A Note on the Fact That Some Schools, Due to Their Excessive Expansion in Questioning, Imagine Matters That Do Not Cross the Mind

The Shaykh : On this occasion, I say that the schools that are most expansive in questioning about certain matters that are impossible to occur, or if they do occur are very rare, are the later Hanafis. They assume issues that sometimes do not cross the mind. The ruling that results from answering a hypothetical question, which was hypothetical in their time, then becomes a reality after them. However, the ruling they issued remains effective and practiced among people. The legal ruling is overturned because the imagined question differs somewhat from reality. I mentioned this in a discussion that took place between me and some muftis who deny the claim of following and independent legal reasoning and the like. I said to him, this is a necessity because now events happen and cases occur that were not known before. So where do the scholars take the answer to these cases that have happened? It is necessary to return to the Book and the Sunnah in them. He said, like what? I said to him, like praying in an airplane. What is the ruling on praying in an airplane? He said, it is permissible, obviously. I said to him, why? He said, because praying in an airplane is like praying on a ship, and praying on a ship is explicitly permitted, unless one fears drowning. The thing that separates the ship from the land is that the land is a place for prayer, so the land is a place for prayer. Therefore, the one who prays on the ship is like the one who prays on the land, because the separator between the ship and the land is water. Likewise, the separator between the airplane and the land is air. This is what he said. No problem, we reached an agreed-upon result with him. But where is the point? I said to him, you contradicted the school. He said, why? I said to him, because al-Rafi'i al-Kabir says in his book *Sharh al-Wajiz* for Imam al-Ghazali, or al-Ghazali, that if a man prays on a swing that is not suspended from the ceiling and not supported by the ground, his prayer is invalid. And this swing is the helicopter in particular. I said, I have not seen this text. I said to him, go back to al-Rafi'i's *Sharh al-Wajiz* and you will find this text in it. And he who memorizes is a proof against he who does not memorize. The point is that this mufti, if... why? Because he conditions that one must be praying on the ground, and this one is praying between the sky and the ground. So, glory be to Allah, you look at the Sunnah, how sweet it is: "And any man of my Ummah who is overtaken by prayer, his mosque and his purification are with him." This is the virtue of the Sunnah.