The origin of the disagreement between the schools of jurisprudence is nothing but an extension of the disagreement among the Companions.

The questioner : O Shaykh, may Allah reward you. Regarding the statement of Abu Hurayrah to Abu al-Sa'ib when he squeezed his arm and said to him, "Recite it for yourself, O Persian," what do you say? May Allah reward you.

The Shaykh : What should I say? Is this a report traced to the Prophet or a report stopping at a Companion?

The questioner : It is in *Sahih Muslim*.
The Shaykh: What I asked you was whether it was narrated as a report stopping at a Companion or traced to the Prophet. It is a report stopping at a Companion, not traced to the Prophet, is that correct?

The questioner : Yes

The Shaykh : Reflect! It is a report stopping at a Companion, and the Companions also differed on this issue. The disagreement among the Imams is nothing but a reflection of that disagreement among the Companions. Therefore, if the Companions differed, it is not befitting for Muslims to differ and for each group to be partisan toward some of those Companions, because the opposing group can say, "This is Ibn Mas'ud, for example, who says there is no recitation behind the Imam," and there are many such cases. Rather, we should now be free from the disagreement that existed among the Companions and was inherited by those who came after them. However, we may differ from the early generations because we have been able to know the evidence of the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali schools, and perhaps other schools, because the Sunnah reached us from the Imams who collected the hadith and facilitated access to it through their blessed lives and their great and intensive efforts, as they traveled through the lands east and west and presented it to us as a readily digestible morsel. We should present any disagreement, whether old or new, to this Sunnah, as is explicit in the Qur'an in the saying of Allah the Exalted: No one can claim that the Companions agreed on the obligation of recitation in the loud prayers, which is the position of the Shafi'is, or that they agreed on the obligation of silence in the loud prayers, as is the position of Ahmad ibn Hanbal and those who followed him, such as Ibn Taymiyyah and others, or that they agreed that silence behind the Imam is obligatory in both the loud and quiet prayers, as the Hanafis say. No one can claim that all the Companions, collectively, were on the position of any of these three schools. We can all be certain that some of them held the view that reciting al-Fatihah behind the Imam is obligatory, while others held that silence behind the Imam in the loud prayers is obligatory. Therefore, since the issue was one of disagreement and contention, the verse mentioned above applies to us. In light of that, we should study the hadiths in their totality, keeping in mind that Abu Hurayrah said so, which is different from when he narrated, for narration is one thing and opinion is another.