No scholar’s opinion is bigger than Quran and ahadith. The Quran clearly says follow Allah and follow the messenger and those amongst you with knowledge. ..and when you differ follow Allah and the messenger. …so Allah is saying in Qurab that at the end you dont even follow scholars if their opinion mo matter how informed goes against the quran and ahadith. ..so there is nothing wrong to say we follow Quran and Sunnah as that is exactly what Allah commands us to do….

The consequence is, people think one factual data or statement has only one interpretation, because that’s what they’re habituated to expect, because the other statements and information that the learned person weighs, not to mention the hierarchy of reasoning that is employed, is invisible to them. It also means, they cannot tell the difference between a poorly derived conclusion, and a well-derived one, and do not realise that in many cases, simply being aware of reasoning methodology is enough to differentiate between really poor/disqualified vs potentially credible arguments, without needing to be an equivalent scholar (although you would need to be for better accuracy than that). Frequently – especially on religious topics – it ends up boiling down to claims of the degree of ‘holiness’ of ‘my scholar vs yours’, usually measured by arguably unrelated traits such as outward appearance, routine commitment to certain acts of worship, popularity, degree of relatedness to own race/country, degree of relatedness to Arabs (the race of the Prophet), and claims of supernatural signs of sainthood. I am highly appreciative of your efforts to restore the original high quality reasoning once considered the norm among the Companions, and which actually was the precursor and set the standard for the standard of reasoning that forms today’s expected norms in all professional disciplines.

A spin-off phenomenon is: the ability of such reasoning is present from advanced schooling, but for some reason certain lay groups believe this is improper to apply it to ‘religious’ topics because it is ‘only for science and other dunya disciplines’, so psychologically they exclude the skill out of taboo feelings.

Wasalamu alykum wr,

A very thoughtful question br Yousef. In my opinion, I think it would be very rare for a scholar today to come across a hadith or other piece of evidence that can definitively settle all disputes. This is because for more than 700 years rulings and interpretations have constantly been revised and reviewed by scholars from all different schools of law (madhab) and they are usually referred to as “Muhaqqiqeen” (research scholars). This leaves the chances of finding such strong evidence rare.

Secondly, even if such an evidence was to be found, there is almost always differences in how texts are understood, thus even then there will still be different scholarly interpretations. Nonetheless, it could be, that such evidence if found, can bolster one interpretation and give it more credibility over others. But I think even the chance of that happening is minimal due to different methods employed in interpreting texts.

However what you mentioned did sometimes happen in the very early stages of Islam. For example Uthman (ra) used to hold the opinion that ghusl (bath to ritually clean yourself) was made wajib by a person physically engaging in sexual intercourse. However if a man simply ejaculated through other means, then ghusl was not wajib on him. However due to the hadith which says ghusl is made wajib by ejaculation alone, all the scholars after him, and even during his time differed with him (I’m not aware if later scholars still held the opinion of Sayidina Uthman, but if you do come across any that do, please do let me know).

Now from our perspective, especially with the other scholars differing with Uthman, we know retrospectively that Sayyidina Uthman’s (ra) opinion was actually incorrect. None the less he based it on the evidence that he had, and inshaAllah he will no doubt be rewarded for it.

Can this happen today? I doubt it…

JAK for your contribution

Haq.

This is good. What we need is to remove the cancer from the ummah. Some of the cancer is in oour blindly accepting something as a requirment of the deen just because someone says that: “Muhammad 9saws”) said”. but we need to be wiise enough to distinguish what he really did say and do and incorporate that into our lives.

The best way for accomplishing that is by mens of more and more discussion.

Wa’alykum as-Salam Br. Gabriel,

Firstly, sorry for the late reply. Secondly, about your question, I did think of giving examples in the article but for fear of making it too long, I didn’t. a quick example I could give you is about the six fasts of Shawwal that are recommended after Ramadhan. The Hadith mentions about the time of the fasts “six days from (Arabic: min) Shawwaal” Majority of the scholars understood this to mean six fasts of Shawaal, but Imam Malik understood it to mean “Starting from Shawaal”, hence said these fasts can be kept any time after Ramadan so long as its kept before the next Ramadan. So whilst they agree on the authenticity of the Hadith, they differed n their interpretation.

Hope this helps,
Wassalam
Haq.

JazzakAllahu Khair Br. Arsalan for your informative and coherent reply!