FROM THE EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

desist from doing so. The result was that the Sunnah remained mostly a general directive interpreted by the early Muslims in different ways. What the Prophet had done was to lay down certain regulations, but the jurists elaborated them with many more details. The reason for these further additions to the laws by interpretation is that the Prophet himself had made allowances in his commands. He left many things to the discretion of the community to be decided according to a given situation. In the early days of Islam, the law was neither inflexible nor very rigidly applied. Different and even contradictory laws relating to many problems could be found acceptable on the basis of argument. It seems that the Prophet provided a wide scope for differences by giving instructions of a general nature, or by validating two diverse actions for the same issue depending on the circumstances. The Prophet aimed at providing opportunities for the application of his guidelines in a variety of circumstances in the future. Had the Prophet laid down specific and rigid rules for each problem, the coming generations would have been prevented from exercising reason and framing laws according to the need of the hour. After the demise of the Prophet, the Companions spread out in different parts of the Muslim world. Most of them came to occupy positions of intellectual and religious leadership. The people of their regions approached them for decisions regarding various problems. They gave their decisions sometimes according to what they understood from the Quran and the Sunnah. The interpretation of the Quran also caused differences of opinion among the Companions. The points on which the Quranic injunctions were silent or those points not dealt with in detail in the Quran were to be explained. The result was that these verses were sometimes interpreted in the light of the traditions of the Prophet, and sometimes on the basis of the jurists’ opinions. Moreover, since the traditions themselves were diverse, it was natural that there were differences. In some cases, a Companion did not know a particular Hadith; hence he decided the problem on the basis of his own opinion. When the relevant Hadith was brought to his notice, he withdrew his personal judgement. On this account, Umar, the second Caliph, changed his opinion several times. People in Prophet’s lifetime were not interested in unnecessary philosophical discussions or in hair-splitting details.