Madhhab
[5][6][7] The transformations of Islamic legal institutions in the modern era have had profound implications for the madhhab system.
With the spread of codified state laws in the Muslim world, the influence of the madhhabs beyond personal ritual practice depends on the status accorded to them within the national legal system.
Nevertheless, the majority of Sunni scholarship continues to uphold post-classical creedal belief in rigorously adhering (Taqlid) to one of the four schools in all legal details.
[10] Schools of Islamic jurisprudence are located in Pakistan, Iran, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Egypt, Turkey, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, China, the Philippines, Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia and multiple other countries.
According to John Burton, "modern research shows" that fiqh was first "regionally organized" with "considerable disagreement and variety of view."
In the second century of Islam, schools of fiqh were noted for the loyalty of their jurists to the legal practices of their local communities, whether Mecca, Kufa, Basra, Syria, etc.
)[Note 1] Al-Shafiʽi wrote that, "every capital of the Muslims is a seat of learning whose people follow the opinion of one of their countrymen in most of his teachings".
[17] It has been asserted that madhahib were consolidated in the 9th and 10th centuries as a means of excluding dogmatic theologians, government officials and non-Sunni sects from religious discourse.
[19] Later, the Hanbalites and Jarirites developed two more schools; then various dynasties effected the eventual exclusion of the Jarirites;[20] eventually, the Zahirites were also excluded when the Mamluk Sultanate established a total of four independent judicial positions, thus solidifying the Maliki, Hanafi, Shafi'i and Hanbali schools.
[18] During the era of the Islamic Gunpowders, the Ottoman Empire reaffirmed the official status of these four schools as a reaction to Shi'ite Persia.
[29][30][31] Historically, the fiqh schools were often in political and academic conflict with one another, vying for favor with the ruling government in order to have their representatives appointed to legislative and especially judiciary positions.
[21] The transformations of Islamic legal institutions in the modern era have had profound implications for the madhhab system.
The Hanbali school, with its particularly strict adherence to the Quran and hadith, has inspired conservative currents of direct scriptural interpretation.
It is followed by Muslims in the Hejaz region of Saudi Arabia, Upper Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Swahili coast, Indonesia, Malaysia, Jordan, Palestine, Philippines, Singapore, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Thailand, Yemen, Kurdistan, and southern India (such as the Mappilas of Kerala and the Konkani Muslims).
In the past, it was also followed by the majority of Muslims in Mesopotamia, Portugal, the Balearic Islands, North Africa and parts of Spain.
The book emphasizes what importance Islam has given to manners and etiquette along with the worship of God, citing the traditions of the first four Imams of the Shi'a Ismaili Fatimid school of thought.
Zaidi Muslims also follow their own school in the form of the teachings of Zayd ibn Ali and Imam Abu Hanifa.
[39] The Amman Message was a statement, signed in 2005 in Jordan by nearly 200 prominent Islamic jurists, which served as a "counter-fatwa" against a widespread use of takfir (excommunication) by jihadist groups to justify jihad against rulers of Muslim-majority countries.
