What is a Madhhab? Why is it necessary to follow one?
According to Nuh Ha Mim Keller:
The word madhhab is derived from an Arabic word meaning "to go" or "to take as
a way", and refers to a mujtahid's choice in regard to a number of interpretive
possibilities in deriving the rule of Allah from the primary texts of the Qur'an and
hadith on a particular question. In a larger sense, a madhhab represents the
entire school of thought of a particular mujtahid Imam, such as Abu Hanifa,
Malik, Shafi'i, or Ahmad--together with many first-rank scholars that came after
each of these in their respective schools, who checked their evidences and refined
and upgraded their work. The mujtahid Imams were thus explainers, who
operationalized the Qur'an and sunna in the specific shari'a rulings in our lives
that are collectively known as fiqh or "jurisprudence". In relation to our din or
"religion", this fiqh is only part of it, for the religious knowledge each of us
possesses is of three types. The first type is the general knowledge of tenets of
Islamic belief in the oneness of Allah, in His angels, Books, messengers, the
prophethood of Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), and so on. All
of us may derive this knowledge directly from the Qur'an and hadith, as is also
the case with a second type of knowledge, that of general Islamic ethical
principles to do good, avoid evil, cooperate with others in good works, and so
forth. Every Muslim can take these general principles, which form the largest and
most important part of his religion, from the Qur'an and hadith.
The third type of knowledge is that of the specific understanding of particular
divine commands and prohibitions that make up the shari'a. Here, because of
both the nature and the sheer number of the Qur'an and hadith texts involved,
people differ in the scholarly capacity to understand and deduce rulings from
them. But all of us have been commanded to live them in our lives, in obedience
to Allah, and so Muslims are of two types, those who can do this by themselves,
and they are the mujtahid Imams; and those who must do so by means of
another, that is, by following a mujtahid Imam, in accordance with Allah's word
in Surat al-Nahl,
" Ask those who recall, if you know not " (Qur'an 16:43),
The slogans we hear today about "following the Qur'an and sunna instead of
following the madhhabs" are wide of the mark, for everyone agrees that we must
follow the Qur'an and the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him
peace). The point is that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is no
longer alive to personally teach us, and everything we have from him, whether the
hadith or the Qur'an, has been conveyed to us through Islamic scholars. So it is
not a question of whether or not to take our din from scholars, but rather, from
which scholars. And this is the reason we have madhhabs in Islam: because the
excellence and superiority of the scholarship of the mujtahid Imams--together
with the traditional scholars who followed in each of their schools and evaluated
and upgraded their work after them, have met the test of scholarly investigation
and won the confidence of thinking and practicing Muslims for all the centuries
of Islamic greatness. The reason why madhhabs exist, the benefit of them, past,
present, and future, is that they furnish thousands of sound, knowledge-based
answers to Muslims questions on how to obey Allah. Muslims have realized that
to follow a madhhab means to follow a super scholar who not only had a
comprehensive knowledge of the Qur'an and hadith texts relating to each issue he
gave judgements on, but also lived in an age a millennium closer to the Prophet
(Allah bless him and give him peace) and his Companions, when taqwa or
"godfearingness" was the norm both of which conditions are in striking contrast
to the scholarship available today. The phenomenon of following the shari'a
without following a particular madhhab is like a person going down to a car
dealer to buy a car, but insisting it not be any known make--neither Volkswagen
nor Rolls-Royce nor Chevrolet but rather "a car, pure and simple". Such a person
does not really know what he wants; the cars on the lot do not come like that, but
only in kinds. The salesman may be forgiven a slight smile, and can only point out
that sophisticated products come from sophisticated means of production, from
factories with a division of labor among those who test, produce, and assemble
the many parts of the finished product. It is the nature of such collective human
efforts to produce something far better than any of us alone could produce from
scratch, even if given a forge and tools, and fifty years, or even a thousand. And so
it is with the shari'a, which is more complex than any car because it deals with the
universe of human actions and a wide interpretative range of sacred texts. This is
why discarding the monumental scholarship of the madhhabs in operationalizing
the Qur'an and sunna in order to adopt the understanding of a contemporary
sheikh is not just a mistaken opinion. It is scrapping a Mercedes for a go-cart.
