ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Prohibition of Recording the Hadith, Causes and Effects Continuation Of The Two Trends After The Holy Prophet: Crisis And Solution Naturally, the continuity of finding faults with the caliph, namely `Umar ibn al-Khattab, would certainly impair his position and lessen his social status in the view of the Muslims. Furthermore, this would affect the structure of the position of caliphate as a whole.

If the caliph allowed the Sahabah in general and the reporters in particular to find faults with him accusing him of ignorance and inaccuracy in the religious laws, they would certainly have the courage to stop in his face directly. It would thus be necessary to provide a new course owing to which the phenomenon of finding faults in the caliph’s verdicts would be eliminated and also the caliph’s deeds and personal judgments would be acceptably effective.

In fact, to compare the caliph’s verdicts to the Holy Qur'an and Sunnah, which would demonstrate the differences between the sources of the Islamic legislation and the caliph’s opinions, would give people the opportunity to criticize him and object to his judgments. As a result, the caliph’s position will be disrespected by people.

On the grounds of the previous consequences, `Umar believed that it is necessary to strengthen the trend of depending upon personal judgments in front of the divine instructions and publicize the concept of Ijtihad among the Sahabah so that he would be excused in any verdict that he would issue. As a consequence, `Umar adopted two conceptions that moved to some of the Muslims thereafter; (1) the dependence on personal views and (2) the acceptance of the Sahabah’s personal opinions as authority.

Later on in this book, we will present the historical progression of these two conceptions as well as their actuality. Let us first quote the statement of Muhammad `Abduh, the great Muslim intellectual, regarding the Sahabah’s personal identification of the advantage.