Question: I am having trouble understanding the concept of "action" in the idea that one must not combine different ideas from different madhabs in the context of one action, thus creating a hideous amalgam that would not be accepted by any madhab. I don't understand what an action is.
Salat seems to be one action: you cannot pray your first raka as a Hanafi and the second as a Maliki. But i have trouble seeing how wudu and salat are the same action. There is both temporal and geographic separation between the two. If we use a dictionary definition of "action" it would imply that a specific action of an individual might have some locality of time and place.
Could you also please explain why creating an amalgam is so objectionable?
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In the Name of Allah, Most Merciful and Compassionate
Our purpose, as the Qur'an explains, is to worship Allah. Allah created us on earth and commanded us to do certain actions and refrain from others. In order to obey Him, we need to know what He demands of us. Hence the importance of sacred knowledge.
In terms of fiqh (knowledge of the rulings of sacred law), Muslims fall into one of two categories. They are either mujtahids (loosely meaning that they possess the stringent qualifications required to derive rulings directly from the Qur'an and Sunna) or muqallids (meaning that they do not possess these qualifications and hence must resort to a mujtahid to find out Allah's ruling on a particular matter). No Muslim will contest that we must follow the Qur'an and Sunna; the question rather is: is one qualified to derive legal rulings oneself, or must one submit to those who are authorized to do so?
Ijtihad
Mujtahids are of various kinds (one can refer to Kamali's "Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence" for a categorization of the different levels of ijtihad) [1]. Only the highest level of mujtahid (the absolute (mutlaq) mujtahid) is not bound to a madhab, and Imam Nawawi mentions in the Majmu' that this mujtahid has not existed since the era of the mujtahid imams. The only ijtihad that is probably alive today is on new issues that were not addressed by the classical works of the madhabs.
Since a mujtahid can derive fiqh rulings directly from the primary sources (commonly enumerated as four: Qur'an, Sunna, Ijma', and Qiyas, although there are others as well), it is haram for him to make taqleed. For him to do so would be to turn away from the Qur'an and Sunna and follow the opinions of men. The verse is Surah al-Tawba where Allah condemns the Jews for taking their Rabbis as lords besides Allah would apply to a mujtahid in such a case.
Taqlid
The concept of authority is not a difficult one to understand. No society would allow someone to perform a surgical operation without first attending medical school; nor would it permit anyone to build a bridge without first graduating from a civil engineering program. Does it not make sense to define criteria for mujtahids to prevent ignoramuses from ruining the Muslims' afterlife?
It is haram for a muqallid to attempt ijtihad and he is sinful for doing so even if he ends up coming to the right conclusion. [2] Allah's laws are not something to be played with and only those qualified to perform ijtihad have permission to delve into the primary evidences and deduce that something is halal or haram. The unqualified must ask the qualified. A mujtahid is to a muqallid what the Qur'an and Sunna are to a mujtahid. To find out the ruling of Allah on a particular issue, we resort to the fiqh books of the four schools; not to Sahih al-Bukhari or Sahih Muslim (let alone the would-be mujtahids of our age). This is not because we don't want to follow the Qur'an and Sunna; rather, it's because the only way we can truly follow the Qur'an and Sunna is by going through someone who understands what they are saying.
If a mujtahid looks at the prayer of a muqallid and rules that his prayer is valid, the muqallid has absolved himself of his responsibility before Allah, regardless of any hadiths that Salafis or modernists might hit him on the head with. Allah has demanded that the muqallid ask the mujtahid, saying, "Ask those who know well if you know not."[3] Those who obstinately shunt aside the madhabs and follow what they think is right risk falling under the purview of the Prophetic curse: "They killed him; may Allah kill them: why did they not ask when they did not know?" [4]
Talfiq
This is where talfiq comes into the picture. Talfiq is to join between the positions of more than one school so that the resulting amalgam would be unacceptable according to all mujtahids. For example, someone who bleeds and decides to follow the Shafi'i school on wudu cannot follow the Hanafi school in prayer by not reciting the fatiha behind the imam, since both schools would say that his prayer was invalid. A muqallid who does talfiq in this manner has not absolved himself of his responsibility before Allah because there is no mujtahid who would look at his action and say that he had done what Allah asked of him.
With this in mind, Imam Ibn Hajar al-Haytami's (whose word, along with Imam Muhammad al-Ramli's, constitutes the final word in terms of fatwa in the Shafi'i school) definition of talfiq makes perfect sense. He said: "Whoever makes taqleed of an Imam in an issue must follow the requirements of his madhab on that issue and everything else that is related to it." (I'atu'l-talibin, 4.219). Since wudu and salat are related (wudu is a condition for the prayer), one must follow the same school on both. Since zakat, fasting, pilgrimage and prayer are not related to each other, one can validly follow a different school in each one.