Sabab or Ḥikma? : The Relationship between Muḥāḏāt al-Nisāʾ (Adjacency with Women) and the Ištibāh

Abstract

When man and woman pray adjacent to each other in a congregational prayer under certain conditions, this constitutes the phenomenon referred to in classical manuals of Islamic law as muḥāḏāt (adjacency with women). There are various scenarios under which muḥāḏāt can lead either to the invalidation of the prayer of the man or the woman or even worse all the participants. The sababs (reasons) behind the relevant legal rulings on muḥāḏāt in its various scenarios are outlined in detail in classical manuals of the Ḥanafī school, which will also be presented here briefly. This paper, however, seeks to find out the ḥikma (philosophy of law), as opposed to, the sabab, behind invalidation of prayer in congregational regular prayer in cases of muḥāḏāt. In fact, it particularly attempts to answer, for the first time in literature, the question of why the prayer of a man praying adjacent to a woman becomes invalid if they pray in congregation and yet it remains valid if they pray by themselves or in a congregational funeral prayer. What is it with congregational regular prayers that makes the difference? These questions constitute an important gap in the previous literature. To fill this gap, this paper, falling back upon classical manuals of Ḥanafī Fiqh, argues that this seems to have much to do with the legal ruling on ištibāh (doubtfulness) with regard to the position of the imām in congregational prayers, which requires participants to maintain sight of the imām directly or indirectly, which, as will be illustrated, seems to be hindered when muḥāḏāt occurs, thus causing the invalidation of prayer. Filling this gap becomes urgent and relevant especially when one considers the fact that this gap has been misused in recent scholarship to accuse Ḥanafīs of not relying on the Qurʾān and the Sunna for law-making in Islamic law and instead simply repeating the laws that existed before. It was also maintained by some contemporary scholars, again partly by using this gap in the literature, that uṣūl al-fiqh was used not to derive laws from the sources of Islamic law, the primary ones of which are the Qurʾān and the Sunna, as claimed by classical jurists, but rather to cover up this surreptitious use of existing laws and then making them appear as laws derived from the Qurʾān and the Sunna. By exploring the philosophy of law behind the legal ruling on muḥāḏāt, the present work illustrates that these accusations have no basis. Finally, revealing the relationship between ištibāh and muḥāḏāt al-nisāʾ for the first time also has the cumulative effect of substantiating idea that it is far more objective and feasible to rely on sabab (reason) or ʿilla (ratio legis), whichever applies, as opposed to ḥikma in deriving laws from the sources of Islamic law.