Rejection Of Incorrect Tawatur Actions To Islam
The definition of Tawatur is that a large number of people pass on a thing. The number is so large that it is impossible to say all of them mi sunderstood something or made a mistake in transmission. In Hadith, one person is reporting something where as in tawatur thousands are transmitting. With the example of beard, we need to see even if there is a tawatur, when did it begin and is it transmitted as a religious commandment.
I think you are confusing ijma and tawatur. Ijma is the consensus of scholars on a particular issue. If there’s an ijma of scholars on an interpretation of a Hadith or a Quran verse and we see that their interpretation is not correct, we don’t have to accept that because we have the actual source and we can understand for ourselves what it says. Tawatur is transmission through generations the religious practises etc.
Take Quran for example, it is transmitted through ijma and quoli tawatur, but when you’ve to look for Quran yourself, where do you find that ijma and tawatur? in the book named Quran where all of that ijma and tawatur has been incorporated but that doesn’t mean that ijma and tawatur doesn’t exist. Now take Sunnah, the same ijma and tawatur is present, but at the same time it is incorporated in fiqh books from generation after generation. Nothing in this negates the ijma and tawatur, but since fiqh has the ability to add or remove certain actions among followers of that particular fiqh, those actions sometimes can be misconstrued as an original Sunnah but we can always revert back to original ijma and tawatur through time line of fiqh and their books. Practically speaking, you can always verify current ijma that is within the current ilm of Ummah, but how are you going to verify at an academic level whether this current ijma has been passed on through previous generations or not, it is through these fiqh books only, otherwise from an academic standpoint, there is no other way to verify or trace it back to the point of initiation. ( I have used Quran’s analogy to help in the understanding of how Ijma and tawatur takes the form of hard book, otherwise there are still differences in the very nature of Quran (Words) & Sunnah (Actions) which makes the tracing back procedure very different for both of these ). Take Beard for example, when you trace back, you find ijma and tawatur on existence of beard but there has never been ijma on its status as a religion. All the fiqh claiming it to be religion has been doing so as an independent interpretation within domain of fiqh and not within domain of that ijma. Take eating with right hand for example, there has never been any disagreement among any jurists in its status as a religion through ijma and tawatur. Take azan in the newborn’s ear for example, it did appear that there was some kind of Ijma in the current ilm of Muslims but when it was traced back, it lacked that very ijma. This is to the best of my understanding but keep following response to 23 questions series, Insh’Allah this topic will be discussed at length in the coming sessions.