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Fiqh al-Sunnah: Is it reliable?

Answered as per Hanafi Fiqh by Qibla.com

Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

I am sure you are aware of the growing prevalence in the West of Sayyid Saabiq’s Fiqh-us-Sunnah, as a fiqh manual for the shebab who rely upon it. What is your opinion of this book, and what it contains? Those who I have seen with it, seek to find the majority ruling on each case by this book and follow it. Is this permissible, or recommended?

Answer:
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Walaikum assalam,

The scholars tell us that though a good effort in some ways, Fiqh al-Sunnah is not a reliable manual of fiqh.

It has a lot of errors in transmitting the positions of each school;

It often leaves out key conditions of an imam or school’s opinion;

It often presents an opinion in a confusing way, which can lead to serious misunderstanding;

It can lead to talfiq: joining between the positions of the imams in one particular action in a way that no one imam would consider valid. This is invalid by scholarly consensus (as transmitted by Ibn Hajar, Ibn Abidin, and others), except in very exceptional circumstances.

Faraz Rabbani.

This answer was indexed from Qibla.com, which used to have a repository of Islamic Q&A answered by various scholars. The website is no longer in existence. It has now been transformed into a learning portal with paid Islamic course offering under the brand of Kiflayn.

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