He says...

He says, “As if they believed that the origin of a judgment in an issue is to do what is good, not to follow the religious laws, the Sahabah used to issue a judgment that is compatible to their personal identifications of the advantage even if such would violate the Holy Sunnah.”[^1] Shaykh `Abd al-Wahhab Khallaf says, “Whenever they could not find a text in the Holy Qur'an or Sunnah that is related to the issue with which they were dealing, the Sahabah would infer a judgment depending upon their personal views.

In their practice of Ijtihad, they rested upon their talents that they had acquired from oral communication with the Holy Prophet as well as their familiarity with the secrets and general principles of the Islamic legislation. They, sometimes, compared the issues about which there was no holy text to similar issues explained in the Holy Qur'an or Sunnah.

On other occasions, they issued judgments depending upon their personal identification of the advantage without committing themselves to any other consideration. On this account, the scope of their Ijtihad in the matters that are not explained in holy texts was very much expansive that it could contain the people’s needs and interests.”[^2] Evidences on the accuracy of the aforesaid quotations are `Umar’s personal verdicts some of which have been previously illustrated.

The gentle reader has thus realized the scope of `Umar’s Ijtihad that opposed the actuality of the Islamic legislation. It is thus probable that `Umar’s personal views that were not accepted by the Sahabah acted as motives beyond the issuance of the decision of prohibiting the reporting and recording of the Hadith.

At any rate, the undoubted result in this respect is that both the trends of the adoption of personal opinions and the compliance with the sacred texts perpetuated after the departure of the Holy Prophet. The trend of the adoption of personal views and the consideration of the Sahabah’s opinions expanded its steps and did not stop at any red line after the departure of the Holy Prophet who was the only one to stop them.

Overstepping all bounds, the Sahabah’s personal opinions crept into the issues about which there were clear-cut text from the Holy Qur'an and Sunnah. To give it a title, this trend should be called ‘Ijtihad and Opinionism.’ Referring to the representatives of this trend, Dr.