Muslims, living in the Muslim Countries, generally tend to have limited exposure to Fiqh and its rulings. There is usually one dominant madhab and that’s all people know about. Rarely, if ever, people are exposed to other madahibs. However, the situation for many of us living in west, like Canada, is quite different.
Because of the diversity of muslims, from various countries, cultures and backgrounds, we are exposed to many madhabs. We find many different opinions on a given issue. We see people praying little differently in mosque. When Ramadhan comes, the whole moon sighting debate starts and not to mention the zabiha meat issues.
The question then arises, why do scholars differ? This then would be the topic of these series of posts Inshallah. So let’s get started. To make it easy for us to understand these difference, scholars usually divide the reasons of differences into various categories and aspects. Here is one such categorization. The differences exists, due to:
- Interpretation of word meanings and grammatical constructions
- Hadith narrations
- Admissibility of certain principles
- Methods of Qiyas
In the next few posts, we will look at each category one by one.
Action Item:
- To get the feeling of some of these difference, skim though some of the fiqh issues in the following books:
- Post in the comments, evidences that show that the differences of opinions existed in the time of the Messenger (SAW) and that the differences are inherently bad or evil. (Hint: there is a post on this website, that talks about this)
References:
- The Evolution of Fiqh by Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips
May Allah make this series beneficial for us.