IB World Religions 5.4.1. Where the Doctrines Came From: Qur'an, Hadith and the Scholars of the Shari'ah Notes

5.4.1. Where the Doctrines Came From: Qur'an, Hadith and the Scholars of the Shari'ah

The sources of doctrine

1. Muslims hold that doctrine is derived rather than invented. What a Muslim must believe and do is taken from what Allah has revealed and from what the Prophet Muhammad taught.
2. The classical scheme lists four usul, meaning roots: the Qur'an, the sunnah of the Prophet, ijma' or the agreement of the scholars, and qiyas or reasoning by analogy.
3. The first two are called revealed sources and the last two derived, since ijma' and qiyas draw conclusions out of the first two rather than adding new revelation.
4. Muslims distinguish shari'ah, the path Allah has laid down, from fiqh, the scholars' understanding of it. Shari'ah is held to be perfect, while fiqh is human work and can be argued with.
5. That distinction is why Muslims can differ in practice while holding one revelation. Disagreement between qualified scholars is disagreement about fiqh, not about Allah's law itself.
6. Belief and conduct were studied with different tools. Questions of belief are argued in 'ilm al-kalam, or theology, and questions of conduct in fiqh, or jurisprudence.

The Qur'an as first source

1. The Qur'an ranks first in every school. A ruling carried by a clear Qur'anic text stands, and no other source may overturn it.
2. Much of the Qur'an states belief rather than rule. A famous ayah of Surah al-Baqarah defines righteousness by belief in Allah, the Last Day, the angels, the Book and the prophets, and then by giving wealth away.
3. The legal material is smaller than students expect. Scholars traditionally count around five hundred ayahs bearing directly on rules, out of more than six thousand.
4. Many of those state a principle without a procedure. The Qur'an commands salah repeatedly and never sets out the hours of prayer or the number of units to be performed.
5. Some passages are general and others specific, some absolute and others qualified, so scholars worked out rules for reading one against another.
6. Because the Qur'an leaves the working detail open, Muslims hold that the Prophet's practice is not an optional supplement to it but a necessary one.

Sunnah and hadith as source

1. The sunnah is the second source, and the Qur'an itself grounds its authority by commanding obedience to the Messenger and calling him a fine example to follow.
2. Scholars describe three functions for it. The sunnah confirms what the Qur'an states, explains what the Qur'an leaves brief, and settles matters the Qur'an does not mention.
3. Because the sunnah reaches later Muslims through hadith, the reliability of a report bears directly on the ruling built on it, and a weak report cannot carry an obligation.
4. Schools weigh reports differently. Some accept a single sound report on a question of law, while others require wider transmission before it may qualify a general Qur'anic principle.
5. Shi'ah Muslims add the teaching of the imams, held to preserve the Prophet's own instruction, so the body of source material they work from is not identical to the Sunni one.
6. Both branches insist that the sunnah is not a rival to the Qur'an. Muslims treat it as the Qur'an's authorised explanation, given by the man to whom the Qur'an was sent.

Ijma, qiyas and ijtihad

1. Where the Qur'an and sunnah do not settle a matter, the fuqaha or jurists reason. Ijma', the agreement of the qualified scholars of a generation, is treated as closing a question for good.
2. Qiyas extends an existing ruling by analogy. The prohibition of wine is carried over to other intoxicants, because scholars identify the reason for the ban as intoxication itself.
3. The reasoning has a fixed shape: an original case, a new case, a cause shared by both, and the ruling carried across. Scholars argue mostly about how to identify the cause.
4. Ijtihad is the effort of a qualified scholar to reach a ruling from the sources. Its opposite is taqlid, following a recognised scholar's conclusion without repeating the work.
5. Sunni scholars later spoke of the door of ijtihad narrowing, as the schools matured and most jurists worked inside an established tradition. Many modern Sunni scholars argue that it must open again.
6. Shi'ah jurisprudence puts 'aql, or reason, where Sunni jurisprudence puts qiyas, and holds ijtihad permanently open, so Shi'ah Muslims follow a living scholar rather than a founder long dead.
7. Further tools are used more sparingly, among them istihsan or preferring the fairer outcome, maslahah or public benefit, and 'urf or settled local custom.

Kalam and the written creeds

1. Doctrine had to be formulated as well as law, and it was usually formulated in argument. Early disputes with the Kharijites about who counts as a believer, and later disputes about human freedom and about Allah's attributes, forced Muslims to state positions.
2. The discipline that resulted is 'ilm al-kalam, theology conducted by reasoned argument from the revealed texts. Those who practise it are the mutakallimun.
3. The Mu'tazilah argued that Allah's justice and oneness require that the Qur'an be created and that human beings act freely. Their opponents held that the Qur'an is Allah's uncreated speech.
4. Al-Ash'ari and al-Maturidi shaped the settlements most Sunnis later accepted, defending revealed doctrine using the same reasoning tools their opponents had used.
5. A stricter current associated with Ahmad ibn Hanbal held that the texts should be affirmed as they stand, without speculative explanation of how they are true.
6. The results were written down as short creeds. Works such as al-'Aqidah al-Tahawiyyah list what a Muslim holds in numbered statements meant to be memorised and taught.
7. Shi'ah theology developed in parallel, with its own emphasis on divine justice and on the imamah, the leadership of the imams, and Shi'ah scholars produced creeds of their own.

Doctrine in daily practice

1. Derived doctrine reaches ordinary Muslims through the ulama, the body of trained scholars, rather than through books alone. Most Sunni Muslims follow one of the four madhhabs, the schools of law that grew out of this scholarship.
2. A Muslim with a question asks a mufti, a scholar qualified to give an answer, and what comes back is a fatwa: a reasoned opinion, enforced by nobody, followed because the reasoning and the scholar are trusted.
3. The Friday khutbah, or sermon, carries doctrine into the mosque week by week, and madrasah and weekend school teaching carries it to children.
4. Modern life raises questions the classical books never faced, and scholars answer them by the same method: organ donation, mortgages, vaccines, and the ethics of new technology.
5. Some of this work is now done collectively, by national fatwa councils and by the shari'ah boards that supervise Islamic banks.
6. Shi'ah Muslims follow a marja', a senior living scholar whose rulings they adopt, which keeps the derivation of doctrine attached to a person who can be asked.
7. The chain is the point. A ruling about a mortgage is traced back through analogy and scholarship to a Qur'anic prohibition, and Muslims regard that traceability as what makes the ruling religious.