What if It Turns Out in the Hereafter That We Followed False Opinions?
Answered by Shaykh Faraz A. Khan
Question
It is said that the four madhabs differ only on smaller jurisprudence issues and not issues regarding aqida. I understand that but then I heard that Hanafis regard witr as wajib while Shafi‘is regard it as sunna.
- Does that mean that if the Shafi‘is are wrong they might be in trouble on the Day of Judgement for not fulfilling something which is necessary?
- Why weren’t these types of things clarified by the Prophet (Sallallahu ‘Alaihi wa Sallam)? Because it seems that the differences in madhabs are sometimes so obvious that you would think that the Prophet would have touched on the issue just like this issue of witr.
Answer
I pray this finds you in the best of health states.
The short answer is that a mujtahid imam is not sinful for an incorrect opinion, and that the lack of explicit clarification in the Qur’an and sunna regarding peripheral legal issues is in fact a vast mercy for our community.
Is A Mujtahid Sinful For an Incorrect Opinion?
No, there is no sin if a mujtahid imam is incorrect in his judgment. Rather there is reward, since he did his utmost to arrive at the ruling. This is based on the explicit hadith that states a mujtahid receives 2 rewards if he is correct and 1 reward if incorrect. [Bukhari, Muslim]
Of course, this applies only to a qualified mujtahid imam, namely, a religious scholar that has attained mastery of the various religious sciences whereby he is able to derive rulings directly from the Quran and sunna. Examples are those whom the four legal schools (madhabs) were named after: Imams Abu Hanifa, Malik, Shafi‘i and Ahmed ibn Hanbal (Allah have mercy on them all).
If an unqualified person derives a ruling directly from the Quran and sunna, without recourse to a qualified imam of one of the four schools, the person incurs sin even if he is correct.
The Role of a Prophet
Our Master Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) was sent to humanity as a prophet, messenger, and bringer of guidance. He, therefore, spoke in “prophetic language” of guidance, not in technical juridical language.
That is to say, rather than providing us with lists of actions accompanied by their respective rulings of being mandatory, recommended, disliked, etc., he (peace and blessings be upon him) lived in the world as a prophet to be emulated and followed, and taught us guidance to be practiced. Moreover, his silence on matters was a mercy, as those matters were then open to disagreement, allowing for leeway that would otherwise have not been there.
Understanding Differences of Opinion
While the beliefs and general practices of Islam were clearly delineated and are therefore not differed upon, there was disagreement even amongst the Companions (sahaba) with respect to the finer details and peripheral issues of practice.
With respect to these issues, there was further disagreement over the next few generations after the Companions. There are many reasons for this, such as the ambiguous nature of language that leads to multiple interpretations, as well as the difference amongst the mujtahid imams in foundational legal theory (usul al-fiqh).
That is, when approaching the Qur’an and sunna and deriving law, each imam had his own specific ‘methodological rules’ in areas including:
- linguistic interpretation, such as the exact meaning of words, or their particular usage in any given Qur’anic verse or hadith;
- hadith verification, such as the well-known disagreement regarding the strength of a mursal hadith, i.e., in which a follower (tabi`i) narrates directly from the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) without stating the name of the Companion that relates that hadith;
- reconciliation of seemingly conflicting texts, whether Qur’anic verses, hadiths, or both;
- the role of inherited practice of towns inhabited by scholar-Companions, such as Medina and Kufa;
- reconciliation of legal analogy (qiyas) versus legal preference (istihsan),
- as well as many other aspects of legal derivation that led to difference of opinion.
A Vast Mercy
Historically, this culminated in four schools of law according to Sunni Islam, all of which are valid to follow. And the resultant difference of opinion amongst the schools is a great mercy for the community (umma). This is not only evident historically, but was explicitly articulated by many eminent imams, both early and late, such as Imams Umar ibn Abdul Aziz, Abu Hanifa, Malik, Khattabi, Nawawi, Ibn Qudama, Ibn Taymiyya, Shatibi and others. [Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim; Shatibi, I`tisam; Ibn Taymiyya, Majmu` al-Fatawa]
For example, a scholar once authored a work in difference of opinion, to which Imam Ahmed ibn Hanbal responded, “Do not call it ‘The Book on Disagreement’, but rather call it ‘The Book of the Sunna.'”
And the rightly guided Caliph Umar ibn Abdul Aziz used to say:
“It does not please me if the Companions of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) did not disagree [on a particular issue], since if they all agreed on a matter and then a person did not act accordingly, he would be astray. Yet if they differed on a matter, and one person took the opinion of one [of the Companions] and someone else took the opinion of another [Companion], there would be leeway in the matter.” [Ibn Taymiyya, Majmu` al-Fatawa]
While the prophetic report “The difference of opinion in my community is a mercy” has a problematic chain of narration, its meaning was generally accepted amongst scholars of both law and hadith.
For more detail on the four schools of law, please see the following:
A Reader on Following Schools of Thought Madhabs
And Allah knows best.
wassalam
[Shaykh] Faraz A. Khan
Checked and Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
Shaykh Faraz A. Khan has lived in Amman, Jordan, for several years studying and teaching traditional Islamic sciences, with a focus on Hanafi jurisprudence, hadith studies, theology, logic, and Arabic grammar. He translated and annotated the classical Hanafi primer “Ascent to Felicity” (Maraqi ‘l-Sa`adat) by Imam Shurunbulali, recently published by White Thread Press.
