"The Caliphate and Imamate in Islamic Thought" Series
By the writer and thinker Thaer Salama – Abu Malek
Part Forty-Five: Methods of Semantic Mutawatir - Part 2
As for the second type: As for practical transmission, it is obtained by extrapolating facts and customs1 established among the nation, such as languages: the use of languages by Arabs is included in the semantic mutawatir, as they have agreed on specific words that convey specific meanings. In order for a word to be considered an Arabic word, it must be narrated from the Arabs in a correct narration, either by transmitting poetry, or through the use of languages by those who are authoritative among the Arabs (and this is a form that ranges between semantic and verbal mutawatir).
Another example: extrapolating what has reached us of the consensus of Muslims on a matter that originates from the consensus of the Companions, then transmitted in later eras as a consensus on a ruling, such as the establishment that the prayers are five, their rak'ahs, the Sunnah of Fajr, and the holding of the caliphate.
As for the third type: the semantic mutawatir is derived through examining and extrapolating the commonality of texts, facts, words, clues, evidence, indicators, general rulings, and rules, and their agreement on a "general meaning" through a process of extrapolation, and considering the possibility of benefiting from them in confirming a single, shared, and decisive meaning.
For example: by extrapolating the relationships between men and women in Islam, we find: the prohibition of looking at the awrah, lowering the gaze, the prohibition of a woman traveling a certain distance without a mahram, and placing the rows of women in prayer in the public mosque behind the rows of men, separate from them. And the women said to the Messenger ﷺ: "The men have overpowered us, so make a day for us," and the testimony of a woman was not permitted in felonies, and the evidence of these rulings indicates the obligation to separate women from men, and that men do not meet with women. Then the reality of the lives of Muslims in the era of the Messenger ﷺ is the separation of women from men, and this separation means preventing men from meeting with women, and the Sharia made homes a private life, and made seeking permission an indication that it is a private life, so do not enter except with permission, so preventing entry and preventing what results from it except according to specific rulings, so the general evidence for the Sharia rulings related to women towards men indicates definitively and not speculatively the separation of women from men, because it came with definitive evidence of proof, definitive in meaning, from Quranic verses and mutawatir hadiths2. This extrapolation of Sharia rulings leads to the mutawatir meaning of separating men from women among Muslims in private life, and this has become something that is necessarily known from the religion, due to the strength of its proof and its obviousness.
Another example: extrapolating what has reached us from examining the verses and evidence indicating the obligation of the caliphate! This is what we will do in this chapter, God willing.
1- The Sharia came to show people the good and the bad, the good and the evil, the reward and the punishment, so the noble character is a Sharia ruling that the Muslim must possess because he was commanded to possess it, not because it is a good characteristic in itself, and similarly, what people are accustomed to, the Sharia was only revealed to regulate it with Sharia rulings, so it is impossible rationally for the nation to agree - with its different inclinations, origins, ethnicities, and peoples - on a specific established custom unless its origin is the Sharia!
2- Answer to a question for Hizb ut-Tahrir dated: 11th of Rajab 1393 AH 8/9/1973, with modifications.
