Rules Concerning Hair   1. It is sunnah to grow one’s hair on the entire head till the ear lobes or slightly below them. If a person wishes to shave his head, it is sunnah to shave the entire head. It is also permissible to merely clip the hair. However, it is not permissible to clip all the hair and leave the front portion long, as is the fashion today. Similarly, it is also not permissible to shave a portion and leave another portion … [Read more...]

Rules Concerning Hair   by Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi (ra) 1. It is sunnah to grow one’s hair on the entire head till the ear lobes or slightly below them. If a person wishes to shave his head, it is sunnah to shave the entire head. It is also permissible to merely clip the hair. However, it is not permissible to clip all the hair and leave the front portion long, as is the fashion today. Similarly, it is also not permissible to shave a … [Read more...]

The Taqleed Of An Individual And Following One's Whims And Fancies When the level of moral integrity and compliance with the spirit of the Quran and Sunnah deteriorated, scholars issued a Fatwa confining Taqleed to an individual only. The attitude, which the scholars hoped to curb with this Fatwa, was abuse of ambiguous issues in the name of Islam and Islamic legislation. Today, the whole Muslim world is in a frenzy of this kind of … [Read more...]

The Taqleed Of An Individual And New Issues Arguments have been advanced that Taqleed of an individual impedes solutions to modern developments. The answer to such a contention is that modern issues, which demand Ijtihad, should be delegated to an expert scholar - whose Taqleed is very different from that of the lay person. such an expert scholar would be able to sift the principles of earlier Mujtahids and resolve new problems based on … [Read more...]

The Hanafi School of Thought and Ahadeeth The contention that the Hanafi school of thought bases its Fatwas upon weak Ahadith narrations is sheer ignorance. Reflection upon the books of Hanafi Fiqh impartially would leave no room for such an assertion. The following collections of proofs for the Hanafi Fiqh illustrate the deep and profound level of Hadith scholarship current amongst the followers of the Hanafi School of jurisprudence: … [Read more...]

Why The Four Schools of Thought? This begs the question: if following one particular Mujtahid is indispensable, why the need to restrict Taqleed to only the four schools of thought? Several great Imams and Mujtahids have occupied the pages of Islamic scholastic history such personages as Sufyaan Thauri, Imam Awzaa'i, Abdullah ibn Mubarak, Ishaq ibn Rahwaih, Imam Bukhari, Ibn Abi Layla, Ibn Sibrimah, Hasan ibn Saleh and many others. Are all … [Read more...]