Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Al-Shafi'i's Principles

Shafi`i

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The Shāfi‘ī madhab (شافعي) is one of the four schools of fiqh, or religious law, within Sunni Islam. The Shāfi‘ī school of fiqh is named after its founder, Imām ash-Shāfi‘ī. The other three schools of thought are Hanafi, Maliki and Hanbali.

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[edit] Principles

The Shāfi‘ī School of thought stipulates authority to four sources of jurisprudence, also known as the Usul al-fiqh. In hierarchical order the usul al-fiqh consist of: the Quran, the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad, ijma' "consensus", and qiyas "analogy". The Shāfi‘ī school also refers to the opinions of Muhammad's companions (primarily Al-Khulafa ar-Rashidun). The school, based on Shāfi‘ī's books ar-Risala fi Usul al-Fiqh and Kitāb al-Umm, which emphasizes proper istinbaat (derivation of laws) through the rigorous application of legal principles as opposed to speculation or conjecture. It is considered one of the more conservative of the four schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

Imam Shāfi‘ī approached the imperatives of the Islamic Shariah (Canon Law) distinctly in his own systematic methodology. Imam Shāfi‘ī, Imam Malik and Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal almost entirely exclude the exercise of private judgment in the exposition of legal principles. They are wholly governed by the force of precedents, adhering to the Scripture and Traditions; they also do not admit the validity of a recourse to analogical deduction of such an interpretation of the Law whereby its spirit is adopted to the special circumstances of any special case. Their followers are accordingly designated as "Ahlu l-Hadith" or "Traditionalists par excellence", while the followers of Abu Hanifa are called "Ahlu r-Ra'i" - the "People of Private Judgement".

Shāfi‘ī is also known as the "First Among Equals" for his exhaustive knowledge and systematic methodology to religious science. His approach to Islamic jurisprudence has become the standard reference of the scholars not only among his School but among others as well. There is a famous Fiqh maxim, "The Shāfi‘iyy are the Pillars of Knowledge of this Religion".

Among the giants of Islam who adopted this school are:-

Imams of Aqidah:

  • Abu Al-Hasan Ash'ari

Imams of Hadith:

Imams of Fiqh:

  • Sheikh Khatib Shirbini
  • Ibn Hajar Haytami
  • Imam Al-Rafi'ie
  • Imam an-Nawawi
  • Al-Hafiz Izzuddin Abdus-Salam
  • Imam Daqiequl-Eid

Imams of Tafser and Seerah:

  • Imam Mawardi
  • Imam Al-Baghawi
  • Imam Fakhruddin ar-Razi
  • Al-Hafiz Ibn Kathir
  • Shaykh Khatib al-Baghdadi
  • Imam al-Baydhawi

Other Leading Scholars and Religious Experts:

  • Imam Jalaluddin al-Mahally
  • Imam Taqiyuddin as-Subki
  • Imam Tajuddin as-Subki
  • Sheikhu l-Islam Zakariyya al-Ansari
  • Imam Ramli
  • Imam al-Ghazzali

[edit] The Imam

Main article: Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi`i

Shāfi‘ī's [150 – 206 AH] full name is Abū ‘Abdu l-Lāh Muhammad ibn Idrīs ibn al-Abbās ibn ‘Uthmān ibn Shāfi‘ī ibn as-Sa'ib ibn ‘Ubayd ibn ‘Abd al-Yazīd ibn al-Muttalib ibn ‘Abd Manaf. ‘Abd Manaf was the great grandfather of Muhammad. Based on this lineage, he is from the Quraish tribe.[1] He was born in 150 AH (760 CE) in Gaza in the same year Imam Abū Hanifa died.[2].

As a member of the school of Medina, ash-Shāfi‘ī worked to combine the pragmatism of the Medina school with the contemporary pressures of the Traditionalists. The Traditionalists maintained that jurists could not independently adduce a practice as the sunnah of Muhammad based on ijtihad "independent reasoning" but should only produce verdicts substantiated by authentic hadith.

Based on this claim, ash-Shāfi‘ī devised a method for systematic reasoning without relying on personal deduction. He argued that the only authoritative sunnah were those that were both of Muhammad and passed down from Muhammad himself. He also argued that sunnah contradicting the Quran were unacceptable, claiming that sunnah should only be used to explain the Quran. Furthermore, ash-Shāfi‘ī claimed that if a practice is widely accepted throughout the Muslim community, it cannot be in contradiction of sunnah.

Ash-Shāfi‘ī was also a significant poet. His poetry is noted for its beauty, wisdom, despite the fact that during his life time he stood off becoming a poet because of his rank as an Islamic scholar. He said once:

و لولا الشعر بالعلماء يزري
لكنت اليوم أشعر من لبيد
For scholars, if poetry did not degrade,
finer than Labīd's I would have said.

However, the beauty of his poetry made people collect it in one famous book under the name Diwān Imām al-Shāfi‘ī. Many verses are popularly known and repeated in the Arab world as proverbs:

نعيب زماننا و العيب فينا
و ما لزماننا عيب سوانا
و نهجو ذا الزمان بغير ذنب
و لو نطق الزمان لنا هجانا
We blame our time though we are to blame.
No fault has time but only us.
We scold the time for all the shame.
Did it have tongue, it would scold us.[3]
  1. ^ Ibn Hazm, Jamharah Ansab al-'Arab
  2. ^ al-Zubaidi, Taj al-'Urus under the header 'Shafa'a'
  3. ^ Diwān Imām al-Shāfi‘ī, Damascus, Syria: Karam Publishing House Verses are translated by Salma al-Helali.

[edit] Importance of the Shāfi‘ī School

[edit] Demographics

The Shāfi‘ī school is followed throughout the Ummah and is the official Madhab of traditional scholars and leading authorities of Ahlu s-Sunnah, but is most prevalent amongst Kurds in Kurdistan and Kurds in other parts of the world. It is also practiced by other communities in Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, the Hejaz in Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Maldives, Sri Lanka, State of Kerala and Tamil Nadu in India, the district of Bhatkal in Karnataka in India, most of Sunni Muslims of Konkan in Maharashtra in India, Mauritania, Ethiopia, among Chechens in Kazakhstan, Israel and the Palestinian territories, most of Lebanon, Syria and is the official madhab followed by the government of Brunei Darussalam and Malaysia. Government of Indonesia also use this madhhab for Indonesian Compilation of Sharia. It is followed by approximately 28% of Muslims world-wide, being the second largest School in terms of followers.

[edit] Famous Shāfi‘ī's

[edit] Contemporary Shafi'i Scholars

[edit] References

  1. ^ Short Biography on Habib 'Ali al-Jifri
  • Rippin, Andrew (2005). Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (3rd ed.). London: Routledge. pp. 90-93. ISBN 0-415-34888-9.
  • Calder, Norman, Jawid Mojaddedi, and Andrew Rippin (2003). Classical Islam: A Sourcebook of Religious Literature. London: Routledge. Section 7.1.
  • Schacht, Joseph (1950). The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence. Oxford: Oxford University. pp. 16.
  • Khadduri, Majid (1987). Islamic Jurisprudence: Shafi'i's Risala. Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society. pp. 286.
  • Abd Majid, Mahmood (2007). Tajdid Fiqh Al-Imam Al-Syafi'i. Seminar pemikiran Tajdid Imam As Shafie 2007.
  • al-Shafi'i,Muhammad b. Idris,"The Book of the Amalgamation of Knowledge" translated by A.Y. Musa in Hadith as Scripture: Discussions on The Authority Of Prophetic Traditions in Islam, New York: Palgrave, 2008
Posted by Najihah at 12:18 AM | |

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