Does the quran say there should be 4 different madhabs for interpreting sunnah?

Question

Each madhab differing in what they say the true sunnah is?

Answer 1

I think it would be helpful if we explore the answer to another question, before we answer this question:

1-  Was Mohammad Infallible??

To me the Quran clearly states that Mohammad like all other prophets and messengers was just a human being and thus was FALLIBLE. He did commit mistakes. Some of these mistakes were even serious to a good extent and thus we find in no less than 4 places that Mohammad did receive warnings for those mistakes i.e.

1-  Surah 80, when he frowned at a blind man.

2-  Ref. 6:35, when he desired for a miracle as a sign to show people, to convince.

3-  Ref. 17:74, when he had almost bent a little bit to pass on a judgment that was more in line with the desires of influential people.

4-   Ref. 33:37, when Mohammad persuaded Zaid not to divorce his wife, as he was already instructed to marry the divorced wife of Zaid.

5-  There are a few other places with a few more hints, but not so clear.

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The advocators of Hadith, in their subconciousness wish to declare that the great scholars (so called) were infallible. While the case over here is that EVEN the End authority that is being referred to (Mohammad himself) is NOT infallible.

Therefore a more valid question is that, ARE the chain of narrators or the scholars of those times, INFALLIBLE.

I think the OBVIOUS answer is "NO" !!!!!!!, rather ABSOLUTELY NOT !!!

Even if for a short time, we lead ourselves to believe that they are, then we find the authority they are referring to, is himself not infallible.

In Verse no. 31:27 informs us that "GOD does not run out of words".

And the verse 6:38, informs us that "Quran is COMPLETE".

In view of the above, to me it is CLEAR that the ONLY source of guidance is the Quran and it is COMPLETE. There is ABSOLUTELY no room for Hadith and sunnat.

Had it been required it would have been preserved like the Quran and included WITHIN it. And Mohammad would have taken ALL the pains to write them down, as he did for the Quran. And would not have left the task at the hands of unkown people, +200 yrs. after his death.

@Edit:

The last verses of Surah 69, tell us that Mohammad was FORBIDDEN to deliver ANY other teachings besides the Quran. The last verses of surah 69, are extremely strict and the strength of the expression is not translatable in English. Yet anyone can feel the strictness of these verses.

Ref. 69:38 to 52.

Answer 2

Not at all.

3:103 And hold fast, all together, unto the bond with God, and do not make sects.

3:105 And be not like those who have drawn apart from one another and have taken to conflicting views after all evidence of the truth has come unto them:for these it is for whom tremendous suffering is in store

3:32 Say: “pay heed unto God and the Apostle.” And if they turn away - verely, God does not love those who deny the truth.

3:132 And pay heed unto God and the Apostle, so that you might be graced with mercy.

Answer 3

No. there is no such mention in the Quran. It simply says Obey Allah and follow the prophet.

Answer 4

The reason why madhhabs exist, the benefit of them, past, present, and future, is that they furnish thousands of sound, knowledge-based answers to Muslims questions on how to obey Allah. Muslims have realized that to follow a madhhab means to follow a super scholar who not only had a comprehensive knowledge of the Qur'an and hadith texts relating to each issue he gave judgements on, but also lived in an age a millennium closer to the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) and his Companions, when taqwa or "godfearingness" was the norm--both of which conditions are in striking contrast to the scholarship available today.

While the call for a return to the Qur'an and sunna is an attractive slogan, in reality it is a great leap backward, a call to abandon centuries of detailed, case-by-case Islamic scholarship in finding and spelling out the commands of the Qur'an and sunna, a highly sophisticated, interdisciplinary effort by mujtahids, hadith specialists, Qur'anic exegetes, lexicographers, and other masters of the Islamic legal sciences. To abandon the fruits of this research, the Islamic shari'a, for the following of contemporary sheikhs who, despite the claims, are not at the level of their predecessors, is a replacement of something tried and proven for something at best tentative.

The rhetoric of following the shari'a without following a particular madhhab is like a person going down to a car dealer to buy a car, but insisting it not be any known make--neither a Volkswagen nor Rolls- Royce nor Chevrolet--but rather "a car, pure and simple". Such a person does not really know what he wants; the cars on the lot do not come like that, but only in kinds.

The salesman may be forgiven a slight smile, and can only point out that sophisticated products come from sophisticated means of production, from factories with a division of labor among those who test, produce, and assemble the many parts of the finished product. It is the nature of such collective human efforts to produce something far better than any of us alone could produce from scratch, even if given a forge and tools, and fifty years, or even a thousand.

And so it is with the shari'a, which is more complex than any car because it deals with the universe of human actions and a wide interpretive range of sacred texts. This is why discarding the monumental scholarship of the madhhabs in operationalizing the Qur'an and sunna in order to adopt the understanding of a contemporary sheikh is not just a mistaken opinion. It is scrapping a Mercedes for a go-cart.

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“Originally, you are commanded to obey Allah’s commands expressed in the Qur'an and in the Sunnah. The early generations of Islam used to abide by these two sources. After the third century A.H. people started categorizing themselves to different schools and sects.

In this case, you are to follow the Qur'an and the Sunnah; it is accessible for any Muslim who wants to know the truth.

These schools are the Islamic schools of Jurisprudence. During the time of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, his Companions, may Allah be pleased with them all, would go to him whenever they had a question and he would answer them. After the demise of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, they used to go to the Rightly- Guided Caliphs, may Allah be pleased with them, and other prominent Companions to answer their questions.

When Islam spread in other lands of the Near East and many more people entered into the fold of Islam, there were many questions that came from different sides, so we had a group of scholars who took it upon themselves to study the Qur'an and the Sunnah and answer people's questions.

There were some who became very prominent and well-known and had a large number of students. These students carried on the methodology of their teachers in answering Islamic questions. Thus, came these schools of Fiqh.

There were many schools, but then slowly they all merged into four main schools among the Sunni’s.

Nowadays, most of the Muslims follow one of these four schools and there are also some who do not restrict themselves to any one of them.

Differences among these schools are based upon their methodologies in their interpretation of the Qur'an and Sunnah, but in most cases, the differences are minor. There has been a great deal of rapprochement and interaction within the scholars of these four schools.”

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Answer 5

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.

In a larger sense, a madhhab represents the entire school of thought of a particular mujtahid Imam, such as Abu Hanifa, Malik, Shafi'i, or Ahmad--together with many first-rank scholars that came after each of these in their respective schools, who checked their evidences and refined and upgraded their work. The mujtahid Imams were thus explainers, who operationalized the Qur'an and sunna in the specific shari'a rulings in our lives that are collectively known as fiqh or "jurisprudence".

In relation to our din or "religion", this fiqh is only part of it, for the religious knowledge each of us possesses is of three types. The first type is the general knowledge of tenets of Islamic belief in the oneness of Allah, in His angels, Books, messengers, the prophethood of Muhammad (Allah bless him and give him peace), and so on.

All of us may derive this knowledge directly from the Qur'an and hadith, as is also the case with a second type of knowledge, that of general Islamic ethical principles to do good, avoid evil, cooperate with others in good works, and so forth. Every Muslim can take these general principles, which form the largest and most important part of his religion, from the Qur'an and hadith.

The third type of knowledge is that of the specific understanding of particular divine commands and prohibitions that make up the shari'a. Here, because of both the nature and the sheer number of the Qur'an and hadith texts involved, people differ in the scholarly capacity to understand and deduce rulings from them.

But all of us have been commanded to live them in our lives, in obedience to Allah, and so Muslims are of two types, those who can do this by themselves, and they are the mujtahid Imams; and those who must do so by means of another, that is, by following a mujtahid Imam, in accordance with Allahs word in Surat al-Nahl,

    "Ask those who recall, if you know not" (Qur'an 16:43),

and in Surat al-Nisa,

    "If they had referred it to the Messenger and to those of authority among them, then those of them whose task it is to find it out would have known the matter" (Qur'an 4:83),

in which the phrase those of them whose task it is to find it out, expresses the words "alladhina yastanbitunahu minhum", referring to those possessing the capacity to draw inferences directly from the evidence, which is called in Arabic istinbat.

These and other verses and hadiths oblige the believer who is not at the level of istinbat or directly deriving rulings from the Qur'an and hadith to ask and follow someone in such rulings who is at this level. It is not difficult to see why Allah has obliged us to ask experts, for if each of us were personally responsible for evaluating all the primary texts relating to each question, a lifetime of study would hardly be enough for it, and one would either have to give up earning a living or give up ones din, which is why Allah says in surat al-Tawba, in the context of jihad:

    "Not all of the believers should go to fight. Of every section of them, why does not one part alone go forth, that the rest may gain knowledge of the religion and admonish their people when they return, that perhaps they may take warning" (Qur'an 9:122).

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The slogans we hear today about "following the Qur'an and sunna instead of following the madhhabs" are wide of the mark, for everyone agrees that we must follow the Qur'an and the sunna of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace). The point is that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) is no longer alive to personally teach us, and everything we have from him, whether the hadith or the Qur'an, has been conveyed to us through Islamic scholars.

So it is not a question of whether or not to take our din from scholars, but rather, from which scholars. And this is the reason we have madhhabs in Islam: because the excellence and superiority of the scholarship of the mujtahid Imams--together with the traditional scholars who followed in each of their schools and evaluated and upgraded their work after them--have met the test of scholarly investigation and won the confidence of thinking and practicing Muslims for all the centuries of Islamic greatness.

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Answer 6

True Sunnah is of Allah Allmighty...and that means UNCHANGEABLE SYSTEM..

Both the words Hadith & Sunnah are in the Quran. Both of them refer to God's Sunnah and God's Hadith. There is no such thing as prophet Muhammad's Hadith or prophet Muhammad's Sunnah. Most the Muslims fail to realize that following words other than that of God is defined in the Quran as idolatry (6:19).

SOME VERSES IN THE QURAN PROCLAIMING THE QURAN TO BE THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE HADITH

"Have they not looked at the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and all the things God has created? Does it ever occur to them that the end of their life may be near? Which hadith, besides this do they believe in?" 7:185

"Among the people, there are those who uphold baseless Hadith, and thus divert others from the path of God without knowledge, and take it in vain. These have incurred a shameful retribution." 31:6

"God has revealed herein the best Hadith; a book that is consistent and points out both ways (to heaven and h**l). The skins of those who reverence their Lord cringe therefrom, then their skins and their hearts soften up for God's message. Such is God's guidance; he bestows it upon whomever He wills. As for those sent astray by God, nothing can guide them." 39:23

"These are God's revelations that we recite to you truthfully. In which hadith other than God and His revelations do they believe?" 45:6

"Let them produce a hadith like this if they are truthful." 52:34

"Therefore, let Me deal with those who reject this Hadith; we will lead them on whence they never perceive." 68:44

"Which Hadith other than this do they uphold?" 77:50

THE ARABIC WORD SUNNAH REFERS TO GOD'S SUNNAH AND NEVER AS THE PROPHET'S SUNNAH

"This has been consistently the case with all the messengers that we sent before you, and you will find that our system (Sunnah) never changes." 17:77

"This is GOD's eternal system (Sunnah), and you will find that GOD's system (Sunnah) is unchangeable." 33:62

"Such is GOD's system (Sunnah) throughout history, and you will find that GOD's system (Sunnah) is unchangeable." 48:23

HADITH/SUNNAH - INVENTION OF PROPHET'S ENEMIES

Most Muslims fail to understand the fact that the Hadith and Sunnah DID NOT come out of the prophet's mouth. Hadith and Sunnah are fabrications created by simple minded individuals and the enemies of the prophet, who created stories (fabrications) which allege something took place two hundred years prior to that time. The Quran states clearly that fancy words (hadith/sunnah) are creation of the prophet's ENEMIES.

[6:112] We have permitted the enemies of every prophet - human  and jinn devils - to inspire in each other fancy words, in order to deceive. Had your Lord willed, they would not have done it. You shall disregard them and their fabrications.

Answer 7

The Quran says to follow Ali ibn Abi Talib (as), therefore one religion i.e Islam, and the people who follow Imam Ali are therefore called Shian-e-Ali (as)!

Even if according to u the Qur'an says to follow the Prophet (s), then WHY NOT follow the Prophet and each and every word of His?

Answer 8

The fiqhi religions are a later addition.

  A Muslim is required to use his judgement in deciding a course of action for himself, in the light of Quran and Sunnah. But some highly educated and dedicated ulemaa like Abu Hanifah, Maalik, Shafai, Ibne Hambal have spent a great deal of time in solving problems in following tenents of Islam.

So you do not have to re-invent the wheel. But make sure you have given adequate thought in deciding a matter and Allah will reward you. Even if you make a mistake, you are rewrded and if you arrive at correct decision, you are rewarded twice as much.

Each and every Muslim should like to be called a Muslim rather than Hanafi or Maliki. Allah SWT has chosen this name for us.

                                                        M. Javed Iqbal

Answer 9

no

just LA ILA HA IL LAL LAH

MUHAMMAD RASUL ALLAH