Why Did They Become Muslims

ta’âlâ not to let my Umma reach a consensus on dalâlat
(something wrong, aberration, heresy). He accepted my
entreatment.” Another hadîth-i-sherîf reads as follows: “Allâhu
ta’âlâ has protected you against three things: First; He has
protected you from unanimity on dalâlat. Second; a Muslim who
dies from a contagion will earn as much thawâb (blessings) as if
he attained martyrdom. Third; if two sâlih (pious, devout)
Muslims attest to a Muslim’s goodness, that third Muslim shall
enter Paradise.” And there is another hadîth-i-sherîf which states,
“The disagreements among my Sahâba, (on some minor details
pertaining to religious practices,) are (the fruits) of (Allâhu
ta’âlâ’s) compassion over you.” Another similar hadîth-i-sherîf
states, “Disagreements among my Ummat, [which gave birth to
different ways, Madh-habs, in matters pertaining to acts of
worship,] is compassion (of Allâhu ta’âlâ).” As his Ummat
(Muslims) exert themselves to find the truth and the right way,
differences of opinion take place among them. Their exertions
move (Allâhu ta’âlâ’s) compassion. This hadîth-i-sherîf has been
denied by two sorts of people. The first one is a person called
‘mâjin’, and the second sort is termed ‘mulhid’. Mâjin is a
deceitful person who tries to exploit the religion for the
realization of his worldly aspirations. And mulhid is a heretic who
has become a disbeliever by contorting the meanings of âyat-ikerîmas
in a way as it suited his mundane advantages. As Yahyâ
bin Sa’îd observes, the Islamic scholars make things easy.
Whereas one of them says that something, (an act, behaviour,
etc.,) is halâl (permitted by Islam), another one says that it is
harâm (forbidden). Sometimes, while they say to pious people
that a certain behaviour is halâl, at times of mischief they say,
‘harâm’ about the same behaviour.
As the hadîth-i-sherîfs quoted above indicate, the ijmâ-iummat,
which means a consensus reached by those profound
scholars called ‘mujtahid’, [1]
is one of the Adilla-i-sher’îyya. In
[1] Ijtihâd means to infer meanings from the figurative âyat-i-kerîmas in
the Qur’ân al-kerîm. A scholar who is learned enough to perform
ijtihâd is called a mujtahid. Performing ijtihâd requires first learning
the basic essentials of Islam, the Qur’ân al-kerîm, all the hadîth-isherîfs
with all the particulars and details entailed, such as the time of
revelation of each âyat-i kerîma, where and upon what event it was
revealed, the âyat-i-kerîmas that invalidated others, which ones
invalidated which ones, and so forth, learning all the scientific
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