Madhabs

In the previous post, we introduced the topic of Differences of Opinions. We listed the four ways of categorizing these differences. In this post, we will look at the first category: Differences due to interpretation of word meanings and grammatical constructions.

Within this category, we have several sub categories:

Shared literal meanings/Equivocality/Homonym (Ishtirak):

An example of this would be the word “qur” which means menses as well as the time of purity between menses. This word occurs in 2:228. The scholars thus arrived at two different rulings for the waiting period of divorce. According to those who considered  Qur’ to be the period of purity, the divorce becomes finalized as soon as her third menses have started, while according to those who viewed Qur’ as the actual menses, it is not finalized until her third menses have ended. You can read the details here.

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.