Plurality of opinions on theological and legal matters is rampant in Islam and it bothered me to no limits in my agnostic days as well as in my faithful days prior to my agnosticism.
The ambiguity of the texts and the ensuing differing interpretations resulting in multiplicity of opinions has endangered my faith on more than one occasion in my one and a half decade of romance with Islam so far!
I painfully wondered why would God give us a scripture that is supposed to guide us but be open to multiple interpretations that many a times lead to discord within the community?
A serious seeker of truth cannot rest in peace without uncovering the answer to this disturbing question! Hence I have had my fair share of trysts with this problem as mentioned briefly in the content structure of the blog. And I’ll discuss several such issues under the section/category of scriptural ambiguities.
Some of the topics covered would be long and controversial like the age of A’aishah, Muhammad’s wife, at the time of her marriage; was it six or fourteen/fifteen? So to begin with it briefly here, let’s take an easy case:
Keeping dogs as pets. Is it allowed or forbidden in Islam?
Three canonical schools of Sunni legal thought, the Hanafi, Shafi’i, and Hanbali schools, prohibit keeping dogs as pets. But a fourth one, namely the Maaliki school, allows it!
So here we have two diametrically opposed opinions extracted from the same sources. So is it an inconsistency or weakness in the Islamic framework?
Not really! As the two opinions can be applied to two different scenarios like the different tools in the kit of a mechanic who in his wisdom knows which one to use under which circumstances.
A culture where it’s easy to keep the dogs clean, get them vaccinated, avail proper medical care, have dedicated washrooms so that they do not defile the living spaces of the house, and other such facilities if readily accessible to ensure the cleanliness of the pet and its surroundings, then a dog as a pet should be fine in such a culture.
On the contrary, if cleanliness is hard to achieve and filthy dogs are a norm, as was the case in the days of the Prophet Muhammad, then in such a culture it would be wise to discourage dogs as pets.
Thus the issue of different opinions, far from being a problem, is actually a useful solution that makes the Islamic framework more robust by enabling Islam to be applied to different scenarios in different times and places; and robustness is one of the key criteria of a true framework of knowledge! Thus, instead of being a weakness, the scope for differing opinions lends more power to Islam and adds to its truth value!
But the question that still remains to be answered elaborately is what actually causes the differences in opinions. Is it due to human weaknesses or is it due to the nature of the texts themselves? Or due to both? In my analysis of the problem, it’s due to both; deficiencies in human endeavours to understand the texts as well as the inherent ambiguity of the texts! It’s a huge topic, so let’s discuss this at length in the next article!