Schools, roles and a shared faith

This lesson asks you to identify differences between branches of one community of believers, to name what unites them, and to describe roles people play. The museum offers the four Sunni schools and two roles in Islamic worship, from records that hold little detail; your class adds the other branches, such as the Shia, and the other roles. ¹

Sort what you read into things that differ between branches and things they share. Be careful to label which branch a source speaks for before you generalise.

The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence says that in juristic usage a madhhab is the method of ijtihad traced to an imam and his school, and that the jurists enumerate the "four madhhabs": Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali ². It applies the word throughout to the imams and their four schools ². Sayyid Sabiq's Fiqh al-Sunna presents its rulings across the madhhabs ³. So the definition names two things: a method of reasoning, and an imam and followers it is traced to.

The record of the madhhab, in its own summary, which carries no citation, says the followers of the four schools differ on the principles of inference, on giving priority to analogy, juristic preference or public interest, on following the companions' opinions, and on many details, and that all of them are efforts of reasoning based on the text. It adds that the museum does not prefer one school over another. The record of the imam says that Wikidata defines the imam as the person who leads worshippers in congregational prayer, and that among the Shia imamate means religious and political leadership of the community ⁴. So there are two kinds of difference here: between schools in method, and between traditions in what one word names.

The definition of the madhhab comes from a jurists' encyclopaedia, the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia of jurisprudence, which enumerates four schools, and from a work of fiqh, Fiqh al-Sunna ². The records of the imam and the muezzin rest on Wikidata alone, a database and not a jurists' encyclopaedia or an academic article ⁴. Wikidata defines the muezzin as the person who calls to prayer from the mosque ⁴. Neither record says how anyone comes to hold either role. The details of how particular schools differ in the record of the madhhab come from a recorded talk, which is evidence of what was said there and not of the subject, so this page does not use them.

The summary in the record of the madhhab says the four schools are efforts of reasoning based on the text, and also that they differ on the principles of inference. Using only that, what would you say unites them and what divides them, and what would you need to read to learn whether the difference matters to those who follow each school?

• The madhhab: its definition in the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia and the four schools.
• The imam: what Wikidata says the word names, for congregational prayer and among the Shia.
• The muezzin: the person who calls to prayer from the mosque.

Read the madhhab, the imam and the muezzin. Write a short card for each role or school: who it concerns, what it does, and which branch of the faith the source speaks for.