Sunni Islam

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Sunni Islam is the largest branch of Islam, also referred to as Ahl as-Sunnah wa’l-Jamā‘ah (Arabic: أهل السنة والجماعة‎ "people of the tradition [of Muhammad] and the community") or Ahl as-Sunnah (Arabic: أهل السنة‎) for short. Sunni Islam is also referred to as Orthodox Islam. The word "Sunni" comes from the term Sunnah (Arabic: سنة‎), which refers to the words and actions[1] or example of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The Sunni branch of Islam has four legal schools of thought or madh'hab.

Contents

[edit] Etymology

Sunni is a broad term derived from sunnah (سنة [ˈsunna], plural سنن sunan [ˈsunæn]), which is an Arabic word that means "habit" or "usual practice".[2] The Muslim usage of this term refers to the sayings and living habits of Muhammad. In its full form, this branch of Islam is referred to as "Ahl Al-Sunnah Wa Al-Jama'ah" (literally, "People of the Sunnah and the congregation"). This is not to be confused with the banned Deobandi sectarian organization in Pakistan that operates under the name Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat, and was previously known as Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan.

[edit] Schools of law (Madh'hab)

Islamic law is known as the Sharī‘ah. The Sharī‘ah is based on the Qur'an and the Sunnah. The Madh'hab translates to "way", and different Madhaheb (plural of Madh'hab) reflect different opinions on some laws and obligations of the sharia, for example when one Madh'hab sees a certain act as an obligation, while the other does not. There are four of these schools:

[edit] Hanafi School

Abu Hanifah (d. 767), was the founder of the Hanafi school. He was born circa 702 in Kufa, Iraq.[3][4] Muslims of Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Muslim areas of Southern Russia, the Caucasus, most of the Muslim areas of the Balkans and Turkey and parts of Iraq, all follow this school. It is also the dominant school of Muslims in the United Kingdom and Germany

[edit] Maliki Madhab

Malik ibn Anas (d. 795) Student of the imam Abu Hanifah's eldest student, Muhammad, Malik ibn Anas developed his ideas in Medina. His doctrine is recorded in the Muwatta which has been adopted by most North African and West African countries like Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Nigeria and others except Egypt, Horn of Africa and Sudan. Also, the Maliki madhab is the official state madhhab of Kuwait, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. He was one of the teachers of Shafi'i.

[edit] Shafi'i school

Muhammad ibn Idris ash-Shafi`i (d. 820) was a student of Malik. He taught in Iraq and then in Egypt. Muslims in Indonesia, Lower Egypt, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Kerala, India, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Palestine, Yemen and Kurds in the Kurdish regions follow the Shafi'i school. Al-Shafi'i placed great emphasis on the Sunnah of Muhammad, as embodied in the Hadith, as a source of the Shari'ah.

[edit] Hanbali School

Ahmad bin Hanbal (d. 855), the namesake of the Hanbali school, was born in Baghdad. He learned extensively from al-Shafi'i. Despite persecution, he held to the doctrine that the Qur'an was uncreated. This school of law is followed primarily in the Arabian Peninsula.

[edit] Theology of the four schools

The followers of these four schools follow the same basic belief system but differ from one another in terms of practice and execution of rituals, and in juristic interpretation of "divine principles" (or Shariah) as envisaged in Quran and Hadith. However Sunni Muslims consider them all equally valid.

There are other Sunni schools of law. However, many are followed by only small numbers of people and are relatively unknown due to the popularity of the four major schools; also, many have died out or were not sufficiently recorded by their followers to survive.

Interpreting the Shari'ah to derive specific rulings (such as how to pray) is known as fiqh, which literally means understanding. A madh'hab is a particular tradition of interpreting fiqh. These schools focus on specific evidence (Shafi'i and Hanbali) or general principles (Hanafi and Maliki) derived from specific evidences. The schools were started by eminent Muslim scholars in the first four centuries of Islam. As these schools represent clearly spelled out methodologies for interpreting the Shari'aa, there has been little change in the methodology per se. However, as the social and economic environment changes, new fiqh rulings are being made. For example, when tobacco appeared it was declared as 'disliked' because of its smell. When medical information showed that smoking was dangerous, that ruling was changed to 'forbidden'.[citation needed] Current fiqh issues include things like downloading pirated software and cloning. The consensus is that the Shari'ah does not change but fiqh rulings change all the time.

A madh'hab is not to be confused with a religious sect. There may be scholars representing all four madh'habs living in larger Muslim communities, and it is up to those who consult them to decide which school they prefer.

[edit] Demographics

All the different Islamic schools and branches shown in colors

Roughly nine out of 10 (nine-tenths) Muslims worldwide are Sunni[5][6] and the remaining are Shia[7] Ahmadiyya and Kharijite.

[edit] Sunni theological traditions

Some Islamic scholars faced questions that they felt were not explicitly answered in the Qur'an, especially questions with regard to philosophical conundra like the nature of God, the existence of human free will, or the eternal existence of the Qur'an. Various schools of theology and philosophy developed to answer these questions, each claiming to be true to the Qur'an and the Muslim tradition (sunnah). Among Sunnites, the following were the dominant traditions:

Due to the emphasis of the Hanbali school of thought on textualism, Muslims who are Hanbali usually prefer the Athari in Aqidah. However atharis are not exclusively Hanbali, many Muslims form the other four schools of thought, including Hanafis, adhere to the Athari school of Aqidah also.

[edit] Sunni view of hadith

The Qur'an as it exists today was compiled by Muhammad's companions (Sahaba) in approximately 650, and is accepted by all Muslim denominations. However, there were many matters of belief and daily life that were not directly prescribed in the Qur'an, but were actions that were observed by Muhammad and the community. Later generations sought out oral traditions regarding the early history of Islam, and the practice of Muhammad and his first followers, and wrote them down so that they might be preserved. These recorded oral traditions are called hadith. Muslim scholars sifted through the hadith and evaluated the chain of narration of each tradition, scrutinizing the trustworthiness of the narrators and judging the strength of each hadith accordingly.

Most Sunni accept the hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim as the most authentic (sahih, or correct), and grant a lesser status to the collections of other recorders. There are, however, four other collections of hadith that are also held in particular reverence by Sunni Muslims, making a total of six:

There are also other collections of hadith which also contain many authentic hadith and are frequently used by specialists. Examples of these collections include:

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Sunna - Definitions from Dictionary.com
  2. ^ Sunnah, Center for Muslim-Jewish Engagement
  3. ^ Josef W. Meri, Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, 1 edition, (Routledge: 2005) in a Afghan persian family(citation needed), p.5
  4. ^ Hisham M. Ramadan, Understanding Islamic Law: From Classical to Contemporary, (AltaMira Press: 2006), p.26
  5. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica, Sunnite
  6. ^ From the article on Sunni Islam in Oxford Islamic Studies Online
  7. ^ Richard Allen Greene (2009-10-07)Nearly 1 in 4 people worldwide is Muslim, report says CNN. Retrieved on 2009-10-11.
  8. ^ J. B. Schlubach. "Fethullah Gülen and Al-Ghazzali on Tolerance". http://www.fethullahgulenforum.org/articles/13/fethullah-gulen-al-ghazzali-on-tolerance. Retrieved 2010-01-07. 
  9. ^ Bülent Þenay. "Ash'ariyyah Theology, Ashariyyah". BELIEVE Religious Information Source. http://mb-soft.com/believe/txw/ashari.htm. Retrieved 2006-04-01. 
  10. ^ "Maturidiyyah". Philtar. http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/islam/sunni/matur.html. Retrieved 2006-04-01. 

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

Personal tools
Namespaces
Variants
Actions
Navigation
Interaction
Toolbox
Print/export
Languages