What is your opinion of those who say that some of the four imams lived in the blessed centuries and that we have been commanded to follow them, so why do we not adhere to the school of one of these imams?

The questioner : Some of the shaykhs responded to us by saying that the imams are those of the early centuries and that it is obligatory for us to follow them.

The Shaykh : As evidence.

The questioner : Abu Hanifa...

The Shaykh : No problem, we are not in history now. Abu Hanifa is, according to some, a Tabi'i (successor), and certainly a follower of the Tabi'un, so he is from the righteous Salaf; but what is the evidence that it is obligatory to follow him specifically? And why should not following Abu Bakr and 'Umar be as we said earlier?

The questioner : But Abu Bakr has no writings, nor is he...

The Shaykh : Nor did Abu Hanifah have any written works, nor did Abu Hanifah have any written works; but what did he actually have? He had followers. Do you see? Does Abu Bakr not have followers? Then, if we assume he has no followers, by Allah, this is a calamity: the best person after the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) has no followers. Then, who comes after him, at the head of our heads and before our eyes, a righteous, pious, and scrupulous scholar, and so on? But why does that superior person have no followers, while this one, who is inferior to him, has followers? It means that we have inverted the truth. The important point is that this issue is extremely difficult from both the religious and the scholarly perspective. Our Lord says: . So, what anyone says, whatever it is, is first of all not from what was revealed to us, let alone being the best of what was revealed to us. Is this clear? Then, if the Imams had agreed on one opinion in every issue, and a person—this is an expression I am turning over in my mind in Arabic, yes, "qami'," meaning worthless—wants to come to us with an understanding that contradicts these Imams, then we reject it. But if we follow one of them while another exists who contradicts him in his opinion, whom do we follow in that case, in the face of the explicit Book of Allah the Mighty and Majestic, which was sent down to solve the problems of people and to resolve the disagreements among them? He says: . Now, let us take an issue that occurs frequently, and we often ask about it. Perhaps among those present, what is on their mind now will be on their mind at other times; because this is an issue, as the jurists say, that causes much distress. For example, a man is taking something from his wife, or from a strange woman, and if he touches her hand while in a state of ablution, does his ablution become invalid or not? Whom do we follow now? Abu Hanifah says it does not become invalid. Al-Shafi'i says his ablution becomes invalid absolutely. Malik says if the touch was with desire, it becomes invalid, otherwise it does not. Bring it up and see: can you follow the three Imams in these contradictory opinions? It is impossible. So what is to be done? Each person goes and says, "My Imam, may Allah be pleased with him." The Hanafi goes and says, "My Imam, may Allah be pleased with him." The Maliki goes and says, "My Imam, may Allah be pleased with him." And the Shafi'i goes and says, "My Imam, may Allah be pleased with him." And we say, "May Allah be pleased with them all." But we cannot follow them all. So, the callers to adhering to the madhhab—no one can say to adhere to it absolutely. And I challenge any person, if he is a very, very great scholar who follows one of these madhahib, or a student, I challenge them all to find a man who is a pure Hanafi, meaning one hundred percent Hanafi; a one hundred percent Maliki; a one hundred percent Shafi'i; a Hanbali likewise. It is impossible. This does not exist in the world. So, if we assume now that a Hanafi contradicted his madhhab in one issue, what is the difference between him and the one who contradicted his madhhab in two issues? There is no difference. Because the reason for urging adherence to what the Shari'ah has established is not that this Imam is more knowledgeable and more learned than us. This is a correct call, but if you contradicted him in that issue, does it mean that you have become more knowledgeable than him? No one says this at all. And in that case, the same answer applies to the one who contradicted the Imam in two, three, or five issues. They are deluding themselves. If they submitted to pure scientific research, it would become clear to them that they are deluded. They imagine that those who call people to follow the Book and the Sunnah, in the fair and just manner we mentioned earlier, are diminishing the value of the Imams. There is no diminishment of the value of the Imams. Why? We say that they are the most knowledgeable, the most understanding, the most juristic, and the closest in rank, and this is an obvious and clear matter. But infallibility belongs to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) alone, to the exclusion of all other people. So, our love for the Imams must not lead us to diminish the value of our following of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) for the sake of our love for the Imams, otherwise we will suffer what befell the Shi'ah, even if it is just a drop in a hundred. What did the Shi'ah do? They forgot the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him); 'Ali (may Allah be pleased with him), al-Hasan and al-Husayn (may Allah be pleased with them); as for the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), he is rarely mentioned, and when he is mentioned, it is only through the People of the House. As for the thousands of Companions, led by Abu Bakr and 'Umar, they have no value. We have gone beyond the Shi'ah when we do not say, "The Messenger of Allah said," but rather, "The madhhab says this, the madhhab says this." Glory to Allah! Why is this rigidity? Out of respect for the Imams. Do you see? Did we respect the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) when we turned away from acting upon his Sunnah? The problem is deep and very wide. Today, take any scholar from those who respect the madhahib, or who respect the Imams verbally and not truly; because true respect does not come by contradicting them in the fundamentals and imitating them in the branches. He says to you, "If the hadith is authentic, then it is my madhhab." But you contradict him in dozens of hadiths that you do not act upon, because the Imam said the opposite. When he said the opposite, he has an excuse, he certainly has an excuse, and he is rewarded in any case. But what is your excuse? His excuse is that he is a Hanafi, and that one's excuse, as we said, is that he is a Maliki, and so on. Where in the Book of Allah is it that this is an excuse that justifies him not to submit to his Messenger in submission? . For this reason, we firmly believe and are ready to reconcile with any person who wants to reach the truth with wisdom and good exhortation. The matter has reached the point where no connection remains between the imitators and the Master of the Prophets and Messengers. The proof is that if you ask him to describe for us the attribute of the prayer of the Messenger, the prayer he performed five times, he cannot describe it to you. Because he can describe to you the prayer of his Imam. And there you will find a vast gap between the one who prays according to the madhhab of one Imam and the one who prays according to the madhhab of another Imam. So, where is the madhhab of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him)? It has become a thing of the past. I am sorry to mention a story, and although I believe it is not realistic, it is sufficient for us to know what following a madhhab has done. There is this book, and in it is the following story, printed and published among the Muslims. The story in which I do not believe in its truth, but it was mentioned as true and real, and it was a strong reason for one of the extremists of the Shi'ah in Egypt to adopt the Hanafi madhhab over the Shafi'i madhhab. What is this story? A man was named in the books of history, one of the princes of Egypt in this long Islamic history. He was a Shi'i, and because of his rule in Egypt and because they were from the People of the Sunnah, they contacted him and conveyed to him the madhhab of the Sunnah, and so on. But he said to them, "I see that you have madhahib, there is the Hanafi and the Shafi'i, and so on. And therefore, I want to enter the Sunni madhhab with insight. What are the madhahib prevalent among you?" They said, "The Hanafi and the Shafi'i." He said, "Bring me two scholars, each representing his madhhab, one Hanafi and one Shafi'i." So they were brought to him. He said to them, "I want each of you to pray the prayer of his madhhab in front of me, so that I can see which prayer is more suitable, and I will adopt that madhhab which describes this prayer." He said, "And here the problem begins." He said, "The Hanafi came, and the case, as they say in our region of Sham, is 'mhabbak,' meaning a fabricated story. A dog's skin was brought, slaughtered, meaning killed, but not tanned, and he wore it. So the flies swarmed over it. The slaughtered, ritually slaughtered dog's skin in the Hanafi madhhab, its slaughter purifies it. With the other Imams, it must be tanned, and this is not the case with all of them either. In any case, he put on the skin and the flies swarmed over it. That other one, the Shafi'i, wore his best clothes. Look at how the case is presented as a fabrication. The Hanafi entered the prayer, and instead of saying "Allahu Akbar," he said, for example, in Turkish, "Tanzim Biyuk," or in Albanian, "Zoti Mek." That Shafi'i said, "Allahu Akbar." Who does not prefer this prayer from the beginning according to that guidance? And to complete the story, to show that it is a fabrication: the Hanafi sat in the prayer for the tashahhud, and instead of reciting the tashahhud or anything else, and instead of saying "As-salamu alaykum," he let it go. The Shafi'i madhhab says that exiting the prayer with the salam is a pillar of the pillars of the prayer, due to his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): . That one said the salam, and that other one, unfortunately, passed gas. Why? He said, "Because the Hanafis say that the obligatory thing is to exit with a 'san'." This 'san' was a 'saba,' or a tasbih, or anything; he exited with a 'san.' And so they brought this example. No animal left in the world would not prefer the prayer of that Shafi'i over this Hanafi prayer. But here you see the bias against the Hanafis. Why? Because the Hanafis, although they said, unfortunately, these things, but this Imam who is praying the prayer of the Hanafi madhhab is taking the lowest prayer among them, not the most complete one. That other one, on the contrary, wore clean clothes and was careful and at ease, and so on. I cannot conceive in my mind that the story could happen in this form. But as I said earlier, what do you think? The book is printed, printed on the basis of, and under it is what? A message called "The Right Madhhab." What is the right madhhab? The madhhab of Imam al-Shafi'i. Any person who wants to see this image presented with these two faces, I tell you, it is the Shafi'i madhhab. But look now, if you study the issue from another angle, for example, Imam al-Shafi'i says it is permissible for a man who commits zina with a woman and she bears him a daughter to marry her. Abu Hanifah says no, this is forbidden, it is not permissible. How can one marry one who is not of his blood? So if it were said to that man, "This is what al-Shafi'i says," naturally he would be repelled. No, on the contrary, here, the issue is exactly the opposite. Therefore, it is not permissible for a person, out of fanaticism for his madhhab, to take the best from his madhhab and argue with it against the others; because the others also have better things, even if from some aspects. And therefore, this will be a cause of sowing discord among those who follow madhahib, and this has happened, and its effects exist even today. One of the effects, for example, is the existence in some major Islamic countries, in the same mosque, of multiple mihrabs, multiple mihrabs, from two to four, depending on the popularity of the madhahib there. We have in Damascus the Umayyad Mosque with four mihrabs, and in other mosques there are two mihrabs. Why? Because there are Hanafis and there are Shafi'is, there are no Malikis and there are no Hanbalis. Why these mihrabs? Each Imam prays in his mihrab because it is disliked to pray behind one who differs in madhhab. So how is it valid for these people to say, "No, we do not follow the Book and the Sunnah, we follow the Imams because the Imams are more knowledgeable"? "A word of truth intended to be used for falsehood." Because the path by which the student of knowledge reaches the knowledge of the opinion of the Imam, whichever Imam it is, is the same path, and better, by which he can reach the knowledge of the opinion of the Master of the Imams, whom we are obligated to follow to the exclusion of others. The path intended for knowing the madhhab of one of the madhahib is the same path, and better, which can be followed to know what the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) was upon, who said, and he saw one day a paper in the hand of 'Umar ibn al-Khattab and asked him about it. He said, "This is from the Torah, a man from the Jews wrote it for him." He said: . So, do you think it is Moses, or Abu Hanifah, or Malik, or al-Shafi'i? What did Moses bring? Moses, the one who spoke with Allah, and one of the resolute among the Messengers, if he were alive, he would have had no choice but to follow me. In my opinion, fanaticism will force these people to say against this hadith, against this hadith, or else they will abandon following a madhhab and follow the Sunnah. What will they say? They will say, "If Moses were alive, he would have had no choice but to follow a madhhab." Glory to Allah! Is it possible for a person to dare to say this? If they say, "No, I seek forgiveness from Allah, if Moses, this man, a prophet who spoke with Allah, would not follow an Imam, because he is more knowledgeable than him. Well, the most knowledgeable among them exists, and he is the Messenger. Now, Moses here needs to follow the Messenger. Submit with us, his obligation is to follow the Messenger, and he does not follow an Imam. So, why do you not follow the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him)?" The answer is, "They are more knowledgeable than us." Our answer returns, "He is more knowledgeable than us in what they agreed upon and consensused. But if they differed, we have known the ruling of Allah" . In short, because of our following in religion of the madhahib, we have been cut off from knowing the guidance of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) in his Sunnah and in his worship. We have, for example, many and very many models, despite the existence of some rulings in some madhahib that match the Sunnah, these Sunnahs have been abandoned. The reason goes back to the fact that some madhahib that dominated in some countries, and this madhhab did not see the Sunnah-ness of that Sunnah, for example, you do not find any mention of that Sunnah in those countries. An example: I know in Syria, there was no mention of the 'aqiqah among the people at all, the first of them being my father (may Allah have mercy on him and forgive us and him). We came here six or seven years ago, the case was the same, they had no news of it, although Imam al-Shafi'i says it and Imam Malik says it. Why? Because the Turkish Hanafi madhhab was the ruling one, and Abu Hanifah (may Allah have mercy on him), by his independent reasoning, said that this is a custom of the pre-Islamic age that was in the time of ignorance, and this is not prescribed. The hadiths that came confirming the obligation, not just recommendation, of the 'aqiqah for a boy, two sheep, and for a girl, one sheep, were hidden from him . These hadiths exist, and many Imams said them. They have no mention in many Islamic countries. Why? Because we left the Sunnah, we no longer care about it. This is a recommended Sunnah, so with time it was erased from the minds of people, so you hardly find today some of the young people who are committed to the Sunnah except that they say to you, "My father did not slaughter for me, what do I do?" I say to him, "The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) slaughtered for himself after the prophethood came to him, he performed the 'aqiqah for himself. So you have an example in the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him). But you must slaughter for your children, and so on." This is a simple example of the examples that are among the effects of our lack of interest in the Sunnah, or to put it more clearly, the severing of the relationship between us and the Messenger. Because studying the Sunnah is no longer as important to us as studying one of the followed madhahib. In any case, we ask Allah the Mighty and Majestic to inspire us with guidance and to make us successful in following the Sunnah of our Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), while benefiting from our scholars, both the Salaf and the Khalaf. Yes.