فِقْهٌ

 

The word “fiqh” linguistically means “understanding” and that is how it was used by the Prophet Muhammad’s generation and the Arabs before Islam. However, it soon became synonymous with a large and important part of Islam and is now frequently translated as “Islamic jurisprudence”.

In laymen’s terms, fiqh refers to the “how to’s” and the “what if’s” of practicing Islam.

Fiqh is important to know so that you can learn how to worship Allah correctly from when you wake up to when you go to bed and throughout the different stages and situations you face in life until death.

When learning how to pray, you are learning the “fiqh” of prayer. When you learn how to fast, how to make hajj, how to pay zakaat, and even how to get married and engage in proper business transactions, you are studying different topics of fiqh. Also, the study of what’s permissible and forbidden of food and clothing are fiqh issues.

Even when you pose a question about practical matters, “What does the Quran say about beards?” or “Did the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ say it’s okay to beat our wives?” These are, essentially, fiqh matters.

There exist books that tour all the branches of Islamic fiqh. There are also books which deal with only a specific branch of fiqh, like prayer or hajj, for example. Some books get even more specific discussing a single issue that many Muslims may be confused about, for example, whether or not wearing a niqaab (face veil) is a must for Muslim women.

Another word often used synonymously with fiqh, and sometimes used to encompass all of Islam’s guidance is Sharia…

الشَّرِيعة

The linguistic meaning of Sharia is much more subtle, yet eerily relevant. One researcher explained it as “… a pathway such as that which an unruly herd of sheep might make as they were herded by a wise shepherd toward a source of water. It is not a narrow path, but rather a broad pathway… defined by the individual tracks that converge and diverge as the sheep make their way, adjusting to local terrain, some moving in large clusters, and others wandering in exploratory forays or venturing alone along previously uncharted courses. The shepherd keeps them within the limit of heading toward the source of water but does not insist that they travel single-file along a narrow path.” (Kugle, 2010, pp. 132-133; he credits V. Cornell for the elucidation).

For all Muslims, especially new Muslims, begin small and simple in your fiqh/sharia studies. I highly recommend the “New Muslim Guide” by Fahd Salem Bahammam. If you find yourself wanting and needing to learn more, you can “graduate” to broader and more technical works. For most of us, a single book of fiqh may suffice us, and then taking any extra questions we have to a God-fearing and knowledgeable Imam. For example, if you are travelling far north where the day is long and the night is short or even non-existent, how would you fast? When would you pray? The scholars of fiqh have answers to these questions. It is not required nor even recommended for every worshipper to become a scholar of fiqh—only to have access to a scholar when the need arises. What is required of you and all Muslims is knowing your specific obligations and how to execute them properly, especially the prayer. By now you’ve probably already learned some fiqh. Even if it’s just the basics of how to pray.

If you’re not confused yet, you may continue on to learn about a seminal concept shaping the history of fiqh development and its evolution in the Muslim world…

مَذْهَبٌ

Now you will not hang around Muslims too long and discuss any issues of fiqh before you hear the word madhab [a two-syllable word pronounced math-hab (the “th” or sometimes “dh” is pronounced passively as it is from the word “that” and “they” but not forcefully like “thanks” or “think”)].

This word is most often used to mean any intangible path or theory a person may be known for. For example, we could say that Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein each proposed different “madhhabs” for understanding gravity. So a madhab is like a school of thought. Now you might be thinking to say, just like I and countless others have said, “I thought Islam was only one school of thought?” Eh. Sorta. But amongst Muslims, the word has a much wider and penetrating connotation, and to understand it, we have to look back in history.

During the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and shortly afterwards, his companions understood how to practice Islam from two primary sources.

1. The Qur’an. Many chapters of the Quran contain specific instruction on how to live and worship. The Quran itself from beginning to end serves this purpose. However, much of it is also historical commentary or telling the eternal consequences of faith, sin, hypocrisy and disbelief. Its message is bolstered with a lot of rhetorical devices to motivate believers toward good action. Some parts give more focus on detailing exactly what Muslims should or should not do (physically) to earn Allah’s Pleasure. That aspect has been isolated for fiqh study.

{لَقَدْ مَنَّ اللَّـهُ عَلَى الْمُؤْمِنِينَ إِذْ بَعَثَ فِيهِمْ رَسُولًا مِّنْ أَنفُسِهِمْ يَتْلُو عَلَيْهِمْ آيَاتِهِ وَيُزَكِّيهِمْ وَيُعَلِّمُهُمُ الْكِتَابَ وَالْحِكْمَةَ وَإِن كَانُوا مِن قَبْلُ لَفِي ضَلَالٍ مُّبِينٍ} ﴿١٦٤﴾ سورة آل عمران

“Allah has indeed conferred great favor on the believers when He sent among them a Messenger from among themselves, reciting to them His Verses, and purifying them and instructing them in the Book and The Wisdom, while before that they had been in plain deviation.” [Surah Ali Imran 3:164]

Purification is a result of sincere worship and honest God-fearing living, the subjects of fiqh.

2. The Prophet’s example or Sunnah. This is sometimes referred to as al-Ḥikmah (the Wisdom) in the Quran, as seen above. Also, Allah says in the Qur’an:

{لَّقَدْ كَانَ لَكُمْ فِي رَسُولِ اللَّـهِ أُسْوَةٌ حَسَنَةٌ لِّمَن كَانَ يَرْجُو اللَّـهَ وَالْيَوْمَ الْآخِرَ وَذَكَرَ اللَّـهَ كَثِيرًا} ﴿٢١﴾ سورة الأحزاب

“Truly, there has been for you a good example in the Messenger of Allah for whoever hopes for Allah and the Last Day and remembers Allah much.” [Surah al-Ahzab 33:21]

The relationship between the Quran and Sunnah is as that should the Quran direct us to open a door, we would expect the Prophet’s example to show whether this is a tangible door or a metaphorical one; and depending, how we would open it. Do you push, pull, say a password, or lift up a stone to find a key.^[1]Claiming to follow the Quran without knowledge of the Prophet’s example negates most of the wisdom of commissioning the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ as a messenger to exemplify Islam.

Details about how these two sources are validated and studied will be provided elsewhere on our website insha’Allah.

The point is, during the Prophet’s lifetime, his companions, known as the ṣaḥābah, usually sought guidance directly from him, or from the senior companions if he was busy. The answer was either from Allah’s Words or the Prophet’s.

After the death of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, his companions spread about in the Arabian peninsula and beyond, to Egypt and North Africa in the West, and to Persia and the tip of China and India in the East, spreading the message of Islam. Those companions had numerous students who heard and recorded what their teachers—the ṣaḥābah—said they witnessed from the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ as well as their answers to questions that were not specifically addressed during the Prophet’s time. They took note of the companions’ answers because they had known the Prophet ﷺ personally, had the best understanding of Arabic and the Quran—since afterwards, many new Muslims were not Arabs, and so the succeeding generations were weaker in Arabic, the language of the Quran and the Prophet ﷺ. Thus, if misunderstanding occurred of the two primary sources, it would be more likely from later generations. Hence, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ has been authentically recorded by al-Bukhari and Muslim as saying:

“The best of generations is my generation, and then those who followed them, and then those who followed them. And then there will come a people…”

Eventually the generation of the companions passed on, so the generation of the followers (or in Arabic, taabi’een) was in full swing. All the cities which the Muslim armies liberated or built from the ground up wherein companions had settled now had teachers from the next generation of Muslim scholars, teaching the Muslims what they learned and understood regarding Arabic, Qur’an recitation and meaning, fiqh and admonitions from those who interacted personally with the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ. For the most part, scholars of this generation remained in the cities that their teachers had settled in. Thus, certain towns became known for having the students of specific companions and thus the legacy of their knowledge. For example, Mecca became known as being the center for the students of Abdullah ibn al-‘Abbaas; Madinah was known for the students of Abdullah ibn ‘Umar, Abu Hurairah, Abu Sa`id al-Khudri and ‘Aa’ishah; Basra had students of Anas ibn Malik; Kufah had students of Abdullah ibn Mas’ood; and so forth.

It was their students, scholars of the third generation, known in Arabic as atbaa’ al-taabi’een or followers of the followers, that did not remain stationary like most of their teachers. Instead, they traveled from city to city, throughout the Muslim world, gathering the heritage of the Prophet’s companions, and thus learning the fiqh of Islam by that means. When these well-traveled scholars finally settled down, they began teaching just as their predecessors did.

In this era, several scholars of various cities became well known for their memorization, travels, asceticism, piety, erudite understanding of the scripture (Quran and Sunnah), and ability to extract a proper ruling for most issues they were asked about but perhaps may not have been specifically addressed by the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ or his companions. While there may have been as many as a dozen scholars of this exceptional caliber, or dozens, four in specific have gained unparalleled notoriety and following. They are ubiquitously known as the Four Imams.

As for Imam Abu Hanifa (d. 150 ah), he was a silk merchant in Kufah, Iraq with either Persian or Arab ancestry. A local scholar noticed his acumen and turned him on to studying Islam with the scholars. He studied diligently for two decades until the passing of his most beloved teacher, leaving him to take over instruction and amass a number of students himself. Abu Hanifa was sharp and witty, a devout worshiper and a cautious businessman, continuing the oversight of his wares even after becoming a great scholar of Islam. Abu Hanifa was the only one of the Four Imams to have seen any of the Prophet’s companions, although that was before he started seeking knowledge himself. He eventually developed his own method of teaching, focusing on hypotheticals to train the prowess of his students. After his passing, his student Abu Yusuf was appointed chief judge for the Abbasid caliphs while another, Muhammad ibn Hasan al-Shaybānī busied himself with teaching and writing. With the help of the Abbasid caliphate, Abu Hanifa’s teachings spread widely and became popular in modern day Iraq, Pakistan, India, Turkey and central Asia, all where his school remains dominant even today.

Meanwhile, Muslim leaders from North Africa and Spain had heard rumors of the famed Imam Malik of Medina, so they sponsored students to travel there and study with the Imam personally. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ is reported to have said, “A time is about to come when people will beat the flanks of camels setting out in search of knowledge but they will not find anyone greater than the scholar of Medinah.” Recorded by al-Tirmidhi.  Imam Malik ibn Anas (d. 179 ah) spent most of his life with knowledge, encouraged from a young age by his parents. And unlike other scholars who traveled much, Malik happened to live at one of the cities that traveling scholars would come and visit often, so he had no need to venture out of Medinah. Hence, he is often referred to as the Imam of the Abode of Migration, since that is where the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ fled to and established the first Islamic constitution and government. Malik was a venerable scholar of hadeeth who had so much reverence for the Prophet’s words that he would often bathe and perfume before teaching. He published the first highly respected and circulated compilation of hadeeth that is still studied today, called al-Muwaṭṭa’. Ultimately, his most well-known students would go [back] to North Africa and Spain and spread his teachings. Till today, most African Muslims consider themselves followers of the Maliki madhab.

As for Imam Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shaafi’ee (d. 204 ah), he was a descendent of one of the Prophet Muhammad’s uncles and was born in Gaza. He was raised primarily by his mother who moved to Mecca where he even lived a while with the Bedouins to become a first-rate scholar of the Arabic language. He memorized the Quran at age 7 and Malik’s al-Muwatta’ by age 10. He studied in Medinah for 16 years under the tutelage of Imam Malik and mastered the school of hadeeth fiqh. Then he studied under Abu Hanifa’s top students to understand the school of rationalization and debate. He created a new school infusing the strengths of the two leading divergent schools. His most famous contribution to Islam, other than the school named after him, is pioneering the study of fiqh derivation, its conditions and guidelines, forever revolutionizing how Islam is studied. Imam al-Shafi`i ultimately settled in Egypt, and his school spread worldwide but has the strongest presence in northern Egypt and Levant, the Gulf of Aden, and Southeast Asia.

As for Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 241), he was also of Arab background. His base was Baghdad but he travelled extensively throughout the Muslim world in search of hadith. He learned fiqh primarily from Imam al-Shafi’i. Imam Ahmad gained notoriety in many areas of Islamic studies, which led some historians with little experience of his fiqh school to misclassify him as exclusively a hadeeth scholar or theologian. His most memorable trial came when refusing to acknowledge the Caliphs’ attempts to officiate a philosophical creed in Islamic garb but subtly entailing atheism. Like all the imams, the elite feared him, the commoners loved him, and tens of thousands gathered for his funeral and burial. His theological and fiqh school were put into writing a couple generations later by Abu Bakr al-Khallāl (d. 311) who gathered Ahmad’s knowledge from his direct students. His school has remained popular in the Jordan and Syria region for a while as well as the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula, and today, is the official school of Saudi Arabia.

What each of these madhabs ultimately consists of are collections of opinions regarding how to properly practice Islam. It is impractical for every Muslim farmer, artisan, doctor, soldier, public official, etc., to memorize the Qur’an, the voluminous texts of the Sunnah, tafseer and learn the minute facets of the Arabic language—all of that takes years and years, just like any other specialty, perhaps even decades. Thankfully, there are scholars that have done that research for the rest of us, written it down, and simplified it for the layman.

There were other scholars who developed schools based on their understandings of the Islamic texts and methodology of addressing new issues, however these four are the only ones whose schools remain extant, studied and practiced in respectable numbers by Sunni Muslims today.

Even though those four scholars ultimately derived their rulings from the same sources, they differed on various issues of how to practice Islam properly.