Shariah, Fiqh
and the Sciences of Nature - Part 3
By Professor Nazeer
Ahmed
CA
In the dialogue between civilizations, the Shariah
occupies a central place. Fiqh is the historical
dimension of the Shariah and is the rigorous attempt
to apply the Shariah in the matrix affairs. The
Shariah is immutable. Fiqh, on the other hand,
is dynamic. It is a moving principle of history
and has evolved into different schools. The words
Shariah and fiqh ought not to be used interchangeably.
In this article we summarize the development of
Maliki and Shafi’i fiqh and provide an introduction
to the Mu’tazilite school. An understanding
of this history helps in inter-civilizational
dialogue and it helps explain some of the differences
within the large and diverse global Islamic community.
The Madinite School was much more orthodox in
its approach to fiqh. While Kufa, the city of
Imam Abu Haneefa, was a border town, subject to
the influence of other civilizations, Madina was
the cradle of Islam and the city of the Prophet.
The Madinites attached the utmost importance to
the Sunnah of the Prophet. The first and foremost
scholar of the Madinite School was Imam Malik
bin Anas (d. 795). He spent most of his life in
Madina and like Imam Abu Haneefa in the previous
generation, took issue with the ruling Abbasids
on juridical matters, for which he was publicly
flogged and imprisoned. Concerned that the Istihsan
of Imam Abu Haneefa would open the gate to unwelcome
innovation, Imam Malik tightened the rules of
Ijma. While accepting the primacy of the Qur’an,
he insisted on the consensus of all of the Companions
as the basis of verified Sunnah (as compared to
Imam Abu Haneefa who maintained that the consensus
of some of the Companions was a sufficient basis
for jurisprudence).
The Maliki School spread through Egypt, Libya,
Algeria and Morocco through the Hajj. The North
African Hajis visited Mecca and Madina and learned
their fiqh from the Madinites. They had little
reason to visit Kufa and Iraq and therefore had
only occasional contact with the Hanafi School.
According to Ibn Khaldun, the cultural affinity
between the unsettled Berbers of North Africa
and the Bedouins of Arabia also contributed to
the acceptance of the Maliki School in Libya and
the Maghrib.
From North Africa, the Maliki School spread to
Spain and was the only official School sanctioned
by the Umayyad dynasty in Cordoba. As Islam spread
from the Maghrib into sub-Saharan Africa through
trade routes, the Maliki School also spread to
Mauritania, Chad, Nigeria and others countries
of West Africa. Most Africans today follow the
Maliki School. The brief interlude of Fatimid
rule in Egypt in the 9th and 10th centuries did
not materially change the contacts between the
Berbers of the Maghrib and the Bedouins of Arabia
and the Maliki School returned to North Africa
when Salahuddin captured Egypt from the Fatimids
(1170 CE).
The first one to establish a formal school of
fiqh was Imam Muhammed ibn Idris al Shafi’i
(d. 820 CE). Through his Risalah (journal), he
was the first scholar to systematically document
the basis of fiqh and critically examine its methodology.
A Syrian by birth, Imam Shafi’i traveled
to Madina and Kufa and learned from the disciples
of Imam Abu Haneefa and Imam Malik. He took issue
on certain of the positions taken by the Hanafi
and Maliki jurists and adopted an independent
position on some of the methodologies. According
to Imam Shafi’i, the sources of fiqh are:
(1) The Qur’an, (2) The Sunnah of the Prophet
(on the issue of the Sunnah, Imam Shafi’i
relaxed the rules of the Maliki School and suggested
that the Sunnah was a valid source of jurisprudence
even if it was supported by a single, reliable
source. (3) Qiyas, provided that it was rigorously
supported by prior cases decided on the basis
of the Qur’an and the Sunnah. Imam Shafi’i
did not accept Istihsan as a valid source of fiqh.
Thus Imam Shafi’i’s positions were
somewhat less orthodox than those of Imam Malik,
but not as liberal as those of Imam Abu Haneefa.
The Shafi’i School spread to Egypt, the
Sudan, Eritrea, East Africa, Malaya and the Indonesian
Islands. Like the Hanafi School, the Shafi’i
School produced many brilliant scholars. One of
them, the great Abu Hamid al Gazzali (d. 1111
CE), not only influenced the development of fiqh,
but also changed the course of Islamic history
through his brilliant dialectic.
It is appropriate at this stage to refer to the
Mu’tazilite School of thought and its counterpoint,
the Asharite School. As the Muslims captured Syria,
Egypt and North Africa, they became custodians
of not just the people of those countries, but
their ideas as well. Most of those lands had been
under Eastern Roman or Byzantine control where
Greek thought was dominant. Historically, the
term “Greek thought” is applied to
the collective wisdom and classical thinking of
the people of the eastern Mediterranean, which
includes a broad geographical arc extending from
Athens in Greece through Anatolia, Syria, Egypt
and Libya. Greek civilization extolled the nobility
of man and placed human reason at the apex of
creation. Plato, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Euclid and
Archimedes are some of the household names from
the galaxy of thinkers produced by this civilization.
The enduring achievement of Greek thought is that
it perfected the rational process and left its
lasting legacy for humankind.
The Muslims were the first inheritors of Greek
thought. It was through the Muslims - more specifically
the Spanish Muslims - that rational thought reached
the Latin West. And it was only after the 12th
century that the West woke up from its slumber
and adopted the Greek civilization as its own,
while about the same time, Muslims turned away
from rational thought towards more esoteric and
intuitive thinking.
The early Muslims not only adopted the rational
approach but set out with enthusiasm to explain
their own beliefs in rational terms. Questions
relating to the nature of man, his relationship
to creation, his obligations and responsibilities,
as also the nature of Divine attributes were tackled.
No Muslim scholar would embark on an intellectual
effort unless his approach had a basis in the
Qur’an. The rationalists saw a justification
for their approach in Qur’anic verses ("Behold!
In the creation of the heavens and the earth…There
are indeed signs for a people who are wise”,
Qur’an: 2,164) and in the Sunnah of the
Prophet. Indeed, the Qur’an invites human
reason to witness the majesty of creation and
reflect on its meaning and understand the transcendence
that suffuses it. The philosophical sciences that
evolved as a result of this effort are referred
to as Kalam (discourse, usually a religious discourse).
Sometimes, Kalam is vaguely translated as Theology,
but Theology as a science never caught on in Islamic
learning as it did in Christianity, because the
Muslims strove and succeeded in preserving the
transcendence of God. Christianity adopted the
position that God is knowable in person and is
hence accessible to human perception. The Muslims,
despite the philosophical challenges of the Greeks,
succeeded in maintaining the position that God
is knowable by His names, attributes and through
the majesty of His creation, whereas His transcendence
is hidden by His light.
The first Islamic scholar who tackled questions
of Islamic belief from a rational perspective
was Al Juhani (d. 699 CE). Note that the rational
approach places human reason at the apex of creation
and makes the world knowable. Al Juhani maintained
that men and women not only have the capacity
to know creation through their reason, but also
have the capacity to act as free agents. Belief
is the result of knowledge and understanding.
Indeed, humankind has the moral imperative to
understand God’s creation. Man, as a rational
being, is mandated not only to understand the
world, but also to act on it using his free will.
Thus Al Juhani’s views bestowed upon humankind
reason and responsibility. Heaven and hell were
consequences of human action. This school of philosophy
was known as the Qadariya School (root word q-d-r,
meaning power or free will. The Qadariya School
of philosophy is not be confused with the Qadariya
sufi brotherhood, founded by Shaykh Abdul Qader
Jeelani of Baghdad, in the 12th century).
The Qadariya approach, when pushed to the limit,
takes God out of the picture of human affairs
in as much as it makes heaven and hell mechanistic
and solely predicated upon human action. This
was unacceptable to the Muslim mind. Furthermore,
the rationalists overreached themselves and applied
their techniques to the Qur’an itself. To
preserve the transcendence of God, they came up
with the absurd postulate that the Qur’an
was “created” in time.
Reaction from the more orthodox quarters was bound
to surface and this happened with the emergence
of the Qida (pre-destination) School. The founder
of this School was Ibn Safwan (d. 745 CE). According
to Ibn Safwan, all power belongs to God and man
is predetermined in his actions, good and evil,
as well as his destination towards heaven or hell.
Like the Qadariya School, the Qida School sought
its justification in the Qur’an (“Say!
I have no power over any good or harm to myself
except as God wills”, Qur’an, 7:188)
and the Sunnah of the Prophet.
The battle lines were now drawn. Like the Christian
civilization in earlier times, the Islamic civilization
was just beginning to come to grips with Greek
rationalism. What was going to be the outcome?
The answers were not clear and were hidden in
the womb of the unknown future. Both Imam Ja’afar
as Saadiq and Imam Abu Haneefa were well aware
of the arguments of qida and qadar, but stayed
clear of being drawn into its controversies.
Wasil ibn Ata (d. 749 CE) combined, developed
and articulated the Qadariya Schools into a coherent
philosophy, which came to be known as the Mu’tazilah
School. We may also look upon the Mu’tazilah
School as the first response of Islamic civilization
to the challenge of Greek thought. This School
flourished for almost two hundred years and at
times was the dominant School of thought among
Muslims. Its influence was comparable to the Schools
of Imam Abu Haneefa, Imam Ja’afar as Saadiq
or Imam Malik. The Caliph al Mansur adopted the
Mu’tazilite doctrine as court dogma (765
CE) and for almost a hundred years, the Mu’tazilites
guided the intellectual ship of Islam until they
were disowned and repudiated by the Caliph al
Mutawakkil (845 CE).
The Mu’tazilite School was challenged by
Imam Hanbal (d. 855) and Hasan al Ashari (d. 935)
and was finally vanquished by al Gazzali (d. 1111).
This battle of ideas had a profound impact on
Islamic history. It influences Muslim thinking
even to this day. (To be continued)
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