in danger of making things lawful and unlawful without proper justification. Some of them preferred
hadiths
from the Messenger of Allah and some of them chose opinion when there was no clear precedent. If they
subsequently learned of a clear
sunna
, they retracted their opinion. That was related of many of the
Companions, including ‘Umar.
After the Companions came their students, the
Tabi‘un
, and two problems arose in their time. One was that
the Muslims divided into parties and groups. The level of disagreement became intense and impassioned.
They were severe with one another and started to accuse one another of disbelief, iniquity and rebellion, and
to threaten one another and to unsheathe the sword. The Community divided into the Kharijites, Shi‘ites,
Umayyads and those who were quiescent in the face of the afflictions which occurred and remained far from
sedition, refusing to become involved in it.
The Kharijites formed different sects: the Azraqites, Ibadites, Najdites and others. The Shi‘a formed into
disparate groups, some of whom had bizarre opinions which took them outside of Islam, even though they
pretended to follow Islam in order to corrupt people. They were not concerned with establishing the
Deen
, but
rather with destroying its basis to restore their old religion and its power and authority – or at least to shatter
Muslim cohesion or to make the Muslims live with intense seditions, and to extinguish the Light of Allah.
The second problem was that Madina lost the unique authority which it enjoyed in the time of the
Companions, especially in the time of ‘Umar which is considered the Golden Age of legal
ijtihad
. It was the
home of the scholars and
fuqaha’
of the Com-panions. They did not leave it without maintaining a scholarly
connection with it. They corresponded regarding problems which arose, because the
sunna
of ‘Umar was to
ensure that the Com-panions of Quraysh were kept within the confines of the Hijaz. The great
Muhajirun
and
Ansar
never left the boundaries of Madina without his permission and he watched over them.
When ‘Umar died, they left for outlying regions. Each group of them became the source of a legal school
which was connected to them and which the people of the places to which they emigrated followed. In the
time of the
Tabi‘un,
there were students of those
fuqaha’
who lived in Madina or other places. Each city had
its
fuqaha’
and their views grew apart as the cities were far apart, each adapting to the customs of his region
and having to deal with the particular problems which troubled it. So people followed the path of those
Companions who were in that region and transmitted the
hadiths
which they reported and which therefore
became current among them. In this way various methods of legal thought appeared in different places, all
derived from the Qur’an and the
Sunna
of the Prophet.
As we have seen, in the time of the Companions there were basically two schools. In one of them, opinion
dominated and transmission played a lesser role, though, if a clear
sunna
emerged, opinion would be
abandoned in favour of it. The other relied almost totally on transmission and preferred not to give a
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