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Isn’t Ijma And Tawatur Just Opinions?
‘Few points against arguing from the perspective of ijma/tawattur:
Firstly, ijma refers to consensus. It is essentially a pov, while tawatttur is an event or statement thats transmitted or practiced en masse
The distinction between the two would be the first generation of Muhammad’s followers stopped drinking alcohol en masse (tawattur) vs they considered drinking alcohol to be impermissible (ijma)
From a Quran only perspective these only illustrate what people did or believed. They are no more than historical facts.
They are human actions and interpretations. Theyre not divinely revealed and therefor not authoritative. They cannot be used to call things haram or fardh.’
‘We cannot assume that their ijma was correct unless it also includes the Prophet himself and for that one needs to rely on ahaad narrations.’
I was talking online and someone sent this message. It’s seems reasonable. Who is to say that the sahabah praying 5 times a day wasn’t just their opinion?
How can it hold divine/religious authority?
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33 Replies
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Isn’t Ijma And Tawatur Just Opinions?
updated 3 years, 6 months ago
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33
Replies
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Also the underlying principle would be that the absence of evidence does not imply evidence of absence.
Just because we don’t find dissenting opinions on eg there being 5 prayers, doesn’t mean that people never held those opinions
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A further reply was:
‘1. we do not have anything from the sahabah not even an ahad report of their saying we had ijma that five prayers were fardh
2. we have some ahad narrations attributed to the prophet saying the five prayers are fardh
3 we have the madhahib which came after the sahabah generation saying the five prayers are fardh
4 this does not mean that the sahabah had ijma that the five prayers were fardh, unless the ahaad narrations attributed to the prophet are true and all the sahabah were aware of them
i dont have to show any report of their disagreement because there is no reason to assume they had an agreement in the first place
it is something back projected based on the ahad reports
So unless you accept the ahad reports to be true you can’t assume anything‘
I then replied this and was wondering if I have understood the principles correctly. Please let me know if I have said something wrong and add anything I have missed:
‘This is based on the assumption that the living tradition is based upon ahad reports. Most of the traditional ulema as far as my knowledge extends all believed in ilmul aamah, whether they had that term in their time or not. You can read al risalah for this. They compiled sunnah based on what was practiced under the principles of generational transfer en Masse through perpetual concurrence and consensus.
So the reason to believe they did not have any disagreement would be that if there was, we would see differing opinions in the living traditions before snd after. Which we don’t.
Even today people do not pray from learning a hadith. It is through generational transfer under the same principles. Sure you can bring up ahlul Hadith but again that’s a recent phenomenon’
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Ijam o tawattur does necessarily transfer the true practice to the next generations but there was no better way in the era of no printed books.
For example, tarawi prayers is an addition to the rituals and we know it from a the history (a single source narration). You cab see how a single source info can change ijam o tawatur.
Ijam o tawatur was useful only when there were not documented history — now we have recorded and verified history that we can and we are already using to correct ijma o tawatur practices.
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Yes but that means that before the recording of these rituals about a century or two later is inaccurate . And that eg salah is not exactly this way for certain
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Recorded history is in no way better than ahad narrations, unless it’s relaying established history. There’s generally a single person writing a history book conveying his own viewpoint about something. Ijma and tawatur has an entire ummah separated by time and space that attests to something.
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True, there is a possibility that the rituals have been drifted away from the right practice during the 1st century of the undocumented history but we need not worry about it as this is none of our fault. We’ve got no better means to find the truth other than relying on the perpetual practice.
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Then to call salah fard in the way it is today would be haraam because to call something fardh is only Allah’s domain
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If rituals would have drifted away there would be proof evident from different people following different things. There are of course such practices, e.g. rafa yadein, and that’s why they’re not considered sunnah.
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That’s an assumption that the difference in rituals didn’t occur before the splitting of certain groups.
Eg people started doing rafa yadein and differing or sadl vs qabd before the different groups that do them split apart
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No there’s no assumption required. Whoever saw Prophet SAW performing salat with or without sadl/qbd followed the ritual that way, hence it’s not a compulsory practice. If Prophet SAW wanted to establish only one way, like the rakahs in fard salat, a split is inconceivable.
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Why is it inconceivable? Didn’t the followers of isa عليه السلام start believing he was the son of God?
Isn’t it very naive to assume that practices wouldn’t change over time?
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My friend – my very dear friend! We have had this conversation before. Quit debating online friends about ijma and tawatur in favor of spending that time eating almonds instead 😅
We can trace back the corruption in Christian beliefs, which breaks tawatur. Also there is no ijma on the concept of Trinity. There’s not a single example in the entire known human history that anyone can cite that meets the criteria of ijma and tawatur as I stated above and still can be proven to have gone through corruption.
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Ok that point about Christians is fine.
But if the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم wanted to establish one way he could’ve. That doesn’t mean that over time certain people could’ve made their own way in certain locations. How do we know whether sadl isn’t a bidah? Just because we don’t have evidence of it starting at a certain time doesn’t mean it didn’t start at a certain time. We wouldn’t know.
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Sorry I’m not discussing sadl/qabd/bidah here. The point that I’m trying to make is that sunnah transmitted through ijma and tawatur is clear, and there can’t be any doubts about it.
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I’m just using an example to illustrate the overall point that bidah can seep into even ijma and tawattur. As for example adhaan in newborns ear did.
So ijma and tawatur is just the opinion that no bidah was introduced.
I’ll use another example to illustrate my point- tarawih gained ijma and tawatur over the years to become what it is today. The only reason it is rejected is because some ahad narrations show that it was never meant to be an everyday thing for the whole month but it slowly evolved this way.
Who knows how many other practices evolved to become this way with ijma and tawattur but the ahad narrations that woudlve proved them to not be correct just haven’t been reported?
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I really don’t think that the concept of ijma and tawatur is clear to you yet. Please refer to our previous discussions on Ask Ghamidi in this regard. We’ve been through these very points before.
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We call it fard based on Quran and hadith. So again, the responsibility is not on us.
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We shouldn’t call it fard. We shouldn’t say anything if there’s a chance that it isn’t the original practice
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True we can’t say Allah has made it fard. What we can say is according to Quran, hadith or the perpetual practice it’s fard. Just leave it here. Whether it was fard ir not God will let us know on the day of judgement.
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So if someone does not pray 5 times a day, claiming that it is inaccurate history then we have no logical grounds to call him wrong?
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True. Given he has a good reason to conclude that the chances of false practice are greater than the chances of truth.
In my view the chances of prayer not being fard are very very slim. We cannot justify it to God if we begin ti skip it fir being skeptical about it
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I wonder if Ghamidi sahab would agree that we can be skeptics labour this sort of transmission
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I doubt too, at times i feel sir Ghamidi believes ijma tawatur is even more authentic than Quran. Whereas we have very clear example of tarawi prayers becoming a part of perpetual practice without any evidence of practice by the prophet SA.
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But he would say that the very fact that we know it was made after the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم shows that it doesn’t have ijma and tawatur
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We know it thru a single source historical record. So it goes against the principle ijma is a superior source than khabre ahad
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Right very good point. I think this should have some extensive clarification as it’s all very complicated
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I think there’s a balance between knowing when the ijma and tawatur started. If we can prove it started from the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم then great. But since we have evidence that this tradition doesn’t go back to him then it wouldn’t fulfil the principles
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You have to rely on khabre ahad to provide evidence against ijma. This is the challenge.
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I guess the only solution is to apply sanity check to find the truth. Whatever makes more sense is something one can defend on the day of judgement. We cannot blindly follow the rule that ijma is a superior source of truth.
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We could also do a triangulation method. If different groups like Sunnis Shias and abadis all agree that there are 5 prayers or they all agree on the text of the Quran then it’s quite likely/certain that they all didn’t agree on the same sources or didn’t collide since they have different principles and different ahadith for example
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True. We need to ask bro Hassan to take it to sir Ghamid even tho there have been a quite few discussions on this topic already.
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There have been discussions but not many videos by them. I only remember like an 8 minute video
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Ahmad from the examples cited by your friend it’s very clear that he has some fundamental misunderstanding about ijma and tawatur as well as ahad reports.
Ijma refers to consensus of the entire ummah. We know that the companions in the first generation started spreading across different continents. If all of them follow a certain practice, then they have ijma over that practice because they have learnt it from Prophet SAW first hand.
Tawatur refers to perpetual transmission of a practice generation after generation starting from the first generation, without any gaps of time and space in the middle. If a certain practice is widely followed by the Muslim community across the globe today with consensus then unless we can find any evidence of gaps or innovation, that practice is mutawatir. We can verify it in the books of fiqh, because in addition to legislation, such books are also a source of historical practices among Muslims.
Ijma and tawatur doesn’t depend upon ahad narrations. Such narrations must be understood in the light of what we have received through ijma and tawatur: the Quran and the Sunnah. While the individual narrators of any narration must be verified, it’s inconceivable that the entire ummah spread across the globe would follow a corrupted practice without any gaps in time and space, and without any evidence of innovation or corruption. Also it’s inconceivable that Prophet SAW would have only shared an essential part of our religion with only one or two people, while the rest of the ummah didn’t even know about it until the narrations started being compiled a century or so later. This kind of an argument is really tantamount to accusing Prophet SAW (na-auzobillah) of not properly conveying the message of God.
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