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in the name of Allah the beneficent the
most merciful I'd like to welcome you
dear viewers to another in our series
studies in
Islam May Allah's peace and blessings be
on each and every one of you in this
series we are looking at the four major
areas of Islamic
disciplines we looked at AA which is the
theological basis for Islam we looked at
T which is the interpretation of the
Quran and we looked at Hadith
the sayings of the Prophet may God's
peace and blessing be upon him which are
particularly relevant to the uh life of
a Muslim from a from a legal
perspective as well as from moral
perspective and social perspectives
Etc then we have looked at we began to
look at the area of Islamic law we
actually went through the foundations of
Islamic law the basic principle
which are the Quran the Sunnah that is
the consensus of opinion of the scholars
andas deduction by way of analogy and we
looked at the five rulings concerning uh
all issues and things which is uh known
as the Halal and the Haram and its uh
elements and how those rulings came to
be and uh in our previous session we
were looking at
the uh reasons that there were
differences amongst the
scholars because if we have this common
Foundation which is all agreed upon so
where would differences come from and I
explained that differences come from in
general interpretations interpretational
differences and where these
interpretational differences lie and um
Scholars differ in their
interpretations then these differences
are acceptable as long as there is
evidence for and support for the
different opinions if there are no if
there is no support I mean Beyond human
uh rational or Reason uh you know
opinions Etc then those differences we
look at as being uh not acceptable
differences I mean a person may make a
ruling because he has no evidence he
makes a ruling based on whatever he
thinks just his intuition tells him this
may be the better choice but once we
have another ruling where there is
evidence to support that ruling then it
has to be given
precedence so uh we looked when we
looked at the differences we looked at
uh differences which occurred concerning
words and their meanings with pointed
out how certain words had shared literal
meanings words in Arabic some of them
have two meanings just as the same way
in English you know you can have the
word um bow bow could mean a bow tie
that you tie something into a bow or it
could mean the bow from the bow and the
arrow you know or it could be the word
bow written the same way uh bow could
mean the act of bowing or it could mean
the bow in soundwise the front part of a
ship you know so in that way words in
English when said could carry different
meanings depending on the context
similarly in Arabic you have words which
had uh same written form or same said
form but having more than one meaning
and um we also have words which had
literal meanings as well as figurative
meanings uh and that one has to take
into account some Scholars would would
go by the literal meaning of a
particular text and say well this is
what was intended this what was said
this what was intended we go with the
text others would say but no there is an
intent behind this text and it's not we
don't take it on face value we take what
was intended by the text this is a basis
for difference and um we also had even
from a grammatical perspective
perspective that uh constructions
certain grammatical constructions in
Arabic you know could have more than one
implication so Scholars looking at the
uh
constructions some concluded it had one
meaning what some concluded had another
and uh as we said in general where there
are evidences to support the differences
then these are acceptable differences
and the prophet may God's peace and
blessing be upon him had said
that if the ruler or the
judge uh strives to find the correct
ruling he makes an effort the term used
is he
makes he strives to find the right
ruling and he is
incorrect Allah will reward him still
with one
reward for his intention and for his
effort if he strives and is correct he
gets two rewards one for the effort and
one for being
correct so in that way um differences
which are a product of Scholastic
efforts to arrive at the correct ruling
these are tolerated
accepted people do have the right to
make a a a decision based on the
evidence that that supports uh their
interpretation however if clear evidence
comes because um the difference may be
say linguistic and we find support for
each linguistic position but then we
have an additional evidence come from a
statement of a companion of the Prophet
may God's peace and blessing be upon him
for example or another statement by the
prophet may God's peace and blessing be
upon him himself which ends the
discussion where there is no room for
interpretation he has already said what
it is in such cases then it is not
acceptable for one to cling on to that
opinion which was valid initially when
there was no clear evidence to resolve
it now to cling on to that is to cling
on to falsehood and that is not
acceptable the uh second major area of
differences had to do with the
narrations of hadiths themselves we know
as we mentioned earlier that the major
Scholars who were the founders of the
schools of Islamic law they were from
the third
generation the um first generation being
that of the the companions of the
Prophet may God's peace and blessing be
upon him the second generation being
known as the
or the successors the students of the
sahabah or the Companions and the third
generation referred to as
the
or different terms for them uh meaning
the students of the successors or the
successors of the
successors these different terms are
used anyway that third
generation um was where Abu hanifah Imam
Malik
aafi and and Ahmed hbal towards the end
of it uh were from that
generation now we should note that in
that
generation the compilation of Hadith was
limited I mean compilation was being
done Scholars of that era in their
various areas Al in Syria uh sufyan thi
in Abu hanifah in Iraq uh you know Al in
Egypt you know the scholars were IM
Malik in Medina scholars in different
areas made their own compilation and
from that era the only uh com complete
compilation of hadiths uh of a scholar
of that time was that of al- M of Imam
Malik he in Medina had compiled a a text
which was narrated by a number of
different uh students of is written down
Etc his compilation of of hadiths known
as Al m is the earliest complete uh
compilation to reach us now this is the
third generation um some people might
mistakenly think oh this is some 200
years after the time of the Prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam but no this
is not the case at all Imam Malik's
grandfather was a
sahabi his grandfather was a sahabi now
he did
not act learn from his grandfather
directly because had he done so he would
be considered a
tab a successor a student of the sahabah
and not a student of the students of the
sahaba but still the Gap is very small
it's no 200 years we're talking about a
generation or
less
so uh the this is compilation in written
form to get to us it doesn't mean that
there wasn't compilation being done in
the time of the tabin and there was
because of the narrations of hadiths the
major narrators of the top 12 narrators
of Hadith for example nine out of the 12
of their student nine of those
companions out of the 12 the top
12 their students were known to record
the Hadith that they got from them and
the companions themselves were known to
record Hadith so the recording of Hadith
was taking place from the time of the
sahabah itself and continued on down
right increasing in volume as the
generations passed anyway the point that
we're making here is that in the time of
the uh when
uh
the major Scholars arose and had their
own
compilations each scholar tended to have
the rulings that were handed down from
the companions who had been in his
area because the companions as
Generations As Time passed from the time
of the Prophet Muhammad wasallam did
spread out some ended up in Egypt some
went on to Syria somewhere in Iraq some
were in Medina Mecca Etc so naturally
the scholars that arose in those various
areas they would have compiled the
Hadith mostly of their areas some of
them did travel and of course compiled
from more than one area maybe two or
three areas like Imam sha he compiled
from Medina he also compiled from Iraq
and he also compiled from Egypt so he
had a larger compilation anyway the
point is that naturally with the
scholars not having gathered these texts
at that time uh and that the major
Gathering took place in the generation
after them this is the generation of the
sah Sahari sah Muslim these are the
major books in which all of the hadiths
were now being gathered and sifted the
authentic clearly identified from the
inauthentic um of course Imam Malik in
his own compilation was pretty uh
stringent in the principles he followed
in gathering so most of his hadiths were
also authentic anyway but it was a
limited compilation you know when we
look at sahkari which has over
7,000 Hadith narrations and we look at
you know Al M whose total number of
narrations is you know right down to a
thousand plus uh narrations you know of
course there a vast difference between
the
two anyway as we said uh Scholars
naturally
would have made rulings based on what
was available to them of Hadith so you
find rulings for example like Abu
hanifah he ruled that
the the prayer for
rain uh did not include
the
formal prayer it was only a Dua a
supplication which would be made and
this was
based on the um position that Ann
Malik uh had narrated that on an a
particular
occasion the prophet Muhammad s wasallam
had made a supplication without making
the formal
prayer uh this was an incident an
occasion which it took
place
however there were other
narrations where the whole formal prayer
was completely described so Abu based on
what had come to him from an Malik he
ruled that the is just a Dua just a
supplication that's all no formal
prayer however his own students the
students of Abu hanifah Abu YF and
Muhammad Shani they both agreed with the
position of the other Scholars Malik uh
Ahmed and Shafi May Allah's peace be on
them all uh they agreed with them that
in fact there was a formal prayer to be
done um and this was of course
narrated uh by abbad tamim and
also that when the prayer was completed
and the Imam and the people went back
they would reverse their
garments right this was the uh part of
the Sunnah or practices of the Prophet
Muhammad wasallam with regards to the
prayer for rain so here we had a case of
narrations not reaching an Imam he make
him making a ruling based on what he had
later on his own
students uh changed their position from
his to that of the other imams because
they found the evidence that the other
imams
had the second um area of difference
could come now also from the the
classification of the Hadith themselves
that as you know or may not know Hadith
were are classified into different
levels basically the authentic and the
inauthentic theah and the those are them
that's the major difference between the
two those which areah are the ones which
may be used for Islamic
law those which are or weak you know
inaccurate they may not be used for
points of Islamic law now a Hadith may
come to a scholar in a way which appears
to him to be authentic he's not aware of
everything about the Hadith and as such
he judges it to be authentic and then he
makes a ruling on the basis of it of it
later on others may find or others may
show that no this Hadith is in fact not
authentic and there is an authentic one
which doesn't agree with it or there is
nothing on the topic so no ruling should
be made in that
respect an example of that can also be
for found in uh Imam Abu
hanifah and um Ahmed H's
position that woodoo or the state of
Purity produced by the ablution woodoo
washing the hands face
feet uh that this state of Purity or
Tara is
broken uh when a person vomits if a
person is forced into vomiting you know
you had a feeling you vomited then you
had to make woodoo over again and this
is based on a narration attributed to
Aisha
in which she reports that the prophet
sallallahu alaihi wasallam had said
whoever is
Afflicted with
vomiting should leave the prayer if it
happened to them in prayer make woodo
then continue where he left off without
speaking during the
interval this particular
narration uh is found in IB maah the
Sunan of in
Maja
however it is not an authentic narration
and as such the position held by Imam a
Shafi and Imam
Malik uh that vomit does not break
woodoo is the more authentic
one and this is based on one the fact
that the Hadith which the other Scholars
used was not authentic
secondly that when the prophet may God's
peace and bless be upon Him specified
the things which broke woodoo the some
narrations which he mentioned wo is
broken by passing wind urine urinating
defecating you know and sexual relations
you know specifically mentioned
these uh group them there was no mention
of vomit in those narrations at all so
on the basis of that uh the correct
ruling would be that held by Imam Shafi
and Imam Malik so in this way you know
of course when a person comes across uh
issues like this they're obliged to
follow the evidence they're not obliged
to follow even though they may have been
brought up according to the hanafi
school of thought or the H school of
thought when the evidence comes to them
what they're obliged to do is to follow
the evidence with that dear viewers we
like to thank you for being with us in
this segment of our
program studies in Islam and we hope
that you'll follow the program
throughout the
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year
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