"Who needs the Imams of Sacred Law when we have the Qur'an
and hadith? Why can't we take our Islam from the word of Allah and His
Messenger?" Nuh Ha Mim Keller explains the necessity to respect
and value scholars and the schools of Islamic law.
The work of the mujtahid Imams of Sacred Law, those who deduce shari'a
rulings from Qur'an and hadith, has been the object of my research for
some years now, during which I have sometimes heard the question: "Who
needs the Imams of Sacred Law when we have the Qur'an and hadith? Why
can't we take our Islam from the word of Allah and His Messenger (Allah
bless him and give him peace), which are divinely protected from error,
instead of taking it from the madhhabs or "schools of jurisprudence"
of the mujtahid Imams such as Abu Hanifa, Malik, Shafi'i, and Ahmad,
which are not?"
It cannot be hidden from any of you how urgent this issue is, or
that many of the disagreements we see and hear in our mosques these
days are due to lack of knowledge of fiqh or "Islamic jurisprudence"
and its relation to Islam as a whole. Now, perhaps more than ever before,
it is time for us to get back to basics and ask ourselves how we understand
and carry out the commands of Allah.
We will first discuss the knowledge of Islam that all of us possess,
and then show where fiqh enters into it. We will look at the qualifications
mentioned in the Qur'an and sunna for those who do fiqh, the mujtahid
scholars. We will focus first on the extent of the mujtahid scholar's
knowledge-how many hadiths he has to know, and so on-and then we will
look at the depth of his knowledge, through actual examples of dalils
or "legal proofs" that demonstrate how scholars join between different
and even contradictory hadiths to produce a unified and consistent legal
ruling.
We will close by discussing the mujtahid's relation to the science
of hadith authentication, and the conditions by which a scholar knows
that a given hadith is sahih or "rigorously authenticated," so that
he can accept and follow it.
Qur'an and Hadith. The knowledge that you and I take from the Qur'an
and the hadith is of several types: the first and most important concerns
our faith, and is the knowledge of Allah and His attributes, and the
other basic tenets of Islamic belief such as the messengerhood of the
Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), the Last Day, and so on.
Every Muslim can and must acquire this knowledge from the Book of Allah
and the sunna.
This is also the case with a second type of general knowledge, which
does not concern faith, however, but rather works: the general laws
of Islam to do good, to avoid evil, to perform the prayer, pay zakat,
fast Ramadan, to cooperate with others in good works, and so forth.
Anyone can learn and understand these general rules, which summarize
the sirat al-mustaqim or "straight path" of our religion.
Fiqh. A third type of knowledge is of the specific details of Islamic
practice. Whereas anyone can understand the first two types of knowledge
from the Qur'an and hadith, the understanding of this third type has
a special name, fiqh, meaning literally "understanding." And people
differ in their capacity to do it.
I had a visitor one day in Jordan, for example, who, when we talked
about why he hadn't yet gone on hajj, mentioned the hadith of Anas ibn
Malik that
the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,
"Whoever prays the dawn prayer (fajr) in a group and then sits and
does dhikr until the sun rises, then prays two rak'as, shall have
the like of the reward of a hajj and an 'umra." Anas said, "The
Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said: 'Completely,
completely, completely'" (Tirmidhi, 2.481).
My visitor had done just that this very morning, and he now believed
that he had fulfilled his obligation to perform the hajj, and had no
need to go to Mecca. The hadith was well authenticated (hasan). I distinguished
for my visitor between having the reward of something, and lifting the
obligation of Islam by actually doing it, and he saw my point.
But there is a larger lesson here, that while the Qur'an and the
sunna are ma'sum or "divinely protected from error," the understanding
of them is not. And someone who derives rulings from the Qur'an and
hadith without training in ijtihad or "deduction from primary texts"
as my visitor did, will be responsible for it on the Day of Judgment,
just as an amateur doctor who had never been to medical school would
be responsible if he performed an operation and somebody died under
his knife.
Why? Because Allah has explained in the Qur'an that fiqh, the detailed
understanding of the divine command, requires specially trained members
of the Muslim community to learn and teach it. Allah says in surat al-Tawba:
"Not all of the believers should go to fight. Of every section
of them, why does not one part alone go forth, that the rest may
gain understanding of the religion, and to admonish their people
when they return, that perhaps they may take warning" (Qur'an 9:122)
-where the expression li yatafaqqahu fi al-din, "to gain understanding
of the religion," is derived from precisely the same root (f-q-h) as
the word fiqh or "jurisprudence," and is what Western students of Arabic
would call a "fifth-form verb" (tafa''ala), which indicates that the
meaning contained in the root, understanding, is accomplished through
careful, sustained effort.
This Qur'anic verse establishes that there should be a category of
people who have learned the religion so as to be qualified in turn to
teach it. And Allah has commanded those who do not know a ruling in
Sacred Law to ask those who do, by saying in surat al-Nahl,
"Ask those who recall if you know not" (Qur'an 16:43),
in which the words "those who recall," ahl al-dhikri, indicate those
with knowledge of the Qur'an and sunna, at their forefront the mujtahid
Imams of this Umma. Why? Because, first of all, the Qur'an and hadith
are in Arabic, and as a translator, I can assure you that it is not
just any Arabic.
To understand the Qur'an and sunna, the mujtahid must have complete
knowledge of the Arabic language in the same capacity as the early Arabs
themselves had before the language came to be used by non-native speakers.
This qualification, which almost no one in our time has, is not the
main subject of my essay, but even if we did have it, what if you or
I, though not trained specialists, wanted to deduce details of Islamic
practice directly from the sources? After all, the Prophet (Allah bless
him and give him peace) has said, in the hadith of Bukhari and Muslim:
"When a judge gives judgement and strives to know a ruling (ijtahada)
and is correct, he has two rewards. If he gives judgement and strives
to know a ruling, but is wrong, he has one reward" (Bukhari, 9.133).
The answer is that the term ijtihad or "striving to know a ruling"
in this hadith does not mean just any person's efforts to understand
and operationalize an Islamic ruling, but rather the person with sound
knowledge of everything the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)
taught that relates to the question. Whoever makes ijtihad without this
qualification is a criminal. The proof of this is the hadith that the
Companion Jabir ibn 'Abdullah said:
We went on a journey, and a stone struck one of us and opened
a gash in his head. When he later had a wet-dream in his sleep,
he then asked his companions, "Do you find any dispensation for
me to perform dry ablution (tayammum)?" [Meaning instead of a full
purificatory bath (ghusl).] They told him, "We don't find any dispensation
for you if you can use water."
So he performed the purificatory bath and his wound opened and he
died. When we came to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace),
he was told of this and he said: "They have killed him, may Allah kill
them. Why did they not ask?-for they didn't know. The only cure for
someone who does not know what to say is to ask" (Abu Dawud, 1.93).
This hadith, which was related by Abu Dawud, is well authenticated
(hasan), and every Muslim who has any taqwa should reflect on it carefully,
for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) indicated in it-in
the strongest language possible-that to judge on a rule of Islam on
the basis of insufficient knowledge is a crime. And like it is the well
authenticated hadith "Whoever is given a legal opinion (fatwa) without
knowledge, his sin is but upon the person who gave him the opinion"
(Abu Dawud, 3.321).
The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) also said:
Judges are three: two of them in hell, and one in paradise. A
man who knows the truth and judges accordingly, he shall go to paradise.
A man who judges for people while ignorant, he shall go to hell.
And a man who knows the truth but rules unjustly, he shall go to
hell (Sharh al-sunna, 10.94).
This hadith, which was related by Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, Ibn Majah,
and others, is rigorously authenticated (sahih), and any Muslim who
would like to avoid the hellfire should soberly consider the fate of
whoever, in the words of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace),
"judges for people while ignorant."
Yet we all have our Yusuf 'Ali Qur'ans, and our Sahih al-Bukhari
translations. Aren't these adequate scholarly resources?
These are valuable books, and do convey perhaps the largest and most
important part of our din: the basic Islamic beliefs, and general laws
of the religion. Our discussion here is not about these broad principles,
but rather about understanding specific details of Islamic practice,
which is called precisely fiqh. For this, I think any honest investigator
who studies the issues will agree that the English translations are
not enough. They are not enough because understanding the total Qur'an
and hadith textual corpus, which comprises what we call the din, requires
two dimensions in a scholar: a dimension of breadth, the substantive
knowledge of all the texts; and a dimension of depth, the methodological
tools needed to join between all the Qur'anic verses and hadiths, even
those that ostensibly contradict one another.
Knowledge of Primary Texts. As for the breadth of a mujtahid's knowledge,
it is recorded that Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal's student Muhammad ibn 'Ubaydullah
ibn al-Munadi heard a man ask him [Imam Ahmad]: "When a man has memorized
100,000 hadiths, is he a scholar of Sacred Law, a faqih?" And he said,
"No." The man asked, "200,000 then?" And he said, "No." The man asked,
"Then 300,000?" And he said, "No." The man asked, "400,000?" And Ahmad
gestured with his hand to signify "about that many" (Ibn al-Qayyim:
I'lam al-muwaqqi'in, 4.205).
In truth, by the term "hadith" here Imam Ahmad meant the hadiths
of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) in all their various
chains of transmission, counting each chain of transmission as a separate
hadith, and perhaps also counting the statements of the Sahaba. But
the larger point here is that even if we eliminate the different chains,
and speak only about the hadiths from the Prophet (Allah bless him and
give him peace) that are plainly acceptable as evidence, whether sahih,
"rigorously authenticated" or hasan "well authenticated" (which for
purposes of ijtihad, may be assimilated to the sahih), we are still
speaking of well over 10,000 hadiths, and they are not contained in
Bukhari alone, or in Bukhari and Muslim alone, nor yet in any six books,
or even in any nine. Yet whoever wants to give a fatwa or "formal legal
opinion" and judge for people that something is lawful or unlawful,
obligatory or sunna, must know all the primary texts that relate to
it. For the perhaps 10,000 hadiths that are sahih are, for the mujtahid,
as one single hadith, and he must first know them in order to join between
them to explain the unified command of Allah.
I say "join between" because most of you must be aware that some
sahih hadiths seem to controvert other equally sahih hadiths. What does
a mujtahid do in such an instance?
Ijtihad. Let's look at some examples. Most of us know the hadiths
about fasting on the Day of 'Arafa for the non-pilgrim, that "it expiates
[the sins of] the year before and the year after" (Muslim, 2.819). But
another rigorously authenticated hadith prohibits fasting on Friday
alone (Bukhari, 3.54), and a well authenticated hadith prohibits fasting
on Saturday alone (Tirmidhi, 3.120), of which Tirmidhi explains, "The
meaning of the 'offensiveness' in this is when a man singles out Saturday
to fast on, since the Jews venerate Saturdays" (ibid.). Some scholars
hold Sundays offensive to fast on for the same reason, that they are
venerated by non-Muslims. (Other hadiths permit fasting one of these
days together with the day before or the day after it, perhaps because
no religion venerates two of the days in a row.) The question arises:
What does one do when 'Arafa falls on a Friday, a Saturday, or a Sunday?
The general demand for fasting on the Day of 'Arafa might well be qualified
by the specific prohibition of fasting on just one of these days. But
a mujtahid aware of the whole hadith corpus would certainly know a third
hadith related by Muslim that is even more specific, and says: "Do not
single out Friday from among other days to fast on, unless it coincides
with a fast one of you performs" (Muslim, 2.801).
The latter hadith establishes for the mujtahid the general principle
that the ruling for fasting on a day normally prohibited to fast on
changes when it "coincides with a fast one of you performs"-and so there
is no problem with fasting whether the Day of Arafa falls on a Friday,
Saturday, or Sunday.
Here as elsewhere, whoever wants to understand the ruling of doing
something in Islam must know all the texts connected with it. Because
as ordinary Muslims, you and I are not only responsible for obeying
the Qur'anic verses and hadiths we are familiar with. We are responsible
for obeying all of them, the whole shari'a. And if we are not personally
qualified to join between all of its texts-and we have heard Ahmad ibn
Hanbal discuss how much knowledge this takes-we must follow someone
who can, which is why Allah tells us, "Ask those who recall if you know
not."
The size and nature of this knowledge necessitate that the non-specialist
use adab or "proper respect" towards the scholars of fiqh when he finds
a hadith, whether in Bukhari or elsewhere, that ostensibly contradicts
the schools of fiqh. A non-scholar, for example, reading through Sahih
al-Bukhari will find the hadith that the Prophet (Allah bless him and
give him peace) bared a thigh on the ride back from Khaybar (Bukhari,
1.103-4). And he might imagine that the four madhhabs or "legal schools"-Hanafi,
Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali-were mistaken in their judgment that the
thigh is 'awra or "nakedness that must be covered."
But in fact there are a number of other hadiths, all of them well
authenticated (hasan) or rigorously authenticated (sahih) that prove
that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) explicitly commanded
various Sahaba to cover the thigh because it was nakedness. Hakim reports
that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) saw Jarhad in
the mosque wearing a mantle, and his thigh became uncovered, so the
Prophet told him, "The thigh is part of one's nakedness" (al-Mustadrak),
of which Hakim said, "This is a hadith whose chain of transmission is
rigorously authenticated (sahih)," which Imam Dhahabi confirmed (ibid.).
Imam al-Baghawi records the sahih hadith that "the Prophet (Allah bless
him and give him peace) passed by Ma'mar, whose two thighs were exposed,
and told him, 'O Ma'mar, cover your two thighs, for the two thighs are
nakedness'" (Sharh al-sunna 9.21). And Ahmad ibn Hanbal records that
the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, "When one of
you marries [someone to] his servant or hired man, let him not look
at his nakedness, for what is below his navel to his two knees is nakedness"
(Ahmad, 2.187), a hadith with a well authenticated (hasan) chain of
transmission. The mujtahid Imams of the four schools knew these hadiths,
and joined between them and the Khaybar hadith in Bukhari by the methodological
principle that: "An explicit command in words from the Prophet (Allah
bless him and give him peace) is given precedence over an action of
his." Why?
Among other reasons, because certain laws of the shari'a applied
to the Prophet alone (Allah bless him and give him peace). Such as the
fact that when he went into battle, he was not permitted to retreat,
no matter how outnumbered. Or such as the obligatoriness for him alone
of praying tahajjud or "night vigil prayer" after rising from sleep
before dawn, which is merely sunna for the rest of us. Or such as the
permissibility for him alone of not breaking his fast at night between
fast-days. Or such as the permissibility for him alone of having more
than four wives-the means through which Allah, in His wisdom, preserved
for us the minutest details of the Prophet's day-to-day sunna (Allah
bless him and give him peace), which a larger number of wives would
be far abler to observe and remember.
Because certain laws of the shari'a applied to him alone, the scholars
of ijtihad have established the principle that in many cases, when an
act was done by the Prophet personally (Allah bless him and give him
peace), such as bearing the thigh after Khaybar, and when he gave an
explicit command to us to do something else, in this case, to cover
the thigh because it is nakedness, then the command is adopted for us,
and the act is considered to pertain to him alone (Allah bless him and
give him peace).
We can see from this example the kind of scholarship it takes to
seriously comprehend the whole body of hadith, both in breadth of knowledge,
and depth of interpretive understanding or fiqh, and that anyone who
would give a fatwa, on the basis of the Khaybar hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari,
that "the scholars are wrong and the hadith is right" would be guilty
of criminal negligence for his ignorance.
When one does not have substantive knowledge of the Qur'an and hadith
corpus, and lacks the fiqh methodology to comprehensively join between
it, the hadiths one has read are not enough. To take another example,
there is a well authenticated (hasan) hadith that "the Prophet (Allah
bless him and give him peace) cursed women who visit graves" (Tirmidhi,
3.371). But scholars say that the prohibition of women visiting graves
was abrogated (mansukh) by the rigorously authenticated (sahih) hadith
"I had forbidden you to visit graves, but now visit them" (Muslim, 2.672).
Here, although the expression "now visit them" (fa zuruha) is an
imperative to men (or to a group of whom at least some are men), the
fact that the hadith permits women as well as men to now visit graves
is shown by another hadith related by Muslim in his Sahih that when
'A'isha asked the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) what
she should say if she visited graves, he told her, "Say: 'Peace be upon
the believers and Muslims of the folk of these abodes: May Allah have
mercy on those of us who have gone ahead and those who have stayed behind:
Allah willing, we shall certainly be joining you'" (Muslim, 2.671),
which plainly entails the permissibility of her visiting graves in order
to say this, for the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) would
never have taught her these words if visiting the graves to say them
had been disobedience. In other words, knowing all these hadiths, together
with the methodological principle of naskh or "abrogation," is essential
to drawing the valid fiqh conclusion that the first hadith in which
"the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) cursed women who visit
graves"-was abrogated by the second hadith, as is attested to by the
third.
Or consider the Qur'anic text in surat al-Ma'ida:
"The food of those who have been given the Book is lawful for
you, and your food is lawful for them" (Qur'an 5:5).
This is a general ruling ostensibly pertaining to all their food.
Yet this ruling is subject to takhsis, or "restriction" by more specific
rulings that prove that certain foods of Ahl al-Kitab, "those who have
been given the Book," such as pork, or animals not properly slaughtered,
are not lawful for us.
Ignorance of this principle of takhsis or restriction seems to be
especially common among would-be mujtahids of our times, from whom we
often hear the more general ruling in the words "But the Qur'an says,"
or "But the hadith says," without any mention of the more particular
ruling from a different hadith or Qur'anic versethat restricts it. The
reply can only be "Yes, brother, the Qur'an does say, 'The food of those
who have been given the Book is lawful for you,' But what else does
it say?" or "Yes, the hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari says the Prophet (Allah
bless him and give him peace) bared his thigh on the return from Khaybar.
But what else do the hadiths say, and more importantly, are you sure
you know it?"
The above examples illustrate only a few of the methodological rules
needed by the mujtahid to understand and operationalize Islam by joining
between all the evidence. Firstly, we saw the principle of takhsis or
"restriction" of general rules by more specific ones, both in the example
of fasting on the Day of 'Arafa when it falls on a Friday, Saturday,
or Sunday, and the example of the food of Ahl al-Kitab. Secondly, in
the Khaybar hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari about baring the thigh and the
hadiths commanding that the thigh be covered, we saw the principle of
how an explicit prophetic command in words is given precedence over
a mere action when there is a contradiction. Thirdly, we saw the principle
of nasikh wa mansukh, of "an earlier ruling being abrogated by a later
one," in the example of the initial prohibition of women visiting graves,
and their subsequently being permitted to.
These are only three of the ways that two or more texts of the Qur'an
and hadith may enter into and qualify one another, rules that someone
who derives the shari'a from them must know. In other words, they are
but three tools of a whole methodological toolbox. We do not have the
time tonight to go through all these tools in detail, although we can
mention some in passing, giving first their Arabic names, such as:
- The 'amm, a text of general applicability to many legal rulings,
and its opposite:
- The khass, that which is applicable to only one ruling or type
of ruling.
- The mujmal, that which requires other texts to be fully understood,
and its opposite:
- The mubayyan, that which is plain without other texts.
- The mutlaq, that which is applicable without restriction, and
its opposite:
- The muqayyad, that which has restrictions given in other texts.
- The nasikh, that which supersedes previous revealed rulings,
and its opposite:
- The mansukh: that which is superseded.
- The nass: that which unequivocally decides a particular legal
question, and its opposite:
- The dhahir: that which can bear more than one interpretation.
My point in mentioning what a mujtahid is, what fiqh is, and the
types of texts that embody Allah's commands, with the examples that
illustrate them, is to answer our original question: "Why can't we take
our Islamic practice from the word of Allah and His messenger, which
are divinely protected, instead of taking it from mujtahid Imams, who
are not?" The answer, we have seen, is that revelation cannot be acted
upon without understanding, and understanding requires firstly that
one have the breadth of mastery of the whole, and secondly, the knowledge
of how the parts relate to each other. Whoever joins between these two
dimensions of the revelation is taking his Islamic practice from the
word of Allah and His messenger, whether he does so personally, by being
a mujtahid Imam, or whether by a means of another, by following one.
Following Scholars (Taqlid). The Qur'an clearly distinguishes between
these two levels-the nonspecialists whose way is taqlid or "following
the results of scholar without knowing the detailed evidence"; and those
whose task is to know and evaluate the evidence-by Allah Most High saying
in surat al-Nisa':
"If they had referred it to the Messenger and to those of authority
among them, then those of them whose task it is to find it out would
have known the matter" (Qur'an 4:83)
-where alladhina yastanbitunahu minhum, "those of them whose task
it is to find it out," refers to those possessing the capacity to infer
legal rulings directly from evidence, which is called in Arabic precisely
istinbat, showing, as Qur'anic exegete al-Razi says, that "Allah has
commanded those morally responsible to refer actual facts to someone
who can infer (yastanbitu) the legal ruling concerning them" (Tafsir
al-Fakhr al-Razi, 10.205).
A person who has reached this level can and indeed must draw his
inferences directly from evidence, and may not merely follow another
scholar's conclusions without examining the evidence (taqlid), a rule
expressed in books of methodological principles of fiqh as: Laysa li
al-'alim an yuqallida, "The alim [i.e. the mujtahid at the level of
instinbat referred to by the above Qur'anic verse] may not merely follow
another scholar" (al-Juwayni: Sharh al-Waraqat, 75), meaning it is not
legally permissible for one mujtahid to follow another mujtahid unless
he knows and agrees with his evidences.
The mujtahid Imams trained a number of scholars who were at this
level. Imam Shafi'i had al-Muzani, and Imam Abu Hanifa had Abu Yusuf
and Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Shaybani. It was to such students that
Abu Hanifa addressed his words: "It is unlawful for whoever does not
know my evidence to give my position as a fatwa" (al-Hamid: Luzum ittiba'
madhahib al-a'imma, 6), and, "It is not lawful for anyone to give our
position as a fatwa until he knows where we have taken it from" (ibid.).
It is one of the howlers of our times that these words are sometimes
quoted as though they were addressed to ordinary Muslims. If it were
unlawful for the carpenter, the sailor, the computer programmer, the
doctor, to do any act of worship before he had mastered the entire textual
corpus of the Qur'an and thousands of hadiths, together with all the
methodological principles needed to weigh the evidence and comprehensively
join between it, he would either have to give up his profession or give
up his religion. A lifetime of study would hardly be enough for this,
a fact that Abu Hanifa knew better than anyone else, and it was to scholars
of istinbat, the mujtahids, that he addressed his remarks. Whoever quotes
these words to non-scholars to try to suggest that Abu Hanifa meant
that it is wrong for ordinary Muslims to accept the work of scholars,
should stop for a moment to reflect how insane this is, particularly
in view of the life work of Abu Hanifa from beginning to end, which
consisted precisely in summarizing the fiqh rulings of the religion
for ordinary people to follow and benefit from.
Imam Shafi'i was also addressing this top level of scholars when
he said: "When a hadith is sahih, it is my school (madhhab)"-which has
been misunderstood by some to mean that if one finds a hadith, for example,
in Sahih al-Bukhari that is inconsistent with a position of Shafi'i's,
one should presume that he was ignorant of it, drop the fiqh, and accept
the hadith.
I think the examples we have heard tonight of joining between several
hadiths for a single ruling are too clear to misunderstand Shafi'i in
this way. Shafi'i is referring to hadiths that he was previously unaware
of and that mujtahid scholars know him to have been unaware of when
he gave a particular ruling. And this, as Imam Nawawi has said, "is
very difficult," for Shafi'i was aware of a great deal. We have heard
the opinion of Shafi'i's student Ahmad ibn Hanbal about how many hadiths
a faqih must know, and he unquestionably considered Shafi'i to be such
a scholar, for Shafi'i was his sheikh in fiqh. Ibn Khuzayma, known as
"the Imam of Imams" in hadith memorization, was once asked, "Do you
know of any rigorously authenticated (sahih) hadith that Shafi'i did
not place in his books?" And he said "No" (Nawawi: al-Majmu', 1.10).
And Imam Dhahabi has said, "Shafi'i did not make a single mistake about
a hadith" (Ibn Subki: Tabaqat al-Shafi'iyya, 9.114). It is clear from
all of this that Imam Shafi'i's statement "When a hadith is sahih, it
is my position" only makes sense-and could result in meaningful corrections-if
addressed to scholars at a level of hadith mastery comparable to his
own.
Hadith Authentication. The last point raises another issue that few
people are aware of today, and I shall devote the final part of my speech
to it. Just as the mujtahid Imam is not like us in his command of the
Qur'an and hadith evidence and the principles needed to join between
it and infer rulings from it, so too he is not like us in the way he
judges the authenticity of hadiths. If a person who is not a hadith
specialist needs to rate a hadith, he will usually want to know if it
appears, for example, in Sahih al-Bukhari, or Sahih Muslim, or if some
hadith scholar has declared it to be sahih or hasan. A mujtahid does
not do this.
Rather, he reaches an independent judgment as to whether a particular
hadith is truly from the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)
through his own knowledge of hadith narrators and the sciences of hadith,
and not from taqlid or "following the opinion of another hadith scholar."
It is thus not necessarily an evidence against the positions of a
mujtahid that Bukhari, or Muslim, or whoever, has accepted a hadith
that contradicts the mujtahid's evidence. Why? Because among hadith
scholars, the reliability rating of individual narrators in hadith chains
of transmission are disagreed about and therefore hadiths are disagreed
about in the same manner that particular questions of fiqh are disagreed
about among the scholars of fiqh. Like the schools of fiqh, the extent
of this disagreement is relatively small in relation to the whole, but
one should remember that it does exist.
Because a mujtahid scholar is not bound to accept another scholar's
ijtihad regarding a particular hadith, the ijtihad of a hadith specialist
of our own time that, for example, a hadith is weak (da'if), is not
necessarily an evidence against the ijtihad of a previous mujtahid that
the hadith is acceptable. This is particularly true in the present day,
when specialists in hadith are not at the level of their predecessors
in either knowledge of hadith sciences, or memorization of hadiths.
We should also remember what sahih means. I shall conclude my essay
with the five conditions that have to be met for a hadith to be considered
sahih, and we shall see, in sha' Allah, how the scholars of hadith have
differed about them, a discussion drawn in its outlines from contemporary
Syrian hadith scholar Muhammad 'Awwama's Athar al-hadith al-sharif fi
ikhtilaf al-A'imma al-fuqaha [The effect of hadith on the differences
of the Imams of fiqh] (21-23):
(a) The first condition is that a hadith must go back to the Prophet
(Allah bless him and give him peace) by a continuous chain of narrators.
There is a difference of opinion here between Bukhari and Muslim, in
that Bukhari held that for any two adjacent narrators in a chain of
transmission, it must be historically established that the two actually
met, whereas Muslim and others stipulated only that their meeting have
been possible, such as by one having lived in a particular city that
the other is known to have visited at least once in his life. So some
hadiths will be acceptable to Muslim that will not be acceptable to
Bukhari and those of the mujtahid imams who adopt his criterion.
(b) The second condition for a sahih hadith is that the narrators
be morally upright. The scholars have disagreed about the definition
of this, some accepting that it is enough that a narrator be a Muslim
who is not proven to have been unacceptable. Others stipulate that he
be outwardly established as having been morally upright, while other
scholars stipulate that this be established inwardly as well. These
different criteria are naturally reasons why two mujtahids may differ
about the authenticity of a single hadith.
(c) The third condition is that the narrators must be known to have
had accurate memories. The verification of this is similarly subject
to some disagreement between the Imams of hadith, resulting in differences
about reliability ratings of particular narrators, and therefore of
particular hadiths.
(d) The fourth condition for a sahih hadith is that the text and
transmission of the hadith must be free of shudhudh, or "variance from
established standard narrations of it." An example is when a hadith
is related by five different narrators who are contemporaries of one
another, all of whom relate the same hadith from the same sheikh through
his chain of transmission back to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give
him peace). Here, if we find that four of the hadiths have the same
wording but one of them has a variant wording, the hadith with the variant
wording is called shadhdh or "deviant," and it is not accepted, because
the difference is naturally assumed to be the mistake of the one narrator,
since all of the narrators heard the hadith from the same sheikh.
There is a hadith (to take an example researched by our hadith teacher,
sheikh Shu'ayb al-Arna'ut) related by Ahmad (4.318), Bayhaqi (2.132),
Ibn Khuzayma (1.354), and Ibn Hibban, with a reliable chain of narrators
(thiqat)-except for Kulayb ibn Hisham, who is a merely "acceptable"
(saduq), not "reliable" (thiqa)-that the Companion Wa'il ibn Hujr al-Hadrami
said that when he watched the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him
peace) kneeling in the Tashahhud or "Testification of Faith" of his
prayer, the Prophet lifted his [index] finger, and I saw him move it,
supplicating with it. I came [some time] after that and saw people in
[winter] over-cloaks, their hands moving under the cloaks (Ibn Hibban,
5.170-71).
Now, all of the versions of the hadith mentioning that the Prophet
(Allah bless him and give him peace) moved his finger have been related
to us by way of Za'ida ibn Qudama al-Thaqafi, a narrator who is considered
reliable, and who transmitted it from the hadith sheikh 'Asim ibn Kulayb,
who related it from his father Kulayb ibn Shihab, from Wa'il ibn Hujr
al-Hadrami. But we find that this version of "moving the finger" contradicts
versions of the hadith transmitted from the same sheikh, 'Asim ibn Kulayb,
by no less than ten of 'Asim's other students, all of them reliable,
who heard 'Asim report that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him
peace) did not move but rather pointed (ashara) with his index finger
(towards the qibla or "direction of prayer").
These companions of 'Asim (with their hadiths, which are well authenticated
(hasan)) are: Sufyan al-Thawri: "then he pointed with his index finger,
putting the thumb to the middle finger to make a ring with them" (al-Musannaf
2.68-69); Sufyan ibn 'Uyayna: "he joined his thumb and middle finger
to make a ring, and pointed with his index finger" (Ahmad, 4.318); Shu'ba
ibn al-Hajjaj: "he pointed with his index finger, and formed a ring
with the middle one" (Ahmad, 4.319); Qays ibn al-Rabi': "then he joined
his thumb and middle finger to make a ring, and pointed with his index
finger" (Tabarani, 22.33-34); 'Abd al-Wahid ibn Ziyad al-'Abdi: "he
made a ring with a finger, and pointed with his index finger" (Ahmad,
4.316); 'Abdullah ibn Idris al-Awdi: "he had joined his thumb and middle
finger to make a ring, and raised the finger between them to make du'a
(supplication) in the Testification of Faith" (Ibn Majah, 1.295); Zuhayr
ibn Mu'awiya: "and I saw him ['Asim] say, 'Like this,'-and Zuhayr pointed
with his first index finger, holding two fingers in, and made a ring
with his thumb and second index [middle] finger" (Ahmad, 4.318-19);
Abu al-Ahwas Sallam ibn Sulaym: "he began making du'a like this-meaning
with his index finger, pointing with it-" (Musnad al-Tayalisi, 137);
Bishr ibn al-Mufaddal: "and I saw him ['Asim] say, 'Like this,'-and
Bishr joined his thumb and middle finger to make a ring, and pointed
with his index finger" (Abi Dawud, 1.251); and Khalid ibn Abdullah al-Wasiti:
"then he joined his thumb and middle finger to make a ring, and pointed
with his index finger" (Bayhaqi, 2.131).
All of these narrators are reliable (thiqat), and all heard 'Asim
ibn Kulayb relate that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)
"pointed with (ashara bi) his index finger" during the Testimony of
Faith in his prayer. There are many other narrations of "pointing with
the index finger" transmitted through sheikhs other than 'Asim, omitted
here for brevity-four of them, for example, in Sahih Muslim, 1.408-9).
The point is, for illustrating the meaning of a shadhdh or "deviant
hadith," that the version of moving the finger was conveyed only by
Za'ida ibn Qudama from 'Asim. Ibn Khuzayma says: "There is not a single
hadith containing yuharrikuha ('he moved it') except this hadith mentioned
by Za'ida" (Ibn Khuzayma, 1.354).
So we know that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)
used to point with his index finger, and that the version of "moving
his finger" is shadhdh or "deviant," and represents a slip of the narrator,
for the word ishara in the majority's version means only "to point or
gesture at," or "to indicate with the hand," and has no recorded lexical
sense of wiggling or shaking the finger (Lisan al-'Arab, 4.437 and al-Qamus
al-muhit (540). This interpretation is explicitly borne out by well
authenticated hadiths related from the Companion Abdullah ibn al-Zubayr
that "the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) used to point
with his index finger when making supplication [in the Testification
of Faith], and did not move it" (Abi Dawud, 1.260) and that he "used
to point with his index finger when making supplication, without moving
it" (Bayhaqi, 2.131-32).
Finally, we may note that Imam Bayhaqi has joined between the Za'ida
ibn Qudama hadith and the many hadiths that apparently contradict it
by suggesting that moving the finger in the Za'ida hadith may mean simply
lifting it (rafa'a), a wording explicitly mentioned in one version recorded
by Muslim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) "raised
the right finger that is next to the thumb, and supplicated with it"
(Muslim, 1.408). So according to Bayhaqi, the contradiction is only
apparent, and raising the finger is the "movement" that Wa'il saw from
the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and the people's hands
under their cloaks, according to Za'ida's version, which remains, however,
shadhdh or "deviant" from a hadith point of view, unless understood
in this limitary sense.
(e) The fifth and final condition for a sahih hadith is that both
the text and chain of transmission must be without 'illa or "hidden
flaw" that alerts experts to expect inauthenticity in it. We will dwell
for a moment on this point not only because it helps illustrate the
processes of ijtihad, but because in-depth expertise in this condition
was not common even among top hadith Imams. The greatest name in the
field was 'Ali al-Madini, one of the sheikhs of Bukhari, though his
major work about it is now unfortunately lost. Daraqutni is perhaps
the most famous specialist in the field whose works exist. In the words
of Ibn al-Salah, a hafiz or "hadith master" (someone with at least 100,000
hadiths by memory), the knowledge of the 'illa or "hidden flaw" is:
among the greatest of the sciences of hadith, the most exacting,
and highest: only scholars of great memorization, hadith expertise,
and penetrating understanding have a thorough knowledge of it. It
refers to obscure, hidden flaws that vitiate hadiths, "flawed" meaning
that a defect is discovered that negates the authenticity of a hadith
that is outwardly "rigorously authenticated" (sahih). It affects
hadiths with reliable chains of narrators that outwardly appear
to fulfill all the conditions of a sahih hadith ('Ulum al-hadith).
It may surprise some people to learn that one example often cited
in hadith textbooks of such a hidden flaw ('illa) is from Sahih Muslim,
all of whose hadiths are rigorously authenticated (sahih), as Ibn al-Salah
has said, "except for a very small number of words, which hadith masters
of textual evaluation (naqd) such as Daraqutni and others have critiqued,
and which are known to scholars of this level" ('Ulum al-hadith). The
hadith of the present example was related by Muslim from the Companion
Anas ibn Malik in several versions, which might convince those unaware
of its flaw to believe that someone at prayer should omit the Basmala
or "Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim" at the beginning of the Fatiha. According
to the hadith, Anas ibn Malik (Allah be well pleased with him) said,
I prayed with the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give
him peace), Abu Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthman, and they opened with "al-Hamdu
li Llahi Rabbi l-'Alamin,"not mentioning "Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani
r-Rahim" at the first of the recital or the last of it [and in another
version, "I didn't hear any of them recite 'Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani
r-Rahim'"] (Muslim, 1.299).
Scholars say the hadith's flaw lies in the negation of the Basmala
at the end, which is not the words of Anas, but rather one of the subnarrators
explaining what he thought Anas meant. Ibn al-Salah says: "Its subnarrator
related it with the above-mentioned wording in accordance with his own
understanding of it" (Muqaddima Ibn al-Salah (b01), 99). This hadith
is given as an example of a "hidden flaw" in a number of manuals of
hadith terminology such as hadith master (hafiz) Suyuti's Tadrib al-rawi
(1.254-57); hadith master Ibn al-Salah's Ulum al-hadith; hadith master
Zayn al-Din al-'Iraqi's al-Taqyid wa al-idah (98-103); and others. Al-'Iraqi
says, "A number of hadith masters (huffaz) have judged it to be flawed,
including Shafi'i, Daraqutni, Bayhaqi, and Ibn 'Abd al-Barr" (ibid.,
98).
Now, Bukhari has related the hadith up to the words "and they opened
with 'al-Hamdu li Llahi Rabbi l-'Alamin'"; without mentioning omitting
the Basmala (Bukhari, 1.189), and Tirmidhi and Abu Dawud relate no other
version. Scholars point out, in this connection, that the words "al-Hamdu
li Llahi Rabbi l-'Alamin" were in fact the name of the Fatiha, for the
Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and his Companions often
used the opening words of suras as names for them; for example, in the
hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari of Abu Sa'id ibn al-Mu'alla, who relates
that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said:
"I will teach you a sura that is the greatest sura of the Qur'an
before you leave the mosque." Then he took my hand, and when he
was going out, I said to him, "Didn't you say, 'I will teach you
a sura that is the greatest sura of the Qur'an before you leave
the mosque'?" And he said: "'Al-Hamdu li Llahi Rabbi l-'Alamin':
it is the Seven Oft-Recited [Verses] (al-Sab' al-Mathani) and the
Tremendous Recital (al-Qur'an al-'Adhim) that I have been given"
(ibid., 6.20-21).
In this hadith, "Al-Hamdu li Llahi Rabbi l-'Alamin" is plainly the
name of the Fatiha, and means nothing besides, for otherwise, it is
one verse, not seven. 'A'isha, who was one of the ulama of the Sahaba,
also referred to names of suras in this way, as in the hadith of Bukhari
that
the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), when he went
to bed each night, joined his hands together, blew a light spray
of saliva upon them, and read over them "Qul huwa Llahu Ahad," "Qul
a'udhu bi Rabbi l-Falaq," and "Qul a'udhu bi Rabbi n-Nas"; then
wiped every part of his body he could with them (ibid., 233-34),
which clearly shows that she named the suras by their opening words
(after the Basmala), as did other early Muslims (such as Bukhari in
his chapter headings in the section of his Sahih on the Virtues of the
Qur'an, for example). So there is no indication, in the portion of the
Anas hadith's wording that is agreed upon by both Bukhari and Muslim;
namely, "I prayed with the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give
him peace), Abu Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthman, and they opened with 'al-Hamdu
li Llahi Rabbi l-'Alamin,'" that the Basmala was not recited aloud.
Says Tirmidhi: "Imam Shafi'i has said, 'Its meaning is that they used
to begin with the Fatiha before the sura, not that they did not recite
"Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim."' And Shafi'i held that the prayer was
begun with 'Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim,' and that it was recited
aloud in prayers recited aloud" (Tirmidhi, 2.16).
Hadith scholars who are masters of textual critique, like Daraqutni
and others, consider the words of the Anas hadith"not mentioning 'Bismi
Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim,'" which outwardly seem to suggest omitting
the Basmala, to be vitiated by an 'illa or "hidden flaw" for many reasons,
a few of which are:
-It is established by numerous intersubstantiative channels of
transmission (tawatur), that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give
him peace) said, "There is no prayer for whoever does not recite
the Fatiha" (Bukhari, 1.192). That the Basmala is the Fatiha's first
verse is shown by several facts:
First, the Sahaba affirmed nothing in the collation of the Qur'an
(mushaf) of 'Uthman's time except what was Qur'an, and they unanimously
placed the Basmala at the beginning of every sura except surat al-Tawba.
Second, the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, "When
you recite 'al-Hamdu li Llah,' recite 'Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim,'
for it is the Sum of the Qur'an (Umm al-Qur'an), and the Compriser of
the Scripture (Umm al-Kitab), and the Seven Oft-Repeated [Verses] (al-Sab'
al-Mathani)-and 'Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim' is one of its verses"
(Bayhaqi, 2.45; and Daraqutni, 1.312), a hadith related with a rigorously
authenticated (sahih) channel of transmission to the Prophet (Allah
bless him and give him peace), and through another chain to Abu Hurayra
alone (Allah be well pleased with him).
Third, Umm Salama relates: "The Prophet (Allah bless him and give
him peace) used to recite: 'Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim. al-Hamdu
li Llahi Rabbi l-'Alamin,' separating each phrase"; a hadith which Hakim
said was rigorously authenticated (sahih) according to the conditions
of Bukhari and Muslim, which Imam Dhahabi corroborated (al-Mustadrak,
1.232). Daraqutni also relates from Umm Salama that "the Prophet (Allah
bless him and give him peace) when he used to recite the Qur'an would
pause in his recital verse by verse: 'Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim:
al-Hamdu li Llahi Rabbi l-'Alamin: ar-Rahmani r-Rahim: Maliki yawmi
d-din.'" Daraqutni said, "Its ascription is rigorously authenticated
(sahih); all of its narrators are reliable" (Daraqutni, 1.312-13). These
hadiths show that the Basmala was recited aloud by the Prophet (Allah
bless him and give him peace) as part of the Fatiha.
Fourth, Bukhari relates in his Sahih that when Anas was asked how
the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) used to recite, "he
answered: 'By prolonging [the vowels]'-and then he [Anas] recited 'Bismi
Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim,' prolonging the Bismi Llah, prolonging the
r-Rahman, and prolonging the r-Rahim" (Bukhari, 6.241), indicating that
Anas regarded this as part of the Prophet's Qur'an recital and that
the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) recited it aloud.
Fifth, Daraqutni has recorded two hadiths, both from Ibn 'Abbas,
and has said about each of them, "This is a rigorously authenticated
(sahih) chain of transmission, there is not a weak narrator in it,"
of which the first is: "The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace)
used to recite 'Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim,' aloud"; and the second
is: "The Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) used to begin
the prayer with 'Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim'" (al-Nawawi: al-Majmu',
3.347).
-Imam al-Mawardi summarizes: "Because it is established that it is
obligatory to recite the Fatiha in the prayer, and that the Basmala
is part of it, the ruling for reciting the Basmala aloud or to oneself
must be the same as that of reciting the Fatiha aloud or to oneself"
(al-Hawi al-kabir, 2.139).
-Imam Nawawi says: "Concerning reciting 'Bismi Llahi r-Rahmani r-Rahim'
aloud, we have mentioned that our position is that it is praiseworthy
to do so. Wherever one recites the Fatiha and sura aloud, the ruling
for reciting the Basmala aloud is the same as reciting the rest of the
Fatiha and sura aloud. This is the position of the majority of the ulama
of the Sahaba and those who were taught by them (Tabi'in) and those
after them. As for the Sahaba who held the Basmala is recited aloud
at prayer, the hadith master (hafiz) Abu Bakr al-Khatib reports that
they included Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'Uthman, 'Ali, 'Ammar ibn Yasir, Ubayy
ibn Ka'b, Ibn 'Umar, Ibn 'Abbas, Abu Qatada, Abu Sa'id, Qays ibn Malik,
Abu Hurayra, 'Abdullah ibn Abi Awfa, Shaddad ibn Aws, 'Abdullah ibn
Ja'far, Husayn ibn 'Ali, Mu'awiya, and the congregation of Emigrants
(Muhajirin) and Helpers (Ansar) who were present with Mu'awiya when
he prayed in Medina but did not say the Basmala aloud, and they censured
him, so he returned to saying it aloud" (al-Majmu', 3.341).
These are some reasons why scholars regard the Anas hadith in Sahih
Muslim to be mu'all or "flawed." We cannot here discuss other aspects
of the hadith such as the flaws in its chain of narrators, which are
explained in detail in Zayn al-Din 'Iraqi's al-Taqyid wa al-idah (100-101),
though the foregoing may give a general idea why it has been considered
flawed by hadith masters (huffaz) such as Suyuti, 'Iraqi, Ibn Salah,
Ibn 'Abd al-Barr, Daraqutni, and Bayhaqi-and why the shari'a ruling
apparently deducible from the end of the hadith; namely, omitting the
Basmala when reciting the Fatiha at prayer, has been rejected by al-Shafi'i,
Nawawi, and others, who hold that the Basmala is recited aloud whenever
the Fatiha is. (The position of Abu Hanifa and Ahmad ibn Hanbal, it
may be noted, is that one recites the Basmala to oneself before the
Fatiha, thus joining between hadiths on both sides by interpreting the
"omitting" in the Anas hadith in other than its apparent sense, to mean
merely "reciting to oneself.") In any case, it is clearly not a story
of "the hadith in Sahih Muslim that the Imams didn't know about," as
some of the unlearned seriously suggest today, but rather a difference
of opinion in hadith authentication involving the highest levels of
shari'a scholarship.
Studying the five conditions above for a sahih hadith and the differences
about them among specialists shows us why the mujtahid Imams of the
schools sometimes differ with one another about whether a particular
hadith is really from the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace).
Whoever believes that a single scholar, whether Bukhari, Muslim, or
a contemporary sheikh, can finish off all differences of opinion about
the acceptability of particular hadiths, should correct his impressions
by going and studying the sciences of hadith. What we can realize from
this is that when we find a hadith in Sahih Bukhari that one school
of fiqh seems to follow and another does not, it may well be that differences
in fiqh methodology, hadith methodology, or both, play a role.
Conclusions. Let me summarize everything I have said tonight. I first
pointed out that the knowledge you and I learn from the Qur'an and hadith
may be divided into three categories. The first is the knowledge of
Allah and His attributes, and the basic truths of Islamic belief such
as the messengerhood of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace),
the belief in the Last Day, and so on. Every Muslim can and must learn
this knowledge from the Book of Allah and the sunna, which is also the
case for the second kind of knowledge: that of general Islamic laws
to do good, to avoid evil, to perform the prayer, pay zakat, fast Ramadan,
to cooperate with others in good works, and so on. Anyone can and must
learn these general prescriptions for him or herself.
Then we discussed a third category of knowledge, which consists of
fiqh or "understanding" of specific details of Islamic practice. We
found in the Qur'an and sahih hadiths that people are of two types respecting
this knowledge, those qualified to do ijtihad and those who are not.
We mentioned the sahih hadith about "a man who judges for people while
ignorant: he shall go to hell," showing that would-be mujtahids are
criminals when they operate without training.
We heard the Qur'anic verse that established that a certain group
of the Muslim community must learn and be able to teach others the specific
details of their religion. We heard the Qur'anic verse that those who
do not know must ask those who do, as well as the verse about referring
matters to "those whose task it is to find it out."
We talked about these scholars, the mujtahid Imams, firstly, in terms
of their comprehensive knowledge of the whole Qur'an and hadith textual
corpus, and secondly, in terms of their depth of interpretation, and
here we mentioned Qur'an and hadith examples that illustrate the processes
by which mujtahid Imams join between multiple texts, and give precedence
when there is ostensive conflict. Our concrete examples of ijtihad enabled
us in turn to understand to whom the Imams addressed their famous remarks
not to follow their positions without knowing the proofs. They addressed
them to the first rank scholars they had trained and who were capable
of grasping and evaluating the issues involved in these particular proofs.
We then saw that the Imams were also mujtahids in the matter of judging
hadiths to be sahih or otherwise, and noted that, just as it is unlawful
for a mujtahid Imam to do taqlid or "follow another mujtahid without
knowing his evidence" in a question of fiqh, neither does he do so in
the question of accepting particular hadiths. Finally, we noted that
the differences in reliability ratings of hadiths among qualified scholars
were parallel to the differences among scholars about the details of
Islamic practice: a relatively small amount of difference in relation
to the whole.
The main point of all of this is that while every Muslim can take
the foundation of his Islam directly from the Qur'an and hadith; namely,
the main beliefs and general ethical principles he has to follow-for
the specific details of fiqh of Islamic practice, knowing a Qur'anic
verse or hadith may be worlds apart from knowing the shari'a ruling,
unless one is a qualified mujtahid or is citing one.
As for would-be mujtahids who know some Arabic and are armed with
books of hadith, they are like the would-be doctor we mentioned earlier:
if his only qualification were that he could read English and owned
some medical books, we would certainly object to his practicing medicine,
even if it were no more than operating on someone's little finger. So
what should be said of someone who knows only Arabic and has some books
of hadith, and wants to operate on your akhira?
To understand why Muslims follow madhhabs, we have to go beyond simplistic
slogans about "the divinely-protected versus the non-divinely-protected,"
and appreciate the Imams of fiqh who have operationalized the Qur'an
and sunna to apply in our lives as shari'a, and we must ask ourselves
if we really "hear and obey" when Allah tells us
"Ask those who know if you know not" (Qur'an 16:43).