Islam's Reformers .pdf

qiyâs or ijmâ’.” [1] The anti-madhhabite people say, “The gate ofijtihâd cannot be closed. Ijtihâd can be done anytime,” thus theytry to change the religious knowledge. They refer to Shâh Walî-Allah as a support for these words. However, Shâh Walî-Allahclearly writes above that he never admits ijtihâd and qiyâs in thereligious knowledge and also shows that the words andreferences of such non-madhhabite people as Mawdûdî andSayyid Qutb are unsound.“Read the hadîth books of al-Bukhârî, Muslim, Abû Dâwûdand at-Tirmidhî and the Hanafî and Shâfi’î fiqh books! Hold fastto the books ’Awârif al-ma’ârif and Ar-risâlat an-Naqshibandiyya! These great people wrote about the dhikrand yâd dasht so clearly that there is no need to learn themfrom a murshid. It is a very great blessing to attain the grades ofthe great men of tasawwuf” [2] ... “I dreamt of Rasûlullah (’alaihi’s-salâm). I asked him which madhhab and tarîqa were betterand which he liked best. ‘All the madhhabs and tarîqas areequal. None is superior to another,’ he said.” [3]“Muslims have parted into madhhabs. The scholars reportedthe religion that had come from Rasûlullah (’alaihi ’s-salâm).They agreed on most of the teachings, and there remainedsome insignificant disagreements on a minor part. But themajority of scholars held on to the right path and rejected thosewho deviated from their path. From fear, the separatists eitherhid themselves or behaved double-facedly, which showedthat they were the people of bid’a. We should hold fast to theteachings on which the right madhhabs agreed, and we shouldnot deny the ones on which they disagreed. He who says that itis fard to follow the madhhab of a certain person who was not aprophet becomes an unbeliever; Islam had existed before thatperson was created, and fiqh scholars had preached it. Muslimshave always followed one of the right madhhabs, for they havebelieved that the imâm of the madhhab correctly reported thereligion coming from Rasûlullah (’alaihi ’s-salâm). My heart feelsthat it would be good to compare the present teachings of thetwo most widespread madhhabs, the Hanafî and Shâfi’î, with[1] Shâh Walî-Allah ad-Dahlawî, At-tafhîmât al-ilâhiyya, v. II, p. 142,Pakistan, 1387 (1967).[2] Ibid. p. 290.[3] Ibid. p. 301.- 179 -