8-Belief and Islam - Hakikat Kitabevi

superfluous mind, and many more virtues. Ahead of all these
virtues was taqwâ. Next came the Divine Light in their hearts.
With the help of these virtues, our mujtahid imâms understood
what Allâhu ta’âlâ and Rasûlullah meant in their words, and, as
for those they could not understand, they showed [solutions for]
them through qiyâs. Each of the four a’immat al-madhâhib
informed that he did not speak out of his own opinion and said
to his disciples, ‘If you find a sahîh hadîth, leave my word aside
and follow Rasûlullah’s hadîth!’ Whom our a’immat al-madhâhib
told this were profound scholars who were mujtahids like them.
These scholars were the mujtahids of tarjîh (ability to distinguish
between) who knew the documentation of the four madhhabs.
They studied the documents and the transmitters of the hadîth
on which the madhhab imâm had based his ijtihâd and those of
the newly encountered sahîh hadîth, and examined which was
said later and many other conditions, and thus understood
which was to be preferred (tarjîh). Or, the mujtahid imâm [the
imâm al-madhhab] decided about a problem (mas’ala) through
qiyâs because he did not know the hadîth which would
document [or solve] it, and his disciples, finding that hadîth,
decided differently. Yet, while employing such an ijtihâd, the
disciples did not go beyond the rules of the imâm. Those
mujtahid muftîs who succeeded them gave fatwâ in this
manner, too. As it is understood from all that has been written
here, those Muslims who have been following the four a’immat
al-madhhâhib, and the mujtahids who were educated in their
madhhabs, have been following the rules of Allâhu ta’âlâ and
His Messenger. These mujtahids understood the rules in the
Qur’ân al-kerîm and the Hadîth ash-sherîf, which nobody else
could understand, and conveyed what they understood.
Muslims have been living up to what mujtahids understood and
communicated from the Nass, that is, the Book and the Sunna.
For, Allâhu ta’âlâ declares in the 43rd âyat kerîma of sûrat an-
Nakhl, “If you do not know, ask those who know.” [1]
[1] This âyat shows that not everybody can understand the Book and the
Sunna correctly. It commands those who cannot understand them not
to try personally to understand the Qur’ân al-kerîm or the Hadîth ashsherîf
but to learn them by asking those who have understood them. If
everybody had understood the meanings in the Qur’ân al-kerîm and the
Hadîth ash-sherîf correctly, the seventy-two heretical groups would not
have appeared. All of those who started these groups were deeply
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