Waleku As-As-Salam:
Brilliant posts!
I think this division in the name of madhab has gone too far. Some of it may be seen in other religions as well.
(Either we do not get to hear about the vicious nature of this kind of division in other religions or it is not so vicious is up to speculations and personal experience)
If in the past these madhabs did not cause so much of the problem then it is fine.
These days this kind of division does make in to many people’s lives including marriages, friendship and other day to day relations. Admittedly it is not so prevailing among the educated and sensible people but still many illeterate people do get sucked in to these ideas.
Regardless it has any negative attributes in term of lack of respect for each other my question will still remain.
Where does in islam it says you follow a particular madhab?
Did Quran or the Prophet SAW say you must be a hanafi, maliki or a shia only?
Where did people go wrong?
They got strayed when they forgot the real islam and started to follow one man or a group of people or a religious school verdicts blindly like sheep.
Yes many muslims are sheep no doubt about it. They follow a particular kind of thinking without using their own brain and senses.
And then this utter nonsense of doing ‘bait’ on someone is not so uncommon.
Husbad asks wife to do bait on an Imam. Both ask questions of their lives to this imam sahab. Whatever he says, they follow like sheep. And at times a whole family or neighborhood follows this imam…
Reason:
1- Laziness.
2- Strong belief ingrained in to their minds that you are dumb. and..Islam needs to be understood by a shiekh, wali, majaddid or imam first and then you need to learn islam from that person!
There is a common misconception that after the prophet SAW you still need someone else to interpret Islam for you and ONLY one madhab needs to be followed.
What is wrong with this picture? Everything is wrong with this picture.
No matter how much we say, Oh ‘some people’ are wrong and hence they should not have animosity and no madhab says it. But is saying that enough?
Don’t we see sunni 'Aalims" aggravating the trivial issues and Shia ‘Aalim’ doing the same?
It is about time we stop follwing these so called madhabs, sects and learn Islam the way it was meant to be. (Just my personal opinion)
Yes, the way it was meant to be to learn religion from available information.
Make a pure, honest and safe decision to follow whatever comes along as long as the basics are preserved.
If people love prophet SAW so much then why not follow him directly and all by himself?
All those aalims were great at the time and ARE respectful. They brought their interpretations and understanding to what Islam was about. Fine.
Then why not look at each aalim and take what you like in EVERYONE and live life without following a particular person.
**I am sunni, I am Shia, He is hari pagri wala, They are deobandi. We are brelvi, athari or whatever. Does this make sense? **
How many names we will continue to create???
Amagingly, this has become its own science!
People now go in to detail of actions and philosophy to describe themsleves or others what ‘madhab’ they might be ‘close to’ …
In essence, if all are good overall then adopt what good you find in all.