Fiqh

The sources of Fiqh, ranked by authority, are as follows:

• The Qur’an

The Holy Book of Islam, it contains directives and instructions on a number of issues and is the supreme authority for Muslims.

• Hadith

The teachings of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). There is some debate on the authenticity of certain Hadith, particularly as they were not recorded in Muhammad’s day, but several years later. Some Quranists, albeit a small minority, reject all Hadith on the grounds that they are unverifiable. Nevertheless, the mainstream opinion in both Shia and Sunni Islam is that the Hadith are second only to the Qur’an in terms of authority.

• Ijma

Ijma refers to Collective Reasoning, in other words, the consensus of Islamic scholars on a point of Islamic law.

• Qiyas

Qiyas is the principle of analogy applied to the interpretation of Islamic law. It is the process of comparing the Hadith and the Quran to find the solution to a modern problem. There is scholarly debate about the validity of Qiyas with some scholars arguing that it allows for subjective interpretations in matters of Islamic law.

Schools of Fiqh

Sunni

Hanafi

Named after Abu Hanifa, (d. 767), the Hanafi school of Islamic Jurisprudence is the school with the greatest number of followers.  It is especially prevalent in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Russia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

Maliki

Named after Malik ibn Anas (d. 795), the Maliki school of Islamic Jurisprudence is primarily followed in North and West Africa (excluding some parts of Egypt). What marks it out as different from the other schools is its reliance on the legal rulings of the four “Rightly Guided Caliphs” as additional sources on legal matters. In the Maliki School, Ijma is legitimate only if drawn from the first generation of Muslims, or the first three generations of Muslims from Medina. Furthermore, Qiyas – or analogical reasoning – is considered legitimate only as a last resort, when the other sources of authority have been unsuccessfully consulted.

Shafi

The Shafi school of Fiqh, founded by the Arab scholar Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi (d. 820), has followers in Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, the Swahili coast, Hijaz, Yemen, the Caucuses, Malaysia, Indonesia and parts of South Asia.

Hanbali

The Hanbali School, named after Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 835) is the smallest of the four schools of Islamic Jurisprudence and is the official school in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. It prioritises the Quran and the Hadith as sources and also relies on the precedent set by Early Muslims, while treating with suspicion the practice of analogical reasoning. As such, it has been argued that it is the intellectual underpinning of the Wahhabi Movement and to a great extent, also that of modern-day Salafism.

Shia

Ja’fari

The Ja’fari School, named after the sixth Imam of the Twelver branch of Shia Islam, Ja’far al-Sadiq (d. 765) is the largest branch of Shia Islam and has followers in Iran (where it is enshrined in the constitution), Iraq, Azerbaijan and parts of Lebanon. Since 1959, the Ja’fari School has been afforded the status of “fifth school” – along with the four schools of Sunni Fiqh -by Al-Azhar University in Cairo. It is notable in its reliance on independent reasoning and in its teaching of Bada – the concept that rather than predestined, the future of the universe is subject to Allah’s boundless creativity and he may alter it as and when he sees fit.