Shaykh Murabtal Haaj’s Fatwa on
Following
One
of the Four Accepted Madhhabs
By Murabtal
Haaj, Mauritania,
Translated by Hamza
Yusuf Hanson
Copied from the book of the same
name
In the name of Allah, the Merciful, the
Compassionate.
Amongst
the most important replies that I have given, is my reply concerning the one
who has deviated to the point where he censures the importance of studying the
branches [furu'] of jurisprudence, and
we seek refuge in Allah from the deviation of such a wandering deviant. Would
that he simply had claimed independent reasoning (ijtihad)
for himself only, and Allah is his reckoner, but
abandoned the call of Muslims to leave that which is incumbent upon them. In
our reply to such a one, we make mention what the scholars of the
methodological bases of Islamic jurisprudence (usuli’un)
and the Imams of jurisprudence themselves have said about such a matter. As for
my labelling him a deviant, it is only because he has
desired to impose upon common people the precious rank of absolute independent
reasoning [ijtihad], about which Muhammad an-Nabigha said,
And ijtihad in the land of the Moroccans, The
western phoenix has taken to flight with it.
I
say in reply, that the following of qualified scholarship (taqlid)
is an obligation on anyone other than an absolute mujtahid.
I shall make mention of all his prerequisites if Allah wills. [Sidi Abdullah Ould Hajj Ibrahim]
has said in his Maraqi as-Sa’ud: “[taqlid]
is necessary for other than the one who has achieved the rank of absolute ijtihad. Even if he is a limited [mujtahid] who is unable [to perform absolute ijtihad].”
Commenting
on this line, [Sidi Abdullah] said in Nashru al-bunud,
“It
means that taqlid is an obligation on anyone
who is not an absolute mujtahid, even if he
has achieved the limited rank of ijtihad muqayyad . . . [until he says], ‘And ask the people of
the reminder, if you yourselves do not know.’”
By
using the line of Muhammad an-Nabigha above, I am in
no way claiming that all ijtihad has been
severed in every land; how [could I say such a thing] when [Sidi
Abdullah] says in Maraqi as-sa’ud:
“The
earth will never be void of a mujtahid scholar
until its very foundations shake.”
He
also said,
“[Regarding]
the necessity of binding to a specific madhhab,
the [scholars] have mentioned its obligation upon anyone falling short [of the
conditions of ijtihad].”
He
says in Nashru al-bunud,
“It
means that it is incumbent for whoever falls short of achieving the rank of
absolute ijtihad to follow a particular madhhab.”
Again,
in Maraqi as-Sa’ud,
Sidi Abdullah says,
“The
consensus today is on the four, and all have prohibited following [any]
others.”
He
says in Nashru al-bunud,
“This
means that the consensus of the scholars today is on the four schools of
thought, and I mean by the schools of Malik, Abu Hanifa, Shafi’i and Ahmad.
Indeed, all of the scholars have prohibited following any other school of an
independent and absolute mujtahid since the
eighth century when the school of Dawud adh-Dhahiri died out and until the 12th Century and all
subsequent ones.”
In
the chapter concerning inferential reasoning, from Maraqi
as-sa’ud, [Sidi
Abdullah] says,
“As
for the one who is not a mujtahid, then basing
his actions on primary textual evidence [Qur’an and hadith]
is not permissible.”
He
says in Nashru al-bunud,
“It
means that it is prohibited for other than a mujtahid
to base his actions upon a direct text from either the Book or the Sunna even if its transmission was sound because of the
sheer likelihood of there being other considerations such as abrogation,
limitations, specificity to certain situations, and other such matters that
none but the mujtahid fully comprehends with
precision. Thus, nothing can save him from Allah the Exalted excepted
following a mujtahid.Imam al-Qarafi
‘And beware of doing what some students do when they reason directly from the hadith, and yet they don’t know their soundness, let alone what has been mentioned [by the Imams] concerning the subtleties involved in them; by doing this, they went astray and led others astray. And whoever interprets a verse or hadith in a manner that deviates from its intended meaning without proof [dalil] is a kafir.’”
As for the conditions of the absolute and independent ijtihad, they are mentioned in the Maraqi as-sa’ud in the following line and what follows:
“And that [word ‘faqih’2] is synonymous with the [word] ‘mujtahid’ coupled with those things which bear upon [him] the burden of responsibility,
Such as his being of extreme intelligence by nature, and there is some debate about one who is known to reject juristic analogy [qiyas]
He knows the [juristic] responsibilities through intellectual proofs unless a clear transmitted proof indicates otherwise.
[Sidi Abdullah] says [in his commentary] Nashru al-bunud,
“This means that among the conditions of ijtihad is that [the mujtahid] knows that he must adhere to the intellectual proof which is the foundational condition [al-bara’atu al-asliyya3] until a transmitted proof from a sacred law indicates otherwise.”
He then goes on to mention the other conditions of a mujtahid:
[The sciences of] grammar, prosody, philology, combined with those of usul and rhetoric he must master.
According to the people of precision, [he must know] where the judgements can be found without the condition of having memorized the actual texts.
[All of the above must be known] according to a middle ranked mastery at least. He must also know those matters upon which there is consensus.
[Moreover, he must know] things such as the condition of single hadiths and what carries the authority of great numbers of transmissions; also [knowledge of] what is sound and what is weak is necessary.
Furthermore, what has been abrogated and what abrogates, as well as the conditions under which a verse was revealed or a hadith was transmitted is a condition that must be met.
The states of the narrators and the companions [must also be known]. Therefore, you may follow anyone who fulfils these conditions mentioned above according to the soundest opinion.
So, consider all of the above-mentioned, and may Allah have mercy upon you, and [may you] see for yourself whether your companion is characterized by such qualities and fulfils these conditions—and I highly doubt it. More likely, he is just pointing people to himself in his demands that the people of this age take their judgements directly from the Book and Sunna. If, on the other hand, he does not possess the necessary conditions, then further discussion is useless.
In Muhammad ‘Illish’s, Fath al-‘Ali al-Malik, there are many strong rebukes for those who wish to force people to abandon the study of the judicial branches and take directly from the Book and the Sunna. The actual text of the question put to him is as follows:
“What do you say about someone who was following one of the four Imams, may Allah the Exalted be pleased with them, and then left claiming that he could derive his judgements directly form the Qur’an and the soundly transmitted hadiths, thus leaving the books of jurisprudence and inclining towards the view of Ahmad bin Idris? Moreover, he says to the one who clings to the speech of the Imams and their followers, “I say to you ‘Allah and His Messenger say’, and you reply ‘Malik said’ and ‘Ibn al-Qasim said’ or ‘Khalil said.’”
To this, Imam ‘Illish replies:
“My answer to this all this is as follows: Praise be to Allah, and Prayer and Safety be upon our Master Muhammad, the Messenger of Allah. It is not permissible for a common person to abandon following the four Imams and take directly from the textual sources of the Qur’an and the hadiths for the simple reason that this entails a great many conditions that have been clarified in the books of usul. Moreover, these conditions are rarely met by the great scholars, especially in these last days in which Islam has become a stranger just as it began a stranger.”
Ibn ‘Uyyana, may Allah be pleased with him, has said,
“The hadiths are a source of error except for the jurists.”
What he means is that people, other than the scholars, might interpret a tradition based on an apparent meaning, and yet [the hadith may] have another interpretation based on some other hadith that clarifies the meaning or some proof that remains hidden [to the common people]. After a long discussion, he remarks,
“That as for their saying, ‘How can you leave clear Qur’anic verses and sound hadiths and follow the Imams in their ijtihads, which have a clear probability of error,’”
His answer to them is as follows:
“Surely the following of our [rightly guided] Imams is not abandoning the Qur’anic verses or the sound hadiths; it is the very essence of adhering to them and taking our judgements from them. This is because the Qur’an has not come down to us except by means of these very Imams [who are more worthy of following] by virtue of being more knowledgeable than us in [the sciences of] the abrogating and abrogated, the absolute and the conditional, the equivocal and the clarifying, the probabilistic and the plain, the circumstances surrounding revelation and their various meanings, as well as their possible interpretations and various linguistic and philological considerations, [not to mention] the various other ancillary sciences [involved in understanding the Qur’an] needed.
“Also, they took all of that from the students of the companions (tabi’in) who received their instruction from the companions themselves, who received their instructions from the Lawgiver himself, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, divinely protected from every mistake, who bore witness that the first three generations of Muslims would be ones of virtue and righteousness. Furthermore, the prophetic traditions have also reached us through their means given that they were also more knowledgeable than us through their means given that they were also more knowledgeable than those who came after them concerning the rigorously authenticated (sahih), the well authenticated (hasan), and the weak (da’if) channels of transmission, as well as the marfu’u4, mursal5,mutawatir6, ahad7, mu’dal8 and gharib9 transmissions.
“Thus, as far as this little band of men is concerned, there is only one of two possibilities: either they are att