Madhhabs for Dummies
…and the Science of Transmission in Islam
All praise and thanks is due to Allah Who guided me and gave me a semblance of knowledge. I pray He grants me even more guidance, for I have much to learn and that He allows me to touch the hearts of others by following the noble example of His Beloved ﷺ , upon whom I ask there be an abundance of peace.
Introduction and Objective
It’s quite an unfortunate reality that a large segment of the western Muslim community — particularly the youth, has become quite disconnected from the vast authentic scholastic tradition of our faith. Despite being a layperson, I’ve found myself answering the same basic questions regarding the systematic preservation and practices of the Islamic tradition repeatedly. At one point, I unintentionally had the exact same conversation about these issues at least four or five times in the same week, each of which was with different groups of friends. The overall number of times I’ve had to explain these concepts has been innumerable. As such, I thought it would be useful to consolidate my approach in explaining the need for and purpose of schools of thought, or madhahib in a concise article.
There is no shortage of scholarly resources that can be cultivated in addressing this topic. My aim here is not to usurp those resources but to bridge the gap of scholarly language as I’ve found that reading scholarly sources with advanced diction is repellent to beginners. This is a unique article on a classical Islamic concept by one of the youth, for their fellow youth. Before diving in, I simply can’t emphasize enough that this article is coming from a layperson who at best has an aspiration for higher learning (in sha Allah), but is by no means an authoritative, nor a comprehensive voice on the matter.
With this article, I aim to explain what a madhhab is and justify the importance of following one. I will touch upon the basics of transmission (isnad), and the principles of jurisprudence (usul al-Fiqh) as this aids in the understanding of the encapsulation and consistency in our tradition. In essence, I really aim to expose a small picture of how much we don’t know about our religion.
Are you hyped?
Then let us Begin !!!
Typically when I initiate this conversation, I like to frame the context of this discussion and ask a key question. Do you agree that Islam should be followed accurately?
This might come off as a strange question. Any sane Muslim will answer in the affirmative — yes. What is important here is not this question per se, but that which is entailed by the word accuracy. What are the metrics and principles used to establish accuracy? How does one obtain the qualifications to assess these metrics? Do ‘I’ possess such qualifications?
Allah tells us in the Quran,
“Allah has indeed bestowed great blessing upon the believers, for He has sent to them a Messenger from amongst themselves reciting to them Allah’s verses, purifying them, and teaching them the Book and teaching Wisdom while before this they were in manifest misguidance” (The Clear Quran 3:164).
All Muslims will agree that the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is Allah’s beloved messenger who brought us the Quran and taught us its meanings. If anyone knows the details of these expectations called to by the Quran, with not just accuracy, but absolute perfection, it is our beloved Prophet ﷺ.
About 1400 years have passed since his time. Unfortunately, we have never had the blessed opportunity to interact with our Beloved ﷺ directly in this life so how can any of us honestly claim to approximate the Prophet’s ﷺ practice of Allah’s commandments? Given this huge gap in time, in what manner can we engage with his practice now? Some people might jump the gun and rush to quote the blessed, scholarly hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim. What is amusing about this impulsive reflex is that we often forget how these works reached us in the first place.
A super-duper basic intro to the Science of Transmission
With advancements in our technological capabilities, our ability to communicate and encode ideas has been vastly simplified. Humanity learned to mass produce books through the printing press, or more recently develop complex computers and preserve oceans of information on the cloud. With all these rapid developments, we often forget that the most fundamental body of evidence is that of testimony. We observe testimony being applied when a witness provides evidence to the po-lice for a murder crime scene, or when a child stutters recounting the game of tag they played at school to their parents.
Let’s look at a silly example of how we apply testimony in our secular education. I learned in my grade 8 science class the famous m e m e — the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. In reality, I have neither consciously interacted with a mitochondria nor observed closely enough how one works. Rather, I learned this information from my teacher, who gained their credentials in a post-secondary institution. This knowledge was institutionalized after scientists in the past performed, and rigorously tested their experiments, having their work peer reviewed by others. After it was found that this information was accurate, this knowledge was inculcated into the school curriculum which my teacher learned to teach without having necessarily performed the fundamental experiments themselves. As such, we all learned that the mitochondria is in fact the powerhouse of the cell.
The underlying process of conveyance being illustrated in this example is known as ‘transmission’. In this case, a sequence of testimonies had informed my understanding of this subject. The same is likewise true of many of our science or history textbooks and classes which most likely only convey information without their authors having directly interacted with the primary evidences themselves.
Testimony is quite an important concept in Islam. Before the narrations of the Prophet ﷺ were preserved in books, they were transmitted orally. This involved the Prophet ﷺ teaching his followers, his companions (the sahaba) aspects of the religion; in turn, they orally transmitted these traditions among each other and those of the following generation that were their students. The transmission of these narrations between people is known as a chain of transmission (sanad) in which the Prophet ﷺ taught a companion who taught their student, who then taught their student, who then taught their student, who then taught their student — you get the idea — so on and so forth until the text of the hadith (matn) reached the learned people of today or were encoded as scholarly works such as Bukhari and Muslim. To see an example of a hadith and its sanad in action, check out this example here.
You might still be skeptical though… every single game of telephone that you’ve played always ended in a disaster. The phrase that was said at the end of the game was always disgustingly different than innocent words you intended at the very beginning. Humans are fickle — so what then of hadith transmission which is a giant game of telephone over literally a millennium?
The Sciences of Hadith
It should be known that chains of transmission are heavily scrutinized before being deemed acceptable. To be credible, each narrator in the chain must have up-right character, and possess an exceptional memory. Many of these narrators even had an eidetic memory and there have been detailed biographical accounts on just the narrators to ensure they were trustworthy sources. Accounting for credibility of the narrators is known as The Science of Narrators (ilm al-rijal), or The Science of Critiquing (al-jarh wa’l ta’dil) [1].
The result of this deeply intricate process has left us with different classes of strength ascribed to hadith. Many hadith could have a 97% likelihood to be true and be classified as rigorously authentic (sahih), while others could have a grade of 60% accuracy, merely a passing grade, and be classed as weak (da’if). Others could have been even weaker, with a grade of 45%, perhaps due to an untrustworthy narrator in the chain, and consequently be deemed to be fabricated (mawdu). These are just some, among many terms of classification found in hadith studies (ilm al-hadith).
It should be noted that the preservation of the Quran, and a small collection of the hadith worked under a different, but related principle. While I have described singular ‘chains’ of transmission above, the Quran and a small segment of the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ have been mass transmitted (tawattur). In other words, these texts were so widely consistent, that for their narrators to agree upon a lie would be inconceivable [2]. That being said, while only a small portion of the hadith have been mass transmitted in their matn, a larger amount has been mass-transmitted in its meaning.
We can relate to mass transmissions in our own life. Consider this, how do you know a continent like Antarctica exists without having ever been there? The existence of Antarctica has been so widely mass transmitted that we can be necessarily sure that the world has not colluded on a lie and that it is truly a location that exists.
Similarly, every letter and sound of the Quran has been mass transmitted such that we can be sure it was successfully preserved from the Prophet ﷺ. Of course, the process isn’t as simple as these few paragraphs imply; reading of scholastic works would be required to gain a sound understanding of the intricacies. A good text to study would be The History of the Quranic Text which explores the perfect codification and transmission of the Quran and even compares this to the preservation of the other Abrahamic faiths.
Context and the 5 Ws
Allah tells us in the Quran,
It is certainly We Who have revealed the Reminder, and it is certainly We Who will preserve it. (The Clear Quran 15:9)
What is also important to keep in mind is that it was not just the narrations themselves which have been passed on, rather their meanings have been passed on as well. At its core, revelation is largely like a conversation; as with all conversations, there exists an underlying context which constricts possible interpretations of its intended meaning.
As a hyperbolic thought exercise, imagine you and your friend support rivaling soccer (football… if you’re cool) teams. The upcoming weekend, both your fave teams are going to face off and you both are ecstatic. As you hype up the match with each other, you boldly proclaim, “We are going to destroy you !!!”. You intended to express that your favourite soccer team will defeat that of your friend. However, during this proclamation, a random bystander hears this statement and calls the police on you for intended homicide. Do you think it would be an honest assessment on the part of this person to assume that you’re actually going to exert physical violence and kill your friend? This example is obviously quite ridiculous yet the disregard for meanings is something many modern Muslims, and Islamaphobes fall into quite often when it comes to the Quran and Sunnah.
Here are some example questions one might ask to gain context: Why is it that the Prophet ﷺ used ‘this’ wording in his phrasing instead of ‘this other’ wording? Under what circumstances was this Quranic verse revealed? What is the linguistic meaning of this particular word choice? Is the statement figurative or literal? And so on, so forth. Think of the 5 W’s — who, what, where, when and why — when thinking context.
The contexts of our primary texts have been the primary concern of numerous commentaries. This contextual understanding was likewise transmitted through a chain of transmission, and is embodied by works of tafsir.
The Transmission of Sacred Knowledge
Before students of knowledge can independently teach Prophetic knowledge, students would need to obtain an ijazah which is formally known as the right to teach a subject matter themselves. They would only receive this ijazah if sufficient understanding, along with other markers of knowledge were demonstrated. From this, we can conclude that anyone who doesn’t have a sanad back to the Prophet ﷺ, of his teachings and his understandings, really has no right to form or express independent conclusions about applications of these teachings and understandings.
Tying this Back to the Original Question
There are hundreds of thousands of hadith out there, perhaps describing similar or distinct practices/sayings/teachings/traits/interactions (in their correspondence to the Quran) of the Prophet ﷺ, that have been thoroughly evaluated generation to generation through the sanad. To weigh between these evidences, and form conclusions regarding their applications is the concern of jurisprudence (fiqh).
Relevance of Revelation
Before moving on, it might be useful to review what the purpose of Revelation is. The purpose of Revelation is to convey Allah’s conditions and expectations upon us, as His indebted servants. As such, revelation should be a reality we strive to live in its details. What does He ask of us? For example, does He ask worship of us, and if so, in what manner? What are the rules which we must uphold to ensure a fair financial transaction? Are there certain dietary restrictions that we must uphold? What are the laws concerning marriage? Etc. Simply due to the moral nature of actions, every action has an associated ‘legal ruling’ — do our actions conform to Allah’s expectations upon us, being classified as lawful (halal), or not (haram). Or perhaps an action may even be neutral.
All of these questions are examples of fiqh in action. You will notice that for the general aspects of Islamic law, all jurists are in agreement. No two jurists will disagree that one must pray, or that fasting in Ramadan is required. They will however disagree on the finer details of how these commandments are fulfilled. For example, prayer is obligatory, but is reciting the Fatiha behind the imam obligatory? Fasting in Ramadan is obligatory, but does one have to make an explicit intention the night before? These disagreements are known as differences of opinion (ikhtilaf).
This is the part of the conversation where I usually sense dissatisfaction. This is so complicated… wouldn’t it just be easier if I could pick up a book and interpret it myself? Allah tells us in the Quran,
He is the One Who has revealed to you ˹O Prophet˺ the Book, of which some verses are precise — they are the foundation of the Book — while others are elusive. Those with deviant hearts follow the elusive verses seeking ˹to spread˺ doubt through their ˹false˺ interpretations — but none grasps their ˹full˺ meaning except Allah. As for those well-grounded in knowledge, they say, “We believe in this ˹Quran˺ — it is all from our Lord.” But none will be mindful ˹of this˺ except people of reason. (The Clear Quran 3:7)
Allah Himself confirms with us that there are ambiguous verses (and by extension, ambiguously defined practices of the Prophet ﷺ). We should rest content that Allah has arbitrated in this manner by design. Humans are versatile creatures with different temperaments so having a variety of legal rulings is useful as some may be better suited than others. These differences are also a test for us to remain respectful in our disagreements and principled in our applications of legal rulings.
Madhahib, Mujtahids and Usul al-Fiqh
So far, it should be clear that details of Islamic law can be interpreted diversely, yet within a constrained scope. We have enough background knowledge to explore the concepts of Madhahib, Mujtahids and usul al-fiqh.
The eminent scholar, Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller defines the idea of a madhhab quite aptly. He explains,
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. [3]
In this passage, Shaykh Nuh introduces the concept of a mujtahid. A mujtahid is one who possesses the expertise to both derive, and apply an interpretative principle by directly examining primary texts. This process is known as ijtihad. Shaykh Nuh further explains,
[…] ijtihad or “striving to know a ruling” […] does not mean just any person’s efforts to understand and operationalize an Islamic ruling, but rather the person with sound knowledge of everything the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) taught that relates to the question. [3]
These principles allow mujtahid imams to sift this deep ocean of knowledge and assess the weight and relevance of the primary bodies of evidence. Often times, a surface-level reading of the Quran and Sunnah may pose apparent contradictions. It was largely due to these seemingly irreconcilable differences that the science of usul was developed in the first place. One of the lions of our times, Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad elaborates,
The reasons underlying cases of apparent conflict between various revealed texts were scrutinized closely by the early ulama, often amid sustained debate between brilliant minds backed up with the most perfect photographic memories. Much of the science of Islamic jurisprudence (usul al-fiqh) was developed in order to provide consistent mechanisms for resolving such conflicts in a way which ensured fidelity to the basic ethos of Islam. [4]
He later provides an interesting case study as an example of a single applied interpretive principle:
It may also be necessary to look at the position of the narrators of the conflicting hadiths, giving precedence to the report issuing from the individual who was more directly involved. A famous example of this is the hadith narrated by Maymunah which states that the Prophet (pbuh) married her when not in a state of consecration (ihram) for the pilgrimage. Because her report was that of an eyewitness, her hadith is given precedence over the conflicting report from Ibn Abbas, related by a similarly sound isnad, which states that the Prophet was in fact in a state of ihram at the time. [4]
Differing between these hadith would be confusing for laypeople, especially after considering there are numerous such instances of conflicting hadith. However, the interpretation provided by the jurist allows for a principled reconciliation between seemingly conflicting stories.
Its quite clear that a mujtahid‘s knowledge must be extremely vast, and complete. Mujtahids possess a level of Arabic on par with that of the classical Arabs during the time of Prophet ﷺ and a mastery over the hadith. They must apply their principles with strong consistency. They must also have pure hearts, piety and true taqwa as these are the qualities which allow one to objectively assess evidence. Regarding the condition of mastery over hadith, one of the greatest jurists of our history, the illustrious mujtahid, Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal (ra) was asked,
“When a man has memorized 100,000 hadith, is he a scholar of Sacred Law, a faqih?” And [Imam Ahmad] responded, “No.” The man asked, “200,000 then?” And [Imam Ahmad] responded, “No.” The man asked, “Then 300,000?” And [Imam Ahmad] responded, “No.” The man asked, “400,000?” And Ahmad gestured with his hand to signify “about that many” (Ibn al-Qayyim: I‘lam al-muwaqqi‘in, 4.205). [3]
Bukhari and Muslim, while containing what is generally accepted to be the most authentic works, are only but several thousand, and fall far below in the threshold in number set by Imam Ahmad (ra). All who fall under this realllllly high bar, in all its facets must defer to the principles of a mujtahid. As such, the methodology of these mujtahids was codified and represented by a school of thought or madhhab.
There have been many madhahib in our history. Most of them were short lived, and only four have stood the test of time. These are the madhahib of Imam Abu Hanifa (ra) — the Hanafi madhab, Imam Malik (ra) — the Maliki Madhhab, Imam Shafi’i (ra) — the Shafi’i madhhab, and Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal (ra) — the Hanbali madhhab. Each of these schools of thought embody the interpretive principles established and favored by their founders, and were systematically continued, and optimized by succeeding generations of scholars.
Credit should be given to Imam Abu Hanifa (ra) who is the earliest of the four and was the first to develop his madhhab [5]. His principles were determined by examining his consistent derivation in practical and hypothetical case studies. Imam Ash-Shafi’i (ra) also deserves gratitude as he was the first to systematize his preferred set of usuli principles in his Risala [5]; the following generations of scholars followed suite.
Inter-Madhhab Disputes: A red Herring in This Discussion
The complicated reality is that for periods in our history, there were violent inter-madhhab disputes. Studying these disputes as well as the evolution of the madhahib should be conducted through a rigorous historical study. However, these periods of dissonance say nothing about the principles established by the schools of thought. If these disputes lead you to doubt the madhahib system as a whole, just take the example Imam Malik (ra):
[Imam Malik] knew that no one interpretation of Islamic law was perfect and all-encompassing. As such, he refused to allow his fiqh to become official, even under threat of persecution and imprisonment. [5]
The positions of all schools of thought are valid to follow. Its essential for laymen to subscribe to and master one of these schools, so that our duties to Allah can be validly fulfilled, at least with regards to the parts that affect our respective lives. For example, a medical doctor should know the fiqhi rulings that apply to medicine. They don’t necessarily need to know the fiqhi rulings of engineering. It goes without saying, all Muslims should learn the tenets of worship, like that of salah from the perspective of their madhhab.
Madhhab Mixing
By this point, you should be convinced at the legitimacy of the schools of thought but you might wonder why you should only follow one. If all schools of thought are legitimate in their opinions, and you have to respect them all, why can’t you just mix them all up if they’re all considered correct? This is most often what I have found to be the next natural question.
People have some trouble with this concept, so I discovered an unconventional, but clear approach to explaining this issue. Let’s take a case study using two of the madhahib. In this example, we will use the Hanafi and Shafi’i opinions on seafood. The primary evidence in this example is the Quranic verse:
It is lawful for you to hunt and eat seafood, as a provision for you and for travellers. But hunting on land is forbidden to you while on pilgrimage. Be mindful of Allah to Whom you all will be gathered. (The Clear Quran 5:96)
To simplify, the Hanafis rule that only fish are permissible with intra-madhhab disagreement regarding prawns [6]. The principle that the Hanafis assume is that ‘seafood’ implied by this verse pertains to what the Arabs at the time of the Prophet ﷺ considered as seafood, not what modern science has classified as seafood. As such, they considered items like lobster and crab as insect-like and impermissible.
On the other hand, the Shafi’is apply a more textual interpretation. They argue that all seafood is permissible as long as the sea creature is an aquatic animal [7]. So what if I as a Hanafi were to simply conclude that Hanafis should adopt the Shafi’i opinion as their own?
Let’s take another step back for a second. I’ve found that a brief introduction to some concepts from logic is eye opening. Something important to understand here is the idea of premises and conclusions. A premise is an assumption that is made regarding a subject to perform an inference. Here’s a simple example:
P1: All humans like chocolate chip cookies.
P2: Brother Bob is a human.
Conclusion: Therefore, brother Bob likes him some chocolate chip cookies.
As we can see, the conclusion follows from the line of reasoning established from the first two premises. But what if P1 stated that only some humans like chocolate chip cookies. How will this affect the conclusion?
P1: Some humans like chocolate chip cookies.
P2: Brother Bob is a human.
Conclusion: Therefore, brother Bob may or may not like chocolate chip cookies. We can’t really be sure as only some do and others don’t.
The examples were completely irrelevant, but notice that the conclusion in the second example would be nonsensical if placed as the conclusion of the first example and vice versa.
Let’s tie the idea of logic back into the seafood-example. The Hanafis assumed the linguistic implication of ‘seafood’ was that during the time of the Prophet. In contrast, the Shafi’is upheld a universal understanding of the word ‘seafood’. Notice how these are vastly different premises and they lead to different conclusions. Let’s try this using the Shafi’i premises and the Hanafi conclusions and see what happens.
P1: ‘Seafood’ is an all encompassing term encompassing animals which live solely in and die in the sea.
P2: Surah Maidah, verse 96 tells us that ‘seafood’ is permissible for consumption.
Conclusion: Therefore, only fish and prawns are halal…
The Hanafi ruling doesn’t make any sense according to the Shafii reasoning; the same would be true for the opposite. The same is also true for other issues, whether its to do with prayer, or financial transactions, etc.
Therefore, if you’re going to adopt a dispensation from another madhhab, the scholars have outlined procedures to be followed to do so validly. Otherwise, it is simpler to follow one school until you master it!
This should really serve as a point of reflection and appreciation for all of us. Imagine if 1.8 billion Muslims in the world today had to become scholars to practice Islam. Would it really be fair for the farmer in a third world country, trying to make ends meet for their wife and six children, while living under the grips of tyranny and oppression to have to learn a staggering amount of information to come up with a particular conclusion? On a mass scale, this would be quite unrealistic.
The Future of the Schools of Thought
Its worth clarifying that its certainly possible, but extremely unlikely for a new mujtahid imam to arise and independently systematize their own set of precise principles. If this was the case, then it would theoretically be permissible to follow them. However, applying ijtihad for new issues is what is more pertinent in our age especially with vast scientific discoveries in fields that we never imagined. New medicine and technology are vastly altering humanity, so we should examine how our religion interprets such developments.
About 5000 Words Later…
We have briefly explored the field of hadith, recognized there are hundreds of thousands of narrations to consider, acknowledged the crucial role of context when interpreting primary texts, and discussed the pivotal role of the mujtahid. We learned that the madhahib simply establish the principles of its founding mujtahid and are carried across time and improved by generations of jurists.
The article was called ‘Madhhabs for Dummies’, but the actual catch is that we as beginners, including myself, should really be feeling dumber after recognizing how much we don’t know. We should appreciate the mercy of having such a blessed intellectual tradition — proof that Allah fulfilled His promise!
We must strive to rectify our ignorance. Now that you know the importance of the madhahib, its important to be principled in upholding your practice of it. If you don’t have a madhhab, you should slowly ease your way into choosing one. You can read this Seekershub article which outlines how to do so. I hope this article was a nice segue for all of us to structure our practice and connect with our Lord. Please leave feedback, comments and questions below.
References
Each of these scholarly resources have their own footnotes that you can investigate if you are in doubt.
[1] Studies in Hadith Methodology and Literature, pg 33
[2] Studies in Hadith Methodology and Literature, pg 43
[3] Why Muslims Follow Madhhabs? by Shaykh Nuh Ha Mim Keller
[4] Understanding the 4 Madhhabs by Shaykh Abdul Hakim Murad
[5] The Four Imams of Fiqh by Firas Al-Khateeb
[6] What Animals are Halal and Haram in the Hanafi School? by Shaykh Muhammad ibn Adam al-Kawthari
[7] Crabs & Seafood: A Clarification by Ustadh Mostafa Azzam
Extra Resources:
To read more on the validity and epistemology of testimony, Hamza Tzortzis has a wonderful article.
To learn more about the classification and preservation of the Quran and Sunnah, check out The History of the Quranic Text and Studies in Hadith
Methodology and Literature, both by the late scholar, Shaykh Mustafa al-Azami (ra).
I also love this brief but fantastic video by Shaykh Asim Yusuf on the mechanics of transmission.
