Muhammad Shafi Deobandi

Muḥammad Shafī‘ ibn Muḥammad Yāsīn ‘Us̱mānī Deobandī (Urdu: محمد شفیع بن محمد ياسین عثمانی دیوبندی‎; Arabic: محمد شفيع بن محمد ياسين العثماني الديوبندي‎, Muḥammad Shafī‘ ibn Muḥammad Yāsīn al-‘Uthmānī ad-Diyūbandī; c. 25 January 1897 – 6 October 1976), often referred to as Mufti Muhammad Shafi, was a South Asian Sunni Islamic scholar of the Deobandi school of Islamic thought. A Hanafi jurist and mufti, he was also an authority on shari'ah, hadith, tafsir (Qur'anic exegesis), and tasawwuf (Sufism). Born in Deoband, British India, he graduated in 1917 from Darul Uloom Deoband, where he later taught hadith and held the post of Chief Mufti. He resigned from the school in 1943 to devote his time to the Pakistan Movement. After the independence he moved to Pakistan, where he established Darul Uloom Karachi in 1951. Of his written works, his best-known is Ma'ariful Qur'an, a tafsir of the Qur'an.

Birth and early childhood

Muhammad Shafi, son of Maulana Muhammad Yasin, was born on 21 Sha'ban 1314 AH (c. 25 January 1897) in Deoband, British India (in present-day Saharanpur district, Uttar Pradesh, India) to an Usmani family. He was given the name "Muhammad Shafi" (محمد شفيع) by his father's shaikh, Maulana Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, though he was originally named "Muhammad Mubin" (محمد مبین) by his grandfather, Khalifah Tahsin Ali. Shafi grew up in a religious environment. As a child he played in the courtyard of Darul Uloom Deoband and sat in the company of his father, who was a teacher at the school.

Muhammad

Muḥammad (Arabic: محمد‎; c. 570 CE – 8 June 632 CE), is the central figure of Islam and widely regarded as its founder. He is known to Muslims as the "Holy Prophet", almost all of whom consider him to be the last prophet sent by God to mankind to restore Islam, which they believe to be the unaltered original monotheistic faith of Adam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other prophets. He united Arabia into a single Muslim polity and ensured that his teachings, practices, and the Quran, which Muslims believe was revealed to him by God, formed the basis of Islamic religious belief.

Born approximately in 570 CE in the Arabian city of Mecca, Muhammad was orphaned at an early age; he was raised under the care of his paternal uncle Abu Talib. After his childhood Muhammad primarily worked as a merchant. Occasionally, he would retreat to a cave named Hira in the mountains for several nights of seclusion and prayer; later, at age 40, he reported being visited by Gabriel in the cave and received his first revelation from God. Three years after this event Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that "God is One", that complete "surrender" (lit. islām) to him is the only way (dīn) acceptable to God, and that he was a prophet and messenger of God, similar to the other prophets in Islam.

Shafi'i

The Shafi'i (Arabic: شافعي‎ Šāfiʿī ) madhhab is one of the four schools of Islamic law in Sunni Islam. It was founded by the Arab scholar Al-Shafi‘i in the early 9th century. The other three schools of Sunni jurisprudence are Hanafi, Maliki and Hanbali.

The Shafi school predominantly relies on the Quran and the Hadiths for Sharia. Where passages of Quran and Hadiths are ambiguous, the school first seeks religious law guidance from Ijma – the consensus of Sahabah (Muhammad's companions). If there was no consensus, the Shafi'i school relies on individual opinion (Ijtihad) of the companions of Muhammad, followed by analogy.

The Shafi'i school was, in the early history of Islam, the most followed ideology for Sharia. However, with the Ottoman Empire's expansion and patronage, it was replaced with the Hanafi school in many parts of the Muslim world. One of the many differences between the Shafi'i and Hanafi schools is that the Shafi'i school does not consider Istihsan (the personal preference of Islamic legal scholars) as an acceptable source of religious law because it amounts to "human legislation" of Islamic law.

Muhammad Taqi Usmani

Muhammad Taqi Usmani (Urdu: محمد تقی عثمانی‎, Muhammad Taqī ‘Usmāni, born 5 Ocotber 1943) (also spelled Uthmani) is a Hanafi Islamic scholar from Pakistan. He served as a judge on the Federal Shariat Court of Pakistan from 1981 to 1982 and the Shariat Appellate Bench of the Supreme Court of Pakistan between 1982 and 2002. He is an expert in the fields of Islamic Jurisprudence (fiqh), economics, Tasawwuf, and hadith. He also held a number of positions on the Shariah Boards of prestigious Islamic institutions. He is the brother of Islamic scholars Muhammad Rafi Usmani, Muhammad Wali Razi, and Muhammad Razi Usmani, as well as of the Urdu poet Muhammad Zaki Kaifi. He translated of the Holy Qur'an in both English and Urdu language.

Early life

Muhammad Taqi Usmani was born on 5 October 1943 (1362 AH) in Deoband, a city in the Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, India.

In 1958, Usmani passed the Fazil-e-Arabi (Arabic language examination) with distinction, administered by the Punjab Board. In 1959 he graduated from the `Alim course at Darul Uloom Karachi. He then specialised in fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) under the guidance of his father, the Mufti of Darul Uloom Karachi, Muhammad Shafi, receiving his Takhassus degree (equivalent to a PhD) in fiqh and ifta (issuance of Islamic legal opinions) from Darul Uloom Karachi in 1961, earning the title of Mufti. He graduated from the University of Karachi with a Bachelor of Arts in 1964, then received a Bachelor of Laws with distinction from the University of Karachi in 1967. He received a Master of Arts in Arabic literature, with distinction, from the University of Punjab in 1970.