SiblingsOfIlm Guest ContributionTranscriber’s Note
The following is an adaptation of a lecture delivered by Shaykh Muftī Muḥammad Taqī ʿUthmānī (حفظه الله) on the topic of Ādāb al-Ikhtilāf – the etiquettes of difference of opinion. The lecture was addressed to a gathering of ʿulamāʾ. It has been transcribed, translated into English and lightly edited for readability, with sub-headings added for clarity. Any errors in representation or translation are the transcriber’s own, and not attributable to the speaker.
Introduction
Muftī Muḥammad Taqī ʿUthmānī (حفظه الله) opened by acknowledging the particular nature of the occasion. Addressing a gathering of ʿulamāʾ, he said, is simultaneously a great honour and a source of genuine unease. It is an honour because the company of scholars is, in itself, a mercy – Allāh ﷻ descends His blessings upon them on account of their knowledge, their practice and their Taqwa, and one hopes to be counted among them by virtue of mere proximity. The unease, however, stems from the reality that it is ordinarily the scholars who guide others, not the other way around. To offer counsel in such a gathering feels, to say the least, presumptuous.
To resolve this tension, Muftī Ṣāḥib said he reminds himself of the practice of taqrār – the revision session that all who studied in the traditional madāris will recall. After a lesson was delivered by the teacher, the students would sit together and revise it amongst themselves. The one leading the taqrār did not thereby become the teacher of his peers; he was simply a fellow student, conducting a shared review on behalf of the group. No one considered it strange. It was simply how learning was consolidated.
He proceeds by praising Allah granting him the great fortune – one whose full measure of gratitude he said he is unable to discharge – of spending time in the company of some of the most eminent scholars of the twentieth century: his father Muftī Muḥammad Shafīʿ ʿUthmānī (d. 1396/1976), Mawlānā Muḥammad Yūsuf Binnorī (d. 1397/1977), Mawlānā Sham-zai (d. 1423/2002), and Muftī Rashīd Aḥmad Ludhyānwī (d. 1422/2002), may Allāh have mercy upon them all. He said he did not benefit from them as he should have. But Allāh ﷻ, in His generosity, caused certain things that he heard from them – some in formal lessons, others in passing, in the corridor, over a meal, in the car – to settle in his heart. It is those things he shared in this lecture, addressing himself first and others by extension. May Allāh ﷻ grant us all the tawfīq to act upon them.
The True Meaning of Prophetic Inheritance
Muftī Taqi begins with a ḥadīth that is well-known – perhaps so well-known, he remarked, that we have stopped thinking carefully about what it actually demands of us. The Prophet ﷺ said:
إِنَّ الْعُلَمَاءَ وَرَثَةُ الْأَنْبِيَاءِ، وَإِنَّ الْأَنْبِيَاءَ لَمْ يُوَرِّثُوا دِينَارًا وَلَا دِرْهَمًا وَلَكِنْ وَرَّثُوا الْعِلْمَ، فَمَنْ أَخَذَهُ أَخَذَ بِحَظٍّ وَافِرٍ
“The scholars are the inheritors of the Prophets. The Prophets did not leave behind dinars or dirhams; they left behind knowledge. Whoever takes from it has taken a full and abundant share.” (Sunan Abī Dāwūd)
We read this, we teach it, it appears on the walls of our institutions. But Muftī Ṣāḥib recalled how Muftī Muḥammad Ḥasan Ṣāḥib (d. 1392/1972, رحمه الله) – the founder of Jāmiʿah Ashrāfiyyah in Lahore, and one of the most eminent khulafāʾ of Ḥakīm al-Ummat Mawlānā Ashraf ʿAlī Thānawī (d. 1362/1943) – used to draw out the implications of this ḥadīth in a way that is difficult to set aside.
Muftī Ṣāḥib mentioned that he had the opportunity to study directly under Muftī Muḥammad Ḥasan Ṣāḥib. During a visit to Lahore, the teacher assigned to his class went on leave. He presented himself to Ḥaḍrat and explained his situation. Ḥaḍrat said, without hesitation: “We shall teach you.” And so a substantial portion of Sharḥ al-Jāmiʿ and Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb he read directly under him – a memory he recalls with evident warmth.
He described Muftī Muḥammad Ḥasan Ṣāḥib as a person of extraordinary spiritual station. When his leg required amputation and the doctors offered anaesthesia, he declined, saying he did not need it. He immersed himself in dhikr and had his leg amputated whilst fully conscious, such was the degree to which his heart was occupied with the remembrance of Allāh ﷻ. Muftī Taqi then says he did not know of a parallel example anywhere in the world.
It was this same scholar who would say: Look at what inheritance actually means. An heir receives everything that the deceased has left behind – without exception. If the deceased left only a needle, that needle belongs to the heirs. The inheritance of the Prophets, therefore, is not merely the mantle of authority or the platform of guidance. It includes every quality, every duty, every burden and every sacrifice that the Prophets carried.
The Prophet ﷺ dug the trench at Khandaq with his own hands. He tied stones to his stomach from hunger. He was willing — Allāh ﷻ Himself addresses this — to destroy himself from grief over a people going astray: لَعَلَّكَ بَاخِعٌ نَّفْسَكَ أَلَّا يَكُونُوا مُؤْمِنِينَ — “Perhaps you are destroying yourself with grief that they will not believe” (al-Shuʿarāʾ, 26:3). That anguish, Muftī Ṣāḥib noted, is part of the inheritance. The scholars are heirs to it.
This means, he said, that the duty of the ʿulamāʾ is not discharged simply by teaching a few books, issuing fatāwā, and returning home. The inheritance includes a comprehensive and consuming concern for the ummah — a preoccupation that does not leave a person even when they sleep. How is the ummah faring? Where is it being led astray? What are the pathways of kufr, shirk and irreligion through which it is being drawn, and what is to be done about it? This is the weight that the prophetic inheritance places upon the shoulders of the scholars. When this concern is genuinely present, Allāh ﷻ opens the heart. He causes ilhām (inspiration) to descend: what to say, when to say it, to whom, and in what manner. But the condition is that the concern be real — and that it be accompanied by genuine turning towards Allāh ﷻ, asking Him: Yā Allāh, this matter has come before me; by Your mercy and grace, cause the correct response to descend upon my heart.
The Fitnah of Seeking Popular Approval
Muftī Muhammad Taqi then turned to what he described – addressing himself first – as one of the gravest internal fitnahs of our age, a matter his late father Muftī Muḥammad Shafīʿ ʿUthmānī (رحمه الله) used to identify with particular concern: irḍāʾ al-khalq – seeking the approval and pleasure of people.
When a person’s driving concern is not what is genuinely best for the ummah but rather what will make people admire me, follow me, call me a great scholar, call me a mujāhid, call me a reformer, then the direction of his effort quietly reverses. He is no longer working for the pleasure of Allāh ﷻ; he is working for the pleasure of the creation. He may not even be conscious of this. But the outputs will reflect it: positions taken for their popularity rather than their correctness, silences maintained out of fear of controversy, words chosen to land well with the audience in the room rather than to convey what genuinely needs to be said.
Muftī Taqi then shares that his father used to quote a couplet from Hindi poetry, the wisdom of which he said is considerable: Piyā jis ko chāhe suhāgan wohī — “She whom the beloved is pleased with is the true bride.” The context he would provide was this: a young bride is being adorned on her wedding day. Her friends come one after another, praising her appearance, her dress, her jewellery. She says nothing — no acknowledgement, no gratitude. Her friends are puzzled and ask why she has nothing to say in response to all their praise. She replies: “I am grateful for your kind words. But what weight do they carry? You will go home today. I am the one who has to live in that house. What matters is whether he is pleased. Your praise will stay here in this gathering. His pleasure is what I will carry with me for the rest of my life.”
Muftī Ṣāḥib applied this directly: the praise of this world stays in this world. Dunyā kī tarīfayn yahīn rah jāʾen gī. What travels with a person is the question of whether Allāh ﷻ is pleased. If He says, on that Day, that this person did what he did for His sake – that is success. If He does not, then the applause of thousands amounts to nothing.
When ikhlaṣ (sincerity) is present — when a person’s concern is genuinely for the ummah and his seeking is genuinely directed towards Allāh ﷻ – then the worldly praise and criticism of people becomes something he can be entirely free from. It does not affect him one way or the other. And it is in this state of freedom that Allāh ﷻ opens pathways and places into his heart the words and actions that are truly of benefit to the ummah.
Ikhtilāf Is Inevitable – What Matters Is How We Conduct It
Muftī Ṣāḥib then addressed the matter of ikhtilāf – difference of opinion – and shared an observation of his father that he considered among the most important for our time.
People often speak as though the goal should be the elimination of ikhtilāf among scholars and within the ummah. This is, Muftī Ṣāḥib suggested, a misunderstanding of both human nature and the realities of scholarship. His father used to say: as long as two things exist – diyānat (integrity) and ʿaql (sound reasoning) – ikhtilāf cannot be eliminated.
Consider: ʿaql differs from person to person. Each individual brings a different capacity, a different angle of vision, a different set of experiences to bear upon any given question. That alone produces differences. And diyānat – the commitment to saying what one genuinely believes to be true, rather than what is convenient or pleasing – compounds this further. A person of integrity says what his conscience tells him is right, even when those around him hold a different view. Remove integrity, and one is left with artificial uniformity – people publicly agreeing with positions they privately reject. Remove reasoning, and the result is the same – everyone nodding along without actually thinking. Neither of those constitutes the unity that is worth seeking.
Muftī Ṣāḥib pointed to the Ṣaḥābah (رضي الله عنهم) as the clearest illustration. There was ikhtilāf among them – fierce ikhtilāf, on significant matters: jurisprudential positions, political judgments, decisions that had consequences for the whole ummah. There were disputes that extended beyond words. And yet they remain the finest generation. Their ikhtilāf did not negate their greatness, because it was ikhtilāf born of diyānat and ʿaql – each said what he genuinely believed to be true, and each arrived at his position through sincere reasoning.
The problem, then, is not ikhtilāf itself. Ikhtilāf conducted with adab and sincerity is a natural and even healthy feature of a living scholarly tradition. The problem is ikhtilāf conducted for the wrong reasons, with the wrong intentions, or with a disregard for the dignity of those one disagrees with. That is what causes damage – and it is precisely that which the etiquettes of ikhtilāf are designed to address.
The Prophetic Model: Seeing Beyond the Present Moment
Muftī Ṣāḥib concluded with a reflection on the Sīrah — one his father used to make – which bears directly on how a person of learning conducts himself when the crowd is moving in one direction and he can see that it is the wrong one.
He drew attention to the incident of Ṣulḥ al-Ḥudaybiyyah. The Muslims had journeyed to Makkah to perform ʿUmrah. They were turned back. The treaty being negotiated was, by any immediate measure, deeply unfavourable: any Muslim who came from Makkah to the Muslims would have to be returned; any Qurayshī who left the Muslims would not be. And then Abū Jandal (رضي الله عنه) arrived – a new Muslim, in chains, desperate to join the community of believers – and had, per the terms being finalised, to be returned.
The emotional state of the Ṣaḥābah (رضي الله عنهم) at that moment was one of intense anguish. So intense, Muftī Ṣāḥib noted, that something occurred which was without precedent in the entire Sīrah – something that, to the best of his knowledge, happened on only two occasions in the life of the Prophet ﷺ: he gave a command and the Ṣaḥābah did not immediately comply. He instructed them to shave their heads and leave the state of iḥrām. No one moved. Not out of disobedience — but out of a grief and bewilderment so great that they were momentarily paralysed.
The Prophet ﷺ went to Umm al-Muʾminīn (رضي الله عنها) and expressed his concern. She advised him, in her wisdom: do not press them with words right now. Their hearts are broken. Instead, go and shave your own head first. When they see you do it, they will follow. And that is precisely what happened.
The popular course of action at that moment, Muftī Taqi mentions, would have been obvious – rally the emotion in the camp, give the speech that everyone wanted to hear, call for resistance against the Quraysh. Even a man of Ḥaḍrat ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb’s (d. 23/644, رضي الله عنه) formidable courage and loyalty was asking: “Is this a victory?” And yet Allāh ﷻ called it exactly that: fatḥan mubīnā, a clear and manifest opening (al-Fatḥ, 48:1).
The Prophet ﷺ could see what those around him could not – that this treaty, which appeared to be a capitulation, was in fact the pathway to a greater opening than any battlefield victory could have produced. He acted on the basis of that vision, not on the basis of what would have made him most popular in that moment.
Muftī Ṣāḥib’s father used to say: a true leader is one who not only knows how to take his people upward but also knows how to bring them back when necessary. Anyone can inflame. Anyone can stoke sentiment and send people rushing forward on the strength of emotion alone. The harder thing — the prophetic thing – is to hold steady, to absorb the pressure of the crowd’s expectation, and to pursue what is genuinely right even when it is not what the gathering wishes to hear.
Conclusion
These, then, are the foundational matters that Muftī Ṣāḥib identified: a genuine and consuming concern for the ummah; sincerity directed entirely towards Allāh ﷻ rather than towards the applause of people; a clear understanding that ikhtilāf in itself is not the problem; and the prophetic quality of being able to see beyond the demands of the moment to what is truly in the interest of the ummah.
He closed by relating a remark of Ḥakīm al-Ummat Mawlānā Ashraf ʿAlī Thānawī (d. 1362/1943, رحمه الله) – passed down to him through his father – made, as Muftī Ṣāḥib noted, from a station of tawāḍuʿ (humility) quite beyond what most of us can claim: “We ourselves were not able to become proper human beings (ādamī). But Allāh ﷻ, in His grace, showed us proper human beings. And because we have seen what a proper human being looks like, if we ever wish to become one, inshāʾallāh we will at least know what we are aiming for. No imposter will be able to deceive us.”
Muftī Ṣāḥib applied this statement to himself in the most literal sense, saying he cannot claim to have put these things into practice as they deserve. But he has seen – in his father, in his teachers, in the scholars in whose company Allāh ﷻ blessed him to spend time – what these qualities look like when they are real. He shared these reflections in the hope that Allāh ﷻ will, through His mercy, cause them to benefit all who hear them.
May Allāh ﷻ grant us all sincerity, concern for the ummah, the wisdom to disagree with dignity, and the courage to pursue what is right regardless of what the world might say. Āmīn.
