Is it permissible for a lawyer to take a fee for reconciling a husband and wife?

The questioner : Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds. This questioner says: A lawyer does not take on cases except those that conform to the Shari'ah of Allah (Mighty and Majestic), such as cases of marriage, divorce, inheritance, and financial maintenance, among others. Is it permissible for him to take a fee for reconciling two disputing spouses instead of filing a lawsuit on behalf of one of them to the court seeking divorce?

The Shaykh : If he is dedicated to this matter first, and he adheres to the Shari'ah rulings second, then in my opinion and in my independent legal reasoning, it is permissible. But I say that this lawyer cannot adhere to that regarding conformity with the Shari'ah rulings, because the rulings currently issued in the Shari'ah courts, with great regret, and we say this frankly, are not based on the Book and the Sunnah. Rather, most of them are based on the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, and in some of them they have departed from the Hanafi school to some other schools. And this departure was not through the Shari'ah method that Islam commands, which is following the best of the two opinions and the strongest of the two pieces of evidence. Rather, it was by following what they claim is what public benefit requires, the temporal public benefit. And here we return to what we hinted at in our previous statement: those who adopt Shari'ah rulings, even if they are from some of the Islamic schools of jurisprudence, do not adopt them by following the Book and the Sunnah, but by following a public benefit they claim. And the scholar or the one who adopts this public benefit cannot estimate it at its true worth and rule that it conforms to the Shari'ah or contradicts it, unless he is one of the people of knowledge of the Book and the Sunnah. And those who established the laws and introduced some amendments, with regret, are from those judges or doctors who studied what is called today comparative jurisprudence. And comparative jurisprudence, as university students know today, is that when the professor doctor addresses an issue where there is disagreement among the imams, he mentions the opinions and mentions the evidence for each opinion, then he does not clarify, he does not perform a preference between one opinion and another. For example, he might say: this opinion is based on a verse in the Qur'an, on the generality of a verse in the Qur'an. The second opinion is based on a hadith, and he might say this hadith is authentic, or he might say this hadith is weak. And at that time, he applies the principles of jurisprudence. And I give you an example: an old disagreement to this day regarding the suckling that makes marriage forbidden. The Hanafi school to this day says that a baby who suckled from a woman other than his mother once became her son through suckling and she became his mother through suckling. While the Shafi'i school says no. Rather, it is five full sucklings. The doctor who teaches this issue in the university says: the argument of Abu Hanifa is . He tells you: the Qur'an is general in "whoever suckled you," and a single suckling is called suckling. But the other school, the Shafi'i school and others, says: it is authentic from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) that he said: . This is a negation and affirmation that two sucklings and two sips do not make marriage forbidden. So it is a clear refutation of the one who took the generality of the Qur'an. What is the reconciliation? We say, as all scholars of the principles of jurisprudence say: the Qur'an is clarified by the Sunnah. So what was general in the Qur'an and was restricted by the Sunnah, it is obligatory to take the restriction. What was a general text in the Qur'an and was specified by the Sunnah, take the Sunnah. And so on. So now, if the lawyer, within the limits mentioned by the questioner, adopts that he does not rule except by the Shari'ah and does not adopt except the rulings related to marriage, wedlock, divorce, and the like, for example, so-and-so suckled from so-and-so, let us suppose, and this is known in some countries, and I do not know specifically here that the ruling there adopts the Hanafi school. In that case, this lawyer will rule with other than the ruling of the Shari'ah, because the judiciary to which he wants to resort rules with this ruling based on the Hanafi school, but it contradicts the authentic Sunnah. Therefore, I say, regarding taking the fee, if he is sincere and if it has become clear to him that the plaintiff is not claiming falsely, even so, he cannot rule by the Shari'ah unless he is knowledgeable of the Book and the Sunnah and he sets the Book and the Sunnah before his eyes. In that case, I will say this will be his case like the Muslim barber who pledged to Allah that he would not shave the beard; he must close his shop and sit in his house. Anyone else?