| Some Muslims in our times say that whoever follows the four schools is following them blindly, as the Imams of them did not have all the hadiths that we have today. For example, the great hadith collections of Bukhari or Muslim were not yet compiled in the times of the Imams, who were thus unable incorporate their hadiths into their schools of thought. What should one say to such an objection? It should be clear from the reasons given above that no one would translate taqlid or “following a mujtahid scholar” as blind following of madhhabs except someone radically uninformed about the qualifications it takes to be a mujtahid, and the nature and numbers of primary texts that a mujtahid must know to give a ruling in Sacred Law. Far from being blind, following qualified scholarship is no different than many things all of us do every day, such as taking medicine prescribed by a doctor for a common illness without ourselves having been to medical school, or entering a building without having studied the blueprints of the architects to establish whether it is safe. Though there is an element of trust in each of these events (and most others in our daily lives), we do not do them out of “blindness,” but rather because the fabric of our lives is based on a “division of labor,” which assigns different areas of experience to different specialists, without which civilization could not exist. It inspires our confidence because it works.
The observation common today among Muslims that the collections of Bukhari, Muslim, and others were compiled after the time of the mujtahid Imams and hence not available to them is true, but trivially true, and of little significant effect on their work, for a number of reasons.
First, the mujtahid Imams already had the hadiths that compilers later gathered in their collections, having taken them from the same masters that the sheikhs of the compilers took theirs from, with the same chains of transmission back to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). The hadiths were the same hadiths: the compilers did not bring any new ones into existence.
Secondly, as explained above, the Imams did not depend as we do today upon the judgement of Bukhari, Muslim, or others as to the acceptability of hadiths—whether they were sahih “rigorously authenticated,” or otherwise—but rather on their own knowledge as mujtahids of hadiths and narrators.
Thirdly, the most famous works do not contain all the hadiths, or even all the rigorously authenticated (sahih) ones. Imam Bukhari said, “I know by memory 100,000 authentic (sahih) hadiths, and 200,000 inauthentic hadiths” (Suyuti: Tadrib al-rawi (9.00), 1.50), and yet the hadiths of his Sahih al-Bukhari number only about 7,563, of which more than 3,000 are repetitions. Sahih Muslim contains around 3,033 hadiths not counting repetitions, and Muslim said, “Not everything I consider sahih have I put here; I have only put here what they concur upon” (Tadrib al-rawi (9.00), 98). Abu Dawud said of his Sunan, which contains 5,274 hadiths, “I have written 500,000 hadiths from the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace), of which I have selected those contained in the books of sunnas” (Tadrib al-rawi (9.00), 50). Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal said of his Musnad, which is probably the largest of the early compilations and contains some 27,647 hadiths, “I chose the Musnad from 750,000 hadiths” (Tadrib al-rawi (9.00), 49). Ibn Ma‘in once remarked, “I have written one million hadiths with my hand” (Tadrib al-rawi (9.00), 50).
Although these Imams, as mentioned in the previous essay with reference to Ahmad ibn Hanbal, tended to count each chain of transmission as a separate hadith, and often included the statements of the Companions as well, it is clear from their words that the idea that only after the compilations of Bukhari, Muslim, and others could the mujtahid Imams have known “all the hadiths that we have today” is simply wrong. The hadiths existed before the compilers, they were public knowledge to scholars of hadith, including the Imams and their sheikhs, and their numbers far exceeded those of the subsequently compiled collections.
Fourthly, in respect to the contention that the Imams “did not incorporate all the hadiths into their madhhabs”; while undoubtedly true in some instances (as knowledge of all hadiths is probably impossible), what they missed was not ignored by the succeeding generations of top scholars who followed them in each school, rechecking their evidence and conclusions, and revised their Imams’ madhhabs. The madhhabs certainly did not lack hadith scholars, and as pointed out in the previous section, the Imams enjoined the scholars whom they had trained and who came after them to evaluate and revise, and their injunctions were carried out. Let us look at a few examples.
The Shafi‘i School
Early scholars debated which of the prescribed prayers is “the most superior prayer” mentioned in Sura al-Baqara in the verse “Carefully observe the prayers, and [especially] al-salat al-wusta, the most superior prayer” (Qur’an 2:238), in which wusta (literally, “midmost”) refers, according to the Arabic idiom, to the choicest or best part of something, as attested by the use of the same comparative adjective, in its masculine form, in Sura al-Qalam: “The best of them (awsatuhum) said, ‘Did I not tell you, “If only you would glorify [Allah, in repentance]”’” (Qur’an 68:28), in which awsatuhum means “the best of them” (Mahalli: Tafsir al-Jalalayn (9.00), 759).
Now, the position of Imam Shafi‘i was that the salat al-wusta or “most superior prayer” was the dawn prayer (fajr). The evidence for this is not only the numerous hadiths about the special merit of the dawn prayer, particularly when performed in a group (jama‘a) at the mosque—but secondly, that in the Islamic calendar, the night of a particular date comes before the day, such that the sunset prayer (maghrib) is the first of the five prescribed prayers and the midafternoon prayer (‘asr) is the last, making the dawn prayer (fajr) “midmost” between them. Cogent as this reasoning may be, scholars who came after Imam Shafi‘i revised his opinion in light of the rigorously authenticated (sahih) hadith related by Muslim that ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (Allah ennoble his countenance) said,
When it was the day of the [Battle of the] Confederates (al-Ahzab), the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “May Allah fill their graves and houses with fire: they have detained us and busied us from the midmost prayer (al-salat al-wusta) until the sun went down” (Muslim (9.00), 1.436: 627),
which is a nass or “text capable of only one interpretation” from the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) that al-salat al-wusta as used in Sura al-Baqara means the midafternoon prayer (‘asr) and no other. This is the kind of upgrading of the evidences that we are talking about. Imam Nawawi says:
Despite this [wide knowledge of hadiths], Shafi‘i (Allah have mercy on him) chose the way of greater precaution, because knowledge of all hadiths is not humanly possible, and he made the statement related from him through numerous narrators, enjoining [scholars] to take the rigorously authenticated hadith and disregard his position should it contravene an explicit, authentic, and unequivocal text (nass). Our scholars (Allah have mercy on them) have obeyed his injunction and applied it to numerous well-known legal questions” (al-Majmu‘ (9.00), 1.10–11).
The Hanafi School
This revising process is by no means confined to the Shafi‘i madhhab, but is found in all schools. An example from the Hanafi school is the sunna of bathing (ghusl) before going to Friday prayer (jumu‘a). The received position of the school is that the validity of this sunna bath is nullified if one’s ablution (wudu) is broken between the bath and the Friday prayer, in which case one needs to bathe again to attain the reward of the sunna.
Yet we find in the Radd al-muhtar of Ibn ‘Abidin, the foremost fatwa resource for the late Hanafi school, that Imam ‘Abd al-Ghani Nabulusi, after mentioning the above ruling, notes that there are two positions about it among scholars of the madhhab: The first is the position of those who hold the legal reason for this bath is purification (tahara), in which case nullifying one’s ablution between it and the prayer would invalidate it. The second is the position of those who hold that the reason for the bath is cleanliness (nadhafa), in which case nullifying ablution and repeating it between the bath and the prayer would not invalidate it, for the extra ablution, if anything, increases cleanliness. Nabulusi adopts this second position because in his words “the hadiths on this matter imply that the aim is attaining cleanliness alone” (Radd al-muhtar (9.00), 1.114), and Ibn ‘Abidin inclines towards it also, because of the hadiths about the merit of coming to the mosque from the first hour on Friday morning to wait for the congregational prayer (jumu‘a). Abu Hurayra relates that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said:
Whoever bathes on Friday as he would for major ritual impurity (janaba), then goes early [to the mosque] is as though he has sacrificed a she-camel. Whoever goes in the second hour [of daylight] is as though he has sacrificed a cow. Whoever goes in the third hour is as though he has sacrificed a ram. Whoever goes in the fourth hour is as though he has sacrificed a chicken. Whoever goes in the fifth hour is as though he has offered an egg. And when the imam comes out [to begin the sermon], the angels [stop recording, and] come to listen to the remembrance” (Bukhari (9.00), 2.3–4: 881).
Ibn ‘Abidin says of Nabulusi’s position (that the bath (ghusl) on Friday is not invalidated by having to renew one’s ablution before the Friday prayer):
It is attested to by the demand to go early to the prayer, best done in the first hour of the day, which extends till sunrise. When doing this, it might prove difficult to keep one’s ablution (wudu) until the time for the prayer arrives, especially on the longest days of the year. Repeating the bath would be even more arduous, while [Allah says in Sura al-Hajj:] “He has not placed any hardship upon you in religion” (Qur’an 22:78). It might also lead to holding back from going to the bathroom while praying, which is unlawful” (Radd al-muhtar (9.00), 1.114).
Here we see an early position of the Hanafi school (that the Friday bath is nullified by having to renew one’s ablution after it) reevaluated in light of a hadith by two of the school’s principal later scholars, ‘Abd al-Ghani Nabulusi and Ibn ‘Abidin—just as in the previous example we saw Imam Shafi‘i’s opinion that al-salat al-wusta means the dawn prayer (fajr) revised by subsequent scholars to the sounder position that it means the midafternoon prayer (‘asr).
The Hanbali School
There are hadiths to the effect that someone who neglects the prayer (salat) becomes a non-Muslim (kafir), hadiths which Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (in at least one of two positions related from him) seems to have taken literally. These include the well authenticated (hasan) hadith “Between the servant and polytheism or unbelief is leaving the prayer” (Tirmidhi (9.00), 5.13: 2619), and the hadith “The first thing you shall lose from your religion is the keeping of trusts: the last thing you shall lose from your religion is the prayer” (Tabarani (9.00), 9.353: 9754), of which Ahmad said, “Nothing remains of whatever the last has gone”(al-Mughni (9.00), 2.444).
Yet Ibn Qudama Maqdisi, who quotes these hadiths in his eleven-volume Hanbali fiqh compendium al-Mughni, understands their wording as zajr or “sharply warning” people from these actions by likening them to the actions of non-Muslims (kuffar), not that the actions themselves constitute outright unbelief. There are many hadiths with such wording, such as “Reviling a Muslim is wrongdoing, and fighting him is unbelief (kufr)” (Bukhari (9.00), 9.63: 7076), which emphasizes the enormity of the sin of fighting, not that it actually puts one beyond the pale of Islam. And similarly, “The drinker of wine is like an idol worshipper” (Majma‘ al-zawa’id (9.00), 5.70). Or like the hadith “If a man calls his brother a non-Muslim (kafir), it returns upon one of them” (Muslim (9.00), 1.79: 60), of which commentator Munawi says that what returns upon one of them is “the disobedience of considering him a non-Muslim,” not the fact of being a non-Muslim (Fayd al-Qadir (9.00), 1.295), and of which Nawawi says in his commentary on Sahih Muslim:
Its outward sense is not intended, for the position of Muslim Orthodoxy (Ahl al-Haqq) is that no Muslim commits unbelief through acts of disobedience such as murder, fornication, or calling one’s brother an “unbeliever,” unless one [thereby means that one] considers the religion of Islam [which he follows] to be false (Sharh Sahih Muslim (9.00), 2.49).
So too, the sense of zajr or “sharply warning” is how Ibn Qudama Maqdisi explains the wording of the hadiths that ostensively show that leaving the prayer is unbelief (kufr), interpreting them thus to reach an accord with other evidence, such as the rigorously authenticated (sahih) hadith
Whoever testifies that there is no god but Allah alone without associate, and that Muhammad is His slave and messenger, and that Jesus is the slave of Allah, His messenger, His Word that He imparted to Mary, and a spirit from Him, and that paradise is true and hell is true—Allah shall enter him into paradise, no matter what his actions (Bukhari (9.00), 4.201: 3435).
This shows, like many other hadiths of similar purport, that a Muslim commits kufr only through outright unbelief, not through acts of disobedience, for otherwise he would not enter paradise (even if he should be punished first, as in other hadiths) on the generality of “no matter what his actions.” Ibn Qudama cites this and other considerations, and gives his judgement that neglecting the prayer, though a heinous sin, is not itself unbelief (al-Mughni (9.00), 2.446–47). Like the previous examples from the Shafi‘i and Hanafi schools above, this illustrates how a top madhhab scholar may restudy hadith evidence and suggest an upgrading of the received position of his Imam in light of it.
In point of fatwa or “formal legal opinion,” it should be noted that the authoritative position of the Hanbali school is that someone who neglects the prayer is asked to repent and ordered to pray: if he does not, he is executed for unbelief (as he is considered to have denied the obligatoriness of the prayer, which is disbelief), though if he does, he is released. Such a person may not be considered a non-Muslim (kafir) or executed until he has been asked to repent and perform the prayer and has refused (Bahuti: Kashshaf al-qina‘ (9.00), 1.228–29).
The Maliki School
The received position of the Maliki madhhab is that if someone eats or drinks absentmindedly during a fast, this vitiates the fast-day, and he is obliged to make it up if it was obligatory, such as a day of Ramadan (Risala Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (9.00), 176). Yet Maliki scholar Ibn Rushd in his Bidaya al-mujtahid [The beginning of the mujtahid] (al-Hidaya fi takhrij ahadith al-Bidaya (9.00), 5.188) quotes the rigorously authenticated (sahih) hadith of Abu Hurayra in Bukhari and Muslim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said,
When someone forgets and eats or drinks, let him complete his fast, for it is but Allah who has fed him and given him drink (Bukhari (9.00), 3.40: 1933. S).
Some Maliki scholars, supporting the position that absentmindedly eating or drinking vitiates the fast, have suggested that what is meant by the hadith’s words “let him complete his fast” is the lexical sense of fasting, which is simply “to refrain from eating”—the hadith signifying that someone who eats absentmindedly (vitiating his fast, in their view) must refrain from food for the rest of the day, as is also the case with a woman, for example, whose menstrual period ceases in the middle of a day of Ramadan: though the fast-day does not count for her, she is obliged to refrain from food till sundown because of the inviolability of the day. This linguistic sense of “fasting,” they say, is the import of “let him complete his fast.” This interpretation fails, as Sheikh Nuh ‘Ali Salman writes,
because the words of primary texts are initially understood in their shari‘a sense whenever possible, and only if this is impossible are they interpreted according to their linguistic sense. Here, it [“fasting”] must be understood in its shari‘a sense, since the hadith says, “let him complete his fast,” that is, his preceding fast, which was a legal fast [of a day of Ramadan], not a linguistic fast [of merely going without food] (Qada’ al-‘ibadat (9.00), 138).
The Maliki scholar Abu Bakr ibn al-‘Arabi explains why he believes the words “let him complete his fast” should not be taken literally:
“Fasting” is but refraining from eating, and cannot coexist with eating, for the two are opposites, and a person cannot be performing what he is obliged to or making it up when its integral element and reality does not remain or exist. Consider what vitiates ablution (wudu), which is the necessary precondition of the prayer; namely, the things that nullify ablution (hadath) [e.g. using the bathroom]. When any of them happens, deliberately or not, it vitiates purification (‘Arida al-ahwazi (9.00), 3.247).
As for the above hadith, which seems to show that the fast is nullified by absentmindedly eating, Ibn al-‘Arabi mentions the Maliki position
that according to the methodology of Malik, if a hadith of a single narrator conflicts with an established principle [namely, that the lack of a rukn or “obligatory integral” (here, refraining from eating) nullifies the action (a valid fast)], then the hadith cannot be acted upon (‘Arida al-ahwazi (9.00), 3.248).
Yet hadith specialist Ahmad al-Ghumari, also a Maliki, in his commentary on Ibn Rushd’s Bidaya al-mujtahid challenges the Maliki position that a fast is vitiated by absentmindedly eating or drinking, adducing variants of the above Bukhari hadith such as that related in the Sunan of Daraqutni:
When someone fasting absentmindedly eats or drinks, it is but sustenance (rizq) that Allah has sent to him, and he is not obliged to make it up (Daraqutni (9.00), 2.178: 27. S),
—which is a rigorously authenticated (sahih) hadith proving that the legal act of fasting is what is meant by the above hadith, and that absentmindedly eating or drinking does not vitiate this fast (al-Hidaya fi takhrij ahadith al-Bidaya (9.00), 5.188). One might object that these hadiths could be taken to refer to supererogatory fasts, and not obligatory fasts. And in fact, this is the position of the Maliki madhhab; that only obligatory fast-days absentmindedly vitiated need be made up, not supererogatory ones (Risala Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (9.00), 176). But Ghumari adduces another rigorously authenticated (sahih) version of the hadith:
Whoever absentmindedly breaks his fast in the month of Ramadan, he is not obliged to make it up or to expiate it (Daraqutni (9.00), 2.178: 28. S),
which he states “has also been related by Hakim [al-Mustadrak (9.00), 1.430. S] and Bayhaqi [Bayhaqi (9.00), 4.229. S]: Hakim says, ‘It is rigorously authenticated (sahih) according to the standards of Muslim, though neither [Bukhari nor Muslim] related it with this wording’; and Bayhaqi says, ‘[Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah] al-Ansari alone related it from Muhammad ibn ‘Amr [ibn ‘Alqama], though all its narrators are reliable’” (al-Hidaya fi takhrij ahadith al-Bidaya (9.00), 5.189).
These hadiths show Ghumari that first, though it may be intuitively plausible, in Abu Bakr Ibn al-‘Arabi’s words, that “fasting is but refraining from eating, and cannot coexist with eating,” the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) has apprised us that eating or drinking absentmindedly is an exception, by saying in the Bukhari hadith that “when someone forgets and eats or drinks, let him complete his fast.” The word fast may not, on the one hand, be interpreted in a merely linguistic sense, because the Daraqutni hadith’s words “and he is not obliged to make it up” apply only to the legal act of fasting; and cannot refer, on the other hand, to supererogatory fasts alone, for these do not happen “in the month of Ramadan.” Secondly, it is not a case of a hadith of a single narrator conflicting with the school’s received position, but rather several versions with different channels of transmission.
This leads Ghumari to say, in his hadith commentary on the Risala of Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani where the author writes, “and if one breaks one’s [supererogatory] fast absentmindedly, one is not obliged to make it up—as opposed to the obligatory [fast]”:
This distinction [between obligatory and nonobligatory] lacks any acceptable proof, nor is there any evidence for it in the Qur’an or hadith at all. Rather, it contradicts the explicit content of the primary texts, and Allah knows better what evidence Malik relied on therein (Masalik al-dalala (9.00), 109–10).
To be sure, Imam Malik was greater than contemporary scholars in knowledge of the Qur’an and sunna, not the least because of his proximity to the time of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and personal observation of the ‘amal or “invariable sunna practice” of earliest Muslims—as opposed to the merely verbal channels of transmission of hadiths relied upon by those after him. But it is clear in any case that Ghumari’s discussion is not one of “blind following” of the Maliki madhhab, but rather an example from the literature of the madhhab itself that shows how the school’s evidence has been examined and evaluated by subsequent Maliki scholars.
Summary
The claim of some individuals of our times that “whoever follows the four schools is following them blindly, as the Imams did not have all the hadiths we have today or incorporate them into their schools of thought” shows a need for education. It could only be made by someone unfamiliar with what schools of jurisprudence are and how they work, for the fiqh embodied in a madhhab does not represent the work of the founder alone, blindly followed, but of a great many scholars, whose critique and upgrading of the legacy of their Imams we have seen examples of in every school. The last example from the Maliki school, like the previous ones from the Shafi‘i, Hanafi, and Hanbali schools, is but a small detail in the whole expansive canvas of these labors. While the number of examples given above cannot do justice to the scope of this enterprise, the few we have mentioned should give an idea just how benighted it is to use the expression “blind following of madhhabs” to describe what schools of jurisprudence do.
Muslims throughout the ages have followed the four schools of jurisprudence not only because of the completeness of their deductive methodology and their mastery of the Qur’an and hadith primary texts, but because it is clear that a large collectivity of scholars in historical succession is more likely to sift out and correct errors than, for example, the sheikh of one’s neighborhood, the ‘alim of one’s city, the mufti of one’s region, or the hadith scholar with whom one’s peers are currently most impressed.
This is especially true in view of the division of labor among scholars contributing to the madhhabs, who were specialists in Qur’anic exegesis (tafsir), hadith, fiqh, methodological bases of jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh), and other fields. While the Imam of a school must know all of these sciences to be qualified as a mujtahid mutlaq or “absolute mujtahid” capable of giving judgement on any topic of jurisprudence, specialists in particular sciences may well contribute in their field of study. Most of Islam’s greatest authorities on hadith, the huffaz (those with over 100,000 hadiths by memory) considered themselves followers of one of the four madhhabs.
Imam Bukhari learned his jurisprudence (tafaqqaha) from the disciple of Imam Shafi‘i, ‘Abdullah ibn Zubayr al-Humaydi, and studied with Shafi‘i’s disciple’s Za‘farani, Abu Thawr, and Karabisi, which is why Imam Taj al-Din al-Subki lists him with other Shafi‘i scholars in his Tabaqat al-Shafi‘iyya al-kubra [Greater Compendium of Generations of Shafi‘i Scholars] ((9.00), 2.214). His judgement that Bukhari was a Shafi‘i is borne out by the many chapter headings in Sahih al-Bukhari that indicate Bukhari’s fiqh positions and correspond in the main to positions of the Shafi‘i school. But this remains an inference, for we do not have an early source that speaks about Bukhari’s madhhab (or describes him, on the contrary, as being himself a mujtahid), perhaps because early biographers felt his fiqh to be peripheral to his central importance as a hadith Imam.
Imams Muslim, Tirmidhi, and Abu Dawud, according to Mansur ‘Ali Nasif, an Egyptian hadith scholar of the twentieth century, all “worshipped according to the Shafi‘i school” (al-Taj al-jami‘ li al-usul (9.00), 1.16). So did Imams Nasa’i (Tabaqat al-Shafi‘iyya (9.00), 3.14), Bayhaqi (ibid., 4.8), Hakim (ibid., 4.155), Abu Nu‘aym (ibid., 4.18), Ibn Hibban (ibid., 3.131), Daraqutni (ibid., 3.462), Baghawi (ibid., 7.75), Ibn Khuzayma (ibid., 3.109), Suyuti (al-Hawi li al-fatawi (9.00), 1.5), Dhahabi (Tabaqat al-Shafi‘iyya (9.00), 9.100), Ibn Kathir (Tafsir al-Qur’an al-‘Adhim (9.00), 1.2), Nur al-Din Haythami (Majma‘ al-zawa’id (9.00), 1.2), Mundhiri (Tabaqat al-Shafi‘iyya (9.00), 8.259), Ibn Salah (al-Taqyid wa al-idah (9.00), 17), Zayn al-Din al-‘Iraqi (ibid., 20), Wali al-Din al-‘Iraqi (Tabaqat al-Shafi‘iyya li Ibn Qadi Shahba (9.00), 4.80), Ibn al-Athir (al-Nihaya (9.00), 1.9), Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani (Taghliq al-ta‘liq (9.00), 1.109), Taqi al-Din (father of Taj al-Din) al-Subki (Tabaqat al-Shafi‘iyya (9.00), 10.141), Jamal al-Din al-Mizzi (Tahdhib al-kamal (9.00), 1.21), and others. Each of these was a hafiz of over 100,000 hadiths, in both texts and chains of transmission.
Malik and Ahmad ibn Hanbal were of course not only hadith Imams, but mujtahids who founded the madhhabs that bear their names.
The Hanafi school counted among its followers such hadith Imams as ‘Ali Qari (al-A‘lam (9.00), 5.12), Badr al-Din ‘Ayni (‘Umda al-qari (9.00), 1.30), Abu Ja‘far Tahawi (Mukhtasar al-Tahawi (9.00), 3), and Jamal al-Din Zayla‘i, the African sheikh of Ibn Hajar ‘Asqalani who was thought by some to have been even more knowledgeable than his student (Nasb al-raya (9.00), 1.5). The Maliki school had Ibn ‘Abd al-Barr (al-A‘lam (9.00), 8.240), and Qadi ‘Iyad (al-Shifa (9.00), 1.21), while the Hanbali school had Imam ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Jawzi (Daf‘ shubah al-tashbih (9.00), 24–26) and Ibn Rajab (Sharh ‘Ilal al-Tirmidhi (9.00), 1.7). It is plain that one would have to get up very early in the morning to find a hadith these men did not know.
Apart from hadith, in the other fields as well the number and specialization of scholars of the madhhabs have resulted in a body of legal work that in its evidence, range, and detail, demands more than a facile dismissal with slogans about “blind following of madhhabs.”
Finally, if educational necessities such as producing scholars specialized enough to learn and teach a particular madhhab have historically resulted in geographical affiliations of Muslims to one or the other of the schools, for example, the Maliki school in North and West Africa, or the Hanafi school in Pakistan and India—their following the schools of their forefathers is not a blind tradition, but rather a tradition of following sound scholarship. And this is something praiseworthy in the Islamic ethic, not blameworthy. |
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