A R C H I V E S
Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Choosing a Madh-hab |
|---|
| Saam |
| 06/18/04 at 03:33:22 |
| [slm] I hope all of you guys are doing well. As most of you know, I reverted to Islam about 8 months ago... well things were simple back then ;) . The more I study Islam, the more I realize that my own understanding is insufficient. I do not want to just pick and choose who to take takleed (I think that's the word) from. After 'Isha today, we read from Riyadh ulSaliheen, and afterwards we were discussing the ahadith. One hadith said the sunnah for zuhr is 2 before, 2 after, another said only 4 before, another said 4 before and 4 after... all this had my head spinning. We were discussing which one we are to follow and a wiser brother spoke up and indiciated that since they are all authentic it really depends on your madh-hab. I was thinking that we should just follow 4 before and 4 after to be safe, but, alhamdulillah, the brother warned me about making ijtihaad myself on these matters. Afterwards, this brother and I sat down and had a lengthy discussion. He explained to me that all 4 madh-habs regard each other as haqq, but that I really need to pick one and generally stick to it. He explained that the danger in taking one ruling from one madh-hab here and another one from a different madh-hab there can be very dangerous and lead to "picking and choosing" my religion. Especially since we must remember that our nafs is always present, and it might cause us to become lazy and pick a different ruling just out of laziness or what not. He explained that the wisdom in sticking to a madh-hab is that it allows you to better strive against your nafs in fiqhi matters. So I was hoping, insha'Allah, that a knowledgable person here could give me a general breakdown of the four madh-habs and their methodologies. The brother I was speaking with was Hanafi and really did not know too much about other madh-habs. He said Hanafis generally tend to be on the "safe side" when it comes to various authentic sources (i.e. for Zuhr sunnah, they do 4 before and 4 after). He said Shafi'i and Maliki are pretty close to Hanafi, but Hanbali is quite different... although the issues on which all 4 schools differ are small issues anyways. As far as regions, I think he said that Hanafi is the largest Madh-hab and includes most of South Asia and Egypt; and I think he said that Hanbali is generally followed in Saudi Arabia. But what I am really interested in knowing is not really which regions of the world follow which madh-hab, but more of how each extracts law from authentic sources, etc. Any help will be appreciated. :) I really feel that this will help me to sort out a lot of things. Wassalaam. Saam ;-) |
| Re: Choosing a Madh-hab |
|---|
| Mossy |
| 06/18/04 at 08:38:36 |
| Salam, I have a feeling that this thread will be closed soon as this topic raises certain.. Disagreements. Madhabs essentially offer prepackaged Islam for those who do not have sufficient mastery (whatever that may be) of the various sciences of jurisprudence. Each of them offers a slightly different set of base rules from which they derive their rulings and work within these to hopefully provide an internally consistent set of rulings (hence the danger in mixing and matching as each has a slightly different basis). I would recommend reading The Four Imams: Their lives, works and their Schools of Thought by Muhammad Abu Zahra to get an overview of these. Any decent book on usul al fiqh will go over the basic methodologies each uses too - although of course the best source is probably their own fiqh books or, ideally, asking a scholar from that particular madhab. ws, Mossy |
| Re: Choosing a Madh-hab |
|---|
| bhaloo |
| 06/18/04 at 08:47:25 |
| [slm] This is a banned topic. In the past we have had a lot of discussion on this, please go back and search for those discussions and reads them, but per the constitution this topic is banned. Should it continue, you would see why it was banned. :P I'm locking this thread. |
Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board |