Why_Imam_Malik_Ruled_Against_Scripture

The transcription delves into a conflict in early Islamic law regarding the practice of raising hands during prayer at different points. It focuses on Imam Malik's decision to go against a strong hadith due to the lack of consistent practice in Medina, prioritizing living tradition over textual evidence. Malik's method involved considering the ongoing practice of the people of Medina as crucial, even when contradicting strong textual sources like the "Golden Chain" hadith. This approach highlights the importance of lived, collective practice in interpreting Islamic law. Okay, let's unpack this. We are diving into a really deep fascinating conflict in early Islamic law. We really are. It's this clash between, you know, the raw power of a written text, a prophetic report, and the living breathing practice of the people who were there. Text versus living memory. It's a classic tension. And this isn't just an abstract idea. No, not at all. We're looking at a very specific example. It's called Ras Al-Yadan. It's about raising the hands during the prayer, but not at the very beginning at other points. And what makes this so compelling, and this is really the mission of our deep dive, is the contradiction at its heart. We're talking about a central figure, Imam Malik, who literally had the strongest possible evidence for doing this practice. He knew it. He wrote it down. Then he ruled against it. He ruled completely against it. We want to figure out how he got there. And to do that, you have to understand his standard for what a Sunnah, a prophetic practice even is. For him, it wasn't just about a strong report. It had to be something more. Oh, much more. It had to be a constant practice, something you could see, something recognized and passed down through three specific generations. The three generations, the prophet himself pointed to, right? Precisely. First, the Sahaba, the companions, then the Tabiyon, who learned directly from them. And finally, the Tabi al-Tabi in their students, Malik's generation. So if a practice wasn't passed down through that entire living chain, he questioned it. He seriously questioned its status as the definitive constant practice for everyone, no matter how strong an individual report might seem. Okay. That is a very high bar. So let's start with the report itself. Let's look at the textual argument. What was the evidence for raising the hands? It was overwhelmingly strong. Your sources are clear on this. There are many, many more strong reports or Hadith for doing it than for not doing it. So on paper, the case seems pretty open and shut. Textually, it's incredibly powerful. Give us a sense of that power. I mean, what kind of evidence are we talking about here? Well, the main piece of evidence comes from the companion, Ibn Umar. And this is the crucial part. Okay. The report was passed from Ibn Umar to his freed slave, Nafi, and then directly to Imam Malik himself. So Malik is a direct link in this chain. A direct link. And that specific chain, Malik from Nafi, from Ibn Umar, is what later scholars like Imam Bukhari called the golden chain. The golden chain. What does that mean for someone who's not a specialist? Is that just a nice name? No, no. It's a technical term. Think of it like the historical equivalent of a legal document with a perfect, unbroken chain of custody signed and notarized at every step. It's seen as the absolute pinnacle of authenticity. You really can't get a more secure piece of textual evidence in the Islamic sciences. So Malik wasn't just brushing off some random report. He was dealing with the best of the best evidence that he himself was transmitting. Exactly. And you also have other reports, like one from Ali saying the Prophet did this until the end of his life. So you're right. On paper, this case looks absolutely closed. But it wasn't. For Malik, text was only half of the equation, which brings us to his whole methodology. Imam Malik, the Imam of Medina, right? The capital of early Islam. The Imam of Dar al-Hijrah. Yes. And his whole approach was built on this idea that a true sin had to be backed up by the Imam, the perpetual ongoing practice of the people of Medina. Because, you know, Medina wasn't just some city. It was the original headquarters. Is where the Prophet lived and died. If the practice wasn't happening there consistently, then where else would it be? That was exactly his logic. The generations in Medina for Malik held the institutional memory. He believed that collective lived experience was less likely to be wrong than a single report, no matter how strong its chain was. And he was pretty fierce about defending this Madinan tradition, wasn't he? There's a famous letter you mentioned. He was almost militant about it. He wrote to Lathan Ansad, a top scholar in Egypt, and basically said, look, if there is a clear, continuous practice here in Medina, there's just no room for anyone to argue against it. Well, he said the people of Medina inherited something no one else could claim. So to really get this paradox, we need to understand his books because he wrote down both sides of this in a way. We do. Think of it this way. His book, the Muwatta, is like his raw research. It's his collection of reports, the data, all that strong evidence we just talked about. It's in there. Okay. So that's the research binder. Right. But then you have the Mudawana. That's the final verdict. That's the collection of his legal opinions, his actual rulings. Here's where it gets really interesting. This is the moment. In his research binder, the Muwatta, he includes that Golden Chain Hadith. He's holding the signed, notarized contract. He is the source of it. He knows it's authentic. He can't claim ignorance. But then when you turn to his book of law, the Mudawana, his final ruling is, and I'm translating here, I do not know of raising of the hands anywhere in the prayers except in the opening. He rules explicitly against the very text he reported. How on earth did he justify that? He's contradicting himself on paper. His justification was simple. And for him, it was everything. He said he just did not see the practice being carried out by any of the tabun of his time. His teachers. His hundreds of respected teachers who were the direct students of the Companions. So you're saying he was willing to bet that a Golden Chain Hadith was somehow misinterpreted. Or abrogated, or not meant to be a perpetual act. Because the entire generation of experts in Medina wasn't doing it. That seems like an unbelievable theological risk to take. It does to us, maybe. But for Malik, the bigger risk was ignoring the living consensus. He thought, if this was truly the constant sinna, how could it be that all of my teachers here in the Prophet's own city collectively abandoned it? It seemed impossible to him. So how did he look at his own teacher, Nafi, the guy who gave him the Hadith, and then rule against it? Well, remember, this wasn't just Malik's private opinion. The ruling in the Mudawwana is confirmed by what's called Tawatur, or mass transmission, meaning it wasn't just one student who wrote it down. It was confirmed and passed on by tens of thousands of scholars after him. It became the consensus of his entire school. That collective agreement was, for them, proof that his reliance on practice over a single text was the correct reading of the situation. Okay, so let's dig into those teachers, the Tawbiyun, because they are the living evidence he was prioritizing. Right. Malik was a Tawbiyal Tawbiyun. His teachers were the Tawbiyun. And the quality, the caliber of these people is just astonishing. Give me an example. He spent eight years with one of his main teachers, Ibn Hormuz. Eight years. And he said he never saw him raise his hands. Eight years is a long time to observe someone's prayer. And these weren't just any scholars. They were the children and grandchildren of the companions. They literally grew up with the Sunnah. It's like arguing about company policy with the founder's own son. It's exactly like that. Take Al-Qasim bin Muhammad bin Abu Bakr. Okay, so the grandson of the first caliph, Abu Bakr. The very same. And his grand-aunt was Sayyida Aisha. Who was maybe the single most important source for the Prophet's private life and practices. Absolutely. If anyone knew the constant practice in the Prophet's own household, it would be Al-Qasim. Or what about Hisham bin Urwah? Another giant. His father was one of the ten promised paradise. He had direct open access to Sayyida Aisha. Malik looked at these people, his teachers, and concluded, if they who opened their eyes to the Sunnah in the most blessed households aren't doing this as a constant act. Then it can't be the perpetual son of Medina. That was his conclusion. It's not about ignoring the text, but about reading the text through the lens of lived, verifiable mass practice. So then what did they do with that golden chain hadith? They couldn't just ignore it. How did they explain it? They developed an alternative reading. And this is just as fascinating. One view, which your sources point to, was that Ibn Umar, the companion who narrated it, had such an intense love for the Prophet that he would imitate every single thing he ever saw him do. Whether it was a regular practice or just a one-off thing. Exactly. So imitating it could have been an act of personal devotion for Ibn Umar, but that doesn't automatically make it a required communal law for everyone, for all time. And is there any evidence to back up that interpretation? There is a very important piece of counter evidence. The scholar Mujahid bin Jabir is on record stating that he prayed with Ibn Umar and did not see him raise his hands except for the very first opening. Wow. So that has a whole layer of nuance. It really does. It suggests that even the primary narrator of the hadith may not have performed the act perpetually. And for Malik, that was likely the final piece of the puzzle he needed to confidently prioritize the collective practice he was witnessing every single day. So when we put it all together, what does this all mean? This deep dive shows that someone like Imam Malik, one of the earliest legal minds, wasn't just a textualist. Far from it. He gave precedence to the consistent mass transmitted practice, the Imam of the generation that learned directly from the companions, especially in the heartland of Islam, Medina. It was a very conscious weighing of evidence. He decided that the risk of misinterpreting a single text was higher than the risk of an entire generation of scholars in Medina being wrong about how they prayed every day. And this methodology became foundational. It's why two of the major schools of law, the Maliki and the Hanafi schools, to this day, generally don't practice Ras al-Yadayn. They are following the observed practice of those first few generations, the teachers of the companions, rather than giving absolute priority to the textual report that Malik himself so carefully collected. Which leaves us and you with a really important question. It does. If the strongest of texts can be understood or even superseded by the inherited living practice of the community that comes right after, what does that mean for how we approach any tradition? How should we balance historical documents against a living communal consensus when we're trying to define truth? That tension between the book and the lived experience is something that's still very much with us today.