Difference of Opinion

Often the “difference of opinion” between two fair persons is rooted in some assumption that they make on their gut feeling at some point in their thought process.

Example:

Let’s assume person A and B went through Fiqh and Ahadith with sole intention of understanding deen. Going through both they found various differences between the two. They came to know that Imam Abu Hanifa RA (80-148AH) did his contribution before Imam Bukhari’s RA’s (194-265AH) contribution.

1. Person A thought that since Imam Abu Hanifa RA’s era was closer to Prophet SA’s time he might have developed Fiqh on more reliable piece of information. So A considered that since already much work has been done in this domain so let’s move on to other domains that need improvement and started contributing there.

2. Person B thought that since Imam Bukhari RA spent more time in collecting Ahadith instead of inferring from them he might have come across Ahadith that were unknown to Imam Abu Hanifa RA (or other imams). And Prophet’ SA’s saying should have preference over interpretation of Imams. So B started working on further analyzing Hadith, Fiqh and Seerat in an effort to propose agreeable corrections by discussing Ahadith and different opinions from Imams.

The gut feeling of A and B differed because in reality there was no conclusive logical reason to prefer Imam Bukhari’s work over Imam Abu Hanifa’s work or vice versa.