The judge (who himself narrated this story to me) ...

The judge (who himself narrated this story to me) — may God’s mercy be upon him — says: “When we considered and investigated the case, we found her claim to be right, and I think that one of the well-aware ‘ulamā’ has taught her what to say”. The judge says: Then I rebutted the father’s complaint and endorsed the marriage (judged it to be correct).

So the father departed the court being at loss, reiterating these words: “The she-dog became Hanafi”, i.e his daughter has abandoned Mālik and followed Abu Hanifah, and the word “she-dog” (kalbah) implies an insult to his daughter, from whom he has disowned later on. The issue stems from the difference in the ijtihād of the schools.

As Mālik is of the opinion that the marriage of the maiden girl (bikr) can never be valid but only with the permission of her guardian (wali), and even when she be a thayyib (that is, a girl who has had sexual intercourse), he will be her partner in marriage, and she is not allowed to decide to marry anyone without his consent. Whereas Abu Hanifah holds that the sane, grown-up female is competent to choose her husband and to contract marriage, irrrespective of being a maiden or a thayyib.

So this fiqhi issue has caused to separate between the father and his daughter, to the extent that he declared his disavowal of her. Very often fathers used to disown of their daughters for several reasons, one of which being to flee home with the man with whom she likes to get married.

This sort of disowning entails inconvenient consequences, as the father most often may resort to deprive his daughter from her right to inherit him, so as the girl remaining to be an enemy to her brothers who, in turn, would disown their sister who brought them shame. Hence the truth is not as claimed by Ahl al-Sunnah that blessing (rahmah) lies in their disagreement, or at the least, blessing can never be implied in all the controversial matters.

Moreover, there is another point of dispute between them, which is imitation of the dead mujtahid (taqlid al-mayyit). The Sunnis imitate imāms who died several centuries ago, closing the door of ijtihād since that era, and all the ‘ulamā’ succeeding them would be content with the expositions (shuruh), and whatever written in poetry and prose from the fiqh of the four schools of thought.