Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - The Achehnese - tr. Arthur Warren Swete O'Sullivan (1906).djvu/380

 The doctrine is, then, that every Mohammedan is authorized in a given question to follow a different school to that to which he is supposed to belong, provided he do so with full knowledge that this other interpretation is supported by an imām of equal authority with him whom he himself follows, and that he is acquainted with all the rules controlling the question in point in that other school, since, were it otherwise, inconsistencies would arise from following partly one school and partly another. Some add to this a further condition forbidding the selection from every school of what seems easiest and most agreeable.

According to the prevailing opinion, however, each individual may make use of this permission on his own behalf only; for instance, the judge and the mufti must confine themselves to their own school in their verdicts or interpretations of the law, since these affect not themselves but others. It is indeed allowed that the ideal qādhī, as we find him portrayed in the books of the law, should be guided entirely in his pronouncements by the Qurān, by tradition and by what according to his (the qādhī's) view is derived from both these sources by the consensus of the infallible community of Islam. It is, however, admitted without hesitation that it was only in the first two centuries after Mohammad that there were any who came up to this standard, and that now-a-days such a phenomenon would be esteemed a miracle. It is now admitted as a fact that no teacher, no matter how great he be, can do more than simply interpret the law-books of his school. Besides this it is matter of common knowledge that the qādhīs are very seldom chosen from the ranks of the most learned. The existing qādhīs might at best be described as "make-shifts", qādhī ad-dharûrah, but the great majority of them do not even come up to the definition of this term found in the books of the law. They are in fact quite ill-fitted to their task, and are appointed by the authorities for the sake of maintaining social order, but are of course not allowed to go outside the limits of their own school of doctrine.

To return to our main subject; where Achehnese girls are under age and their walis in the ascending line are dead or absent, their being given in marriage is facilitated by the tenets of the Ḥanafite school.