is
known as the Madinah school.
Some historians will split it into Madinah, Mecca,
and Iraq, but basically the Madinah schools, these
were known as Ahl al-Hadith, the scholars
of hadith, okay?
The scripturalists, they would call them in English.
And these most famously are credited to the
schools founded by Imam Malik and Imam al
-Shafi'i and Imam Ahmad, rahimahullah.
What do we wanna say here very quickly?
Number one, we already said they all agree
on the sources, remember?
So it's not like one person uses hadith
and sunnah, the other person doesn't.
That's not why they were called that.
In fact, I will mention to you something
here.
It was them being more known for rational
proofs, more known for textual proofs, and how
they handled them was the real reason they
were called these.
But the rationalists used hadith, and the scripturalists,
the textualists, the hadith, Ahl al-Hadith, they
use rationale.
They all did.
They all use Quran, sunnah, ijma'a, qiyas,
rationale, analogies.
How do I compare this with that?
Maybe the easiest example for the sake of
time, both of these schools, by the way,
aren't founded by these imams.
They're most famously attributed to these imams, but
they all are traced back to companions.
So the school of Al-Kufa is traced.
It's hard to find an opinion with them
that isn't traced to the companions that settled
in Al-Kufa, like Abdullah ibn Mas'ud
and Ali ibn Abi Talib.
May Allah be pleased with them.
The Medinan school, the people in Arabia, their
school have these imams getting sort of the
spotlight, but their opinions are most often traced
back to the companions that stayed behind in
Medina, like Umar ibn Khattab, like Abdullah ibn
Umar, like Aisha radiyallahu anha, and the likes.
Is this clear?
Now that I told you Umar is one
of sort of the founders of the school,
if you will, his opinions are the roots
of this school.
Umar did not apply certain ahadith.
It sounds horrible to say it this way,
but I'm just trying to get you to
break out of your box, trying to jolt
you a little bit.
The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam used to give
non-Muslims from the spoils of war, the
ahadith are clear.
Umar would say, no, hold on, let's think
about this.
He did that to give them incentive to
let go of their tribalism and consider Islam.
He's trying to break their prejudice.
Islam is strong now, they have many incentives.
So this doesn't apply anymore.
Uthman, another one, Medina.
Uthman ibn Affan radiyallahu anha is khilafa.
The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, when you
find a stray camel, don't touch it.
It has its water and it has its
hoof, meaning to fight off an attacker, like
an animal or something, a wolf or a
coyote.
Its legs are strong and it has its
water, it'll last for a while.
Don't touch it until its owner comes back.
Uthman and his khilafa said, he meant because
it is safe and no one will steal
it until its owner comes back.
But now with the surge and rise and
expansion of Islam, Medina is now like a
cosmopolitan area, lots of stranger danger.
Take the camel, secure it, and announce that
you found a camel.
He's not opposing the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
He's sort of applying what he believes was
the intended meaning of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam.
He was employing rationale.
And this is Medina's school.
Likewise, you will find the rational school, right?
Ahlul Ra'i doing the same thing.
They'll say, yes, this makes sense, but we
have these hadith and the ayat and they're
very strong.
So we need to just ignore our rationale
right now and give priority to the texts.
So it went both ways.
These are just popular approaches is where these
names came from.
All right.
I'm not going to have time to get
into this, but oversimplifying the madhab into rational
versus scriptural or strict versus lenient.
People always ask, what's the stricter madhab?
This is a wrong question, by the way.
The madhab are schools, meaning methods to derive
fiqh, derive law.
It's not like, oh, I'm going to take
the stricter approach or the easier approach.
No, it's I have a system of rules
that I use to interpret.
Whatever the interpretation comes out to be, strict
or loose, I don't care.
I'm being consistent.
I'm being principled.
So oversimplifying the madhab into rational versus scriptural
or strict versus lenient is tempting for anybody.
You can oversimplify it as a layman, but
it's simply not true historically and methodologically.
I mean, that's not their method.
It's just not true.
I'll share with you this image at a
later time, if Allah permits.
But this just shows you that how the
people of Medina and the people of Iraq,
where the two schools started, how they became
four schools and how they actually all took
from each other and adapted their opinions upon
learning from each other.
The evolution of fiqh.
And not just are they all students of
each other in a sense, but here in
this graph or this network of transmission, it
starts with the companions and doesn't just move
on to the founders of the fiqh schools,
the four great imams, but even the six
books of hadith, the famous hadith scholars are
in the mix as well.
It is all a system that is interdependent
and completes each other.
But this one I can read to you
because it's much smaller and so it's much
simpler.
So the image on your, that's your right.
It says Muslim was the student of al
-Bukhari and Bukhari was the student of Ahmed
ibn Hanbal and Ahmed was the student of
al-Shafi'i and al-Shafi'i was
the student of Malik and Malik was the
student of Nafi' and Nafi' was the student
of al-A'raj and al-A'raj
was the student of Abu Huraira and Abu
Huraira was the companion and student of the
messenger of Allah Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam.
This is traceable.
You know, you have full confidence in where
all this came from.
And this other side splits it up between
Iraq and Mecca and Medina.
So in Iraq, for example, you have ibn
Mas'ud, his student was al-Qamah, al
-Qamah's student was Ibrahim al-Nakha'i.
These are not a single student.
There's thousands of students, but direct and most
famous teachers.
And then his student was Hamad ibn Salama
and then Hamad ibn Salama, the orange box
on the bottom right, is, bottom left, is
Abu Hanifa, rahimahullah.
And Abu Hanifa has his two famous students,
his two disciples.
And these two, they are companions and colleagues
of, all the way on the other side,
Imam al-Shafi'i, rahimahullah, who is the
student of Imam Malik in the middle.
This is not chronological, sort of perfectly depicted,
vertically at least.
All right, so what do we do with
this?
It's 8.30. I need 10 more minutes,
I'm so sorry.
What do we do with this, with the
four madhahib?
The four madhahib and the scholars of fiqh
in general, their various opinions, these are undoubtedly
valid opinions.
Undoubtedly valid.
I didn't say they're all correct.
They're valid, why?
Because so long as you're in the realm
of speculation, it's not a clear ayah or
hadith, it's not a matter of scholarly agreement.
So long as you're qualified, you're allowed to
have an opinion, it's a valid opinion.
That's it, we won't know for sure until
the day of judgment, which one was right.
And we don't need to.
The Prophet ﷺ said, إِذَا حَكَمَ الْحَاكِمُ فَاجْتَهَدَ
فَأَصَابَ فَلَهُ إِلَيْهِ When the ruler passes a
judgment and exerts his effort, he does his
due diligence, turns out to be right, that's
on the day of judgment.
He gets two rewards, for trying and for
being right, meaning.
And he says, and if he exerts his
effort and is wrong, he gets one reward.
So how can you say sort of he
had no right to do that when Allah
is rewarding him?
Yes?
So what makes it valid?
They agree on the primary sources.
They're all taken from Quran.
They're all taken from Sunnah.
They're all respecting and not infringing on the
areas of scholarly agreement.
They're all using valid methodologies.
And then secondly, because they're secondary sources, they
are disputable.
There's no categorical conclusion to any of these
discussions.
So when the Hanafis, rahimahumullah, they have a
principle that says, any clear analogy, right?
Will be given precedence, will be stronger than
a had hadith.
A hadith that is not like mass transmitted.
Okay, you can't overturn that by the way.
You can't say that's clearly wrong.
It's not, you would not be able to
prove that to anyone that understands these subjects
and is being honest.
The Malikis would say, if there's a practice
in the people of Medina, they were in
Medina, and it's an ongoing practice and everybody's
doing it, therefore, if a hadith comes contrary
to that, we should wonder if this hadith
is authentic.
That's like a sign for us to reconsider
the hadith.
That's their principle, that they would compare what
is sunnah, the ongoing practice of Medina, or
the ahad hadith, the hadith that has a
singular chain, if you will.
Okay, you have a statement of a companion.
What do you do with the statement of
a companion?
If there's a hadith that's weak, do we
take the statement of the companion or the
prophet's statement, but we can't prove the prophet
said it?
We have like a semblance of a reason
to believe the prophet said it.
This is found in the Hanbali Madhab.
So they all have these principles.
I just want you to keep in mind,
brothers and sisters, so these three points, why
they differ.
Number one, they differ on what was said.
Is the hadith authentic or not?
The science of hadith is seven sub-sciences
that all have a conversation with each other,
a negotiation, there's an interplay, and they come
out with a, we think it's authentic, we
think it's not.
And they're not always gonna agree.
The hadith scholars are gonna come out with
different conclusions on, did the prophet say it
or not?
Then, number two, they're gonna differ on, okay,
he said it, or the ayah said it
even, even the ayah now.
But what did it mean?
What did it mean?
So for instance, the prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
clearly said, a woman should not pluck.
Nums is haram, nums.
He said nums.
What is nums?
If you go grab all the books on,
Arabic language, some of them believe that nums
means plucking the eyebrow.
Eyebrow hair is called nums.
Others have said, like Imam At-Tabari Rahimahullah,
nums is plucking facial hair.
So based on your conviction on the linguistic
meaning of nums, you're gonna say she can
or cannot remove the hair that is not
browing over her eyes.
The hair in the middle, for instance.
When Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la
says that the divorced woman, for instance, she
stays unmarried for three qur, three qur.
Qur to the people of one region meant
something, which is menstrual cycles.
And to the people of another region meant
something else, which is exiting the menstrual cycle,
a state of purity.
For instance, you know, I'll give you a
good example to defend the Hanbalis because I'm
like, you know, biased here.
I'm Hanbali.
The prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said on the
29th day of Sha'ban, if it is
unclear to you the moon, what do you
do?
He said in one narration, fa'atimmu, complete
the fast.
Right?
I'm sorry, complete, fa'atimmu.
And so it's crystal clear.
You complete the day of Sha'ban and
you don't fast yet.
You don't fast the just-in-case day,
yawm al-shaq, the doubtful day.
Because the hadith says, complete.
Imam Ahmad believed that hadith, which is crystal
clear, to be a little inauthentic.
He had a criticism of its chain.
He said, and there's another hadith.
They're gonna say there's another hadith.
They're gonna tell him.
The majority is gonna tell him.
The other hadith says, faqduru lahu.
Faqduru lahu means what?
Estimated to them.
He said, that's not what faqduru lahu means.
Qadara means tighten.
We heard in Salatul Isha' today.
Qadara alayhi rizqahu.
He tightens his rizq for him and then
he misunderstands and thinks Allah hates him.
We just heard that in Salatul Isha' just
now.
So he's saying Allah is telling you tighten
Sha'ban and fast one day early just
in case.
You see what's happening there?
Is it authentic?
And then what does it mean?
And then the third one, which is the
bread and butter of fiqh.
How do you reconcile?
You have two things.
You've established what they mean to you.
What if they're conflicting now?
How do you reconcile between seemingly conflicting reports?
So they all have their systems, their rules
for reconciling.
And also the validity of the madhab needs
to be vouched for in light of number
three, that they have proved their competence.
What do I mean?
The madhab is not a set of ideas.
Many will think the madhab is just a
number of opinions that we always say on
the microphone.
That's not what the madhab is.
It's not the answers that they have in
their books about previous questions.
The madhab is like the legal infrastructure of
a massive community of scholars that is like
a living, breathing force, right?
So many scholars have tried to put together
a system to interpret in a way that
allows us to answer unlimited questions until the
day of judgment.
You get it?
And they all withered away.
And these four remained.
So that's very impressive.
That's why people would say, just like go
with the madhabs, you will not be able
to recreate the system.
Like these intellectual skyscrapers, they might need to
get dusted, but they haven't fallen.
That's what we're trying to say.
Yes, maybe some stagnation happened with the madhab,
people became sectarian, get rid of the sectarian
part.
But the madhabs as intellectual juggernauts, as sort
of legal mechanisms, they're indispensable.
They haven't crumbled.
They are how we get signals, the best
signal we can possibly have on speculative issues
about what the message of Allah is, what
Allah wants from us here and there.
Last slide.
When there are disagreements among our scholars, وَرَحِمَهُمُ
اللَّهُ وَحَفِظَ الْأَحْيَاءَ مِنْهُمْ Number one, you need
to realize that not every difference is a
disagreement.
There are disagreements that are just variety.
You know, like the way Sheikh Ahmed and
Sheikh Omar read Quran, these are both traceable
to the Prophet ﷺ.
These are not right and wrong.
These are right and right.
Right, like the modes of recitation.
So that's one category.
You need to know that.
Or else, disagreeing there is disagreeing with the
Prophet himself.
Sallallahu alayhi wa alayhi wa sallam.
Then level two is when there's disagreement, when
there's like contradictory views, like right and wrong,
halal and haram.
Yes, those we said invalid, invalid differences, they
are speculative by design.
Allah made them that way.
And this offers us enough flexibility for the
shari'ah to remain relevant, timeless relevance.
You know, something Al-Ghazali rahimahullah says that's
valuable here in his discussion on sulfiq, legal
theory.
He says, when the scholars of Islam disagree
and they don't condemn each other, this means
two things.
Number one, they agree that you're allowed to
disagree here.
Like everyone's saying, no, no, no.
And they're all saying, yes, abarath, no.
We can disagree here.
That's why we're not condemning each other.
Number two, he says it means that the
issue is speculative.
Why else would I let you disagree?
Why would I let you knowingly dismiss the
revelation?
You're not.
I am admitting that it actually can be
read in multiple ways, right?
So when they disagree on a set number
of views, that's an agreement from them that
we're allowed to speculate within these views.
So just stay out of the conversation.
That doesn't mean it's a free for all.
They also agree that you can't just fatwa
shop.
You can't just cherry pick because the shari
'ah came to remove us from our desires,
from worshiping our desires.
But you are allowed as a scholar to
speculate, as a scholar.
As a layman, you pick your scholar.
You try your best to find the right
scholar and that's it.
You've done your part.
The third thing is when we dismiss.
When there's something definitive, like the oneness of
Allah, the prophethood of Muhammad, the five prayers,
the heterosexual marriages or whatnot, we're gonna dismiss
any conversation after that.
This is not up for discussion.
This is what makes Islam noticeable, identifiable a
thousand years later.
If this is up for discussion, there's no
such thing as Islam anymore.
It's gone.
This is a rallying point for the unity
and it's not like, oh, you have your
truths and I have mine.
No.
And the last thing is disunity.
I've said this in the talk a few
weeks prior.
Disunity is subject to pros and cons.
We can dismiss someone's view and still unite
with them on the common good.
I can start a food pantry with my
local synagogue or church if I believe there
is a benefit in that, right?
Hypothetically, we're speaking about.
Why not?
And I can agree with someone and not
necessarily collaborate with them because it's just duplication
of efforts or brand confusion or whatever.
It may not be viable financially, whatever it
may be.
That has nothing to do with the first
three categories and we should keep that in
mind as well.
Jazakallah khairan.
I always tell people it is so important
and Dr. Omar was saying that last night
as well to me, to a few brothers,
that the biographies of the scholars are very
underserved and we see them as just like
a list, a bucket list of rules and
opinions and statements and we do want to
hit an equilibrium.
We wanna get back to the legacies of
the scholars being rehearsed so we develop respect
for them and what Allah permitted for them
to establish of frameworks for us to function
within our faith, to understand our religious practice,
to sort of identify our sacred law in
an endless number of contexts until the day
of judgment.
Subhanaka Allahumma alhamdu lillahi wa ash-shaytani lillahi
wa ala anta nastaqfiru kana atubu ilayh.