Isn’t Ijma And Tawatur Just Opinions?
A further reply was: ‘ 1. we do not have anything from the sahabah not even an ahad report of their saying we had ijma that five prayers were fardh 2. we have some ahad narrations attributed to the prophet saying the five prayers are fardh 3 we have the madhahib which came after the sahabah generation saying the five prayers are fardh 4 this does not mean that the sahabah had ijma that the five prayers were fardh, unless the ahaad narrations attributed to the prophet are true and all the sahabah were aware of them i dont have to show any report of their disagreement because there is no reason to assume they had an agreement in the first place it is something back projected based on the ahad reports So unless you accept the ahad reports to be true you can’t assume anything‘ I then replied this and was wondering if I have understood the principles correctly. Please let me know if I have said something wrong and add anything I have missed: ‘ This is based on the assumption that the living tradition is based upon ahad reports. Most of the traditional ulema as far as my knowledge extends all believed in ilmul aamah, whether they had that term in their time or not. You can read al risalah for this. They compiled sunnah based on what was practiced under the principles of generational transfer en Masse through perpetual concurrence and consensus. So the reason to believe they did not have any disagreement would be that if there was, we would see differing opinions in the living traditions before snd after. Which we don’t. Even today people do not pray from learning a hadith. It is through generational transfer under the same principles. Sure you can bring up ahlul Hadith but again that’s a recent phenomenon’
I think there’s a balance between knowing when the ijma and tawatur started. If we can prove it started from the prophet صلى الله عليه وسلم then great. But since we have evidence that this tradition doesn’t go back to him then it wouldn’t fulfil the principles
Ahmad from the examples cited by your friend it’s very clear that he has some fundamental misunderstanding about ijma and tawatur as well as ahad reports. Ijma refers to consensus of the entire ummah . We know that the companions in the first generation started spreading across different continents. If all of them follow a certain practice, then they have ijma over that practice because they have learnt it from Prophet SAW first hand. Tawatur refers to perpetual transmission of a practice generation after generation starting from the first generation , without any gaps of time and space in the middle . If a certain practice is widely followed by the Muslim community across the globe today with consensus then unless we can find any evidence of gaps or innovation, that practice is mutawatir. We can verify it in the books of fiqh, because in addition to legislation, such books are also a source of historical practices among Muslims. Ijma and tawatur doesn’t depend upon ahad narrations. Such narrations must be understood in the light of what we have received through ijma and tawatur: the Quran and the Sunnah . While the individual narrators of any narration must be verified, it’s inconceivable that the entire ummah spread across the globe would follow a corrupted practice without any gaps in time and space, and without any evidence of innovation or corruption. Also it’s inconceivable that Prophet SAW would have only shared an essential part of our religion with only one or two people, while the rest of the ummah didn’t even know about it until the narrations started being compiled a century or so later. This kind of an argument is really tantamount to accusing Prophet SAW (na-auzobillah) of not properly conveying the message of God.