Q. In the Qur’an God attaches much importance to the heart, often referring to it as the place of faith and good action. Medical science considers a person’s heart as no more than a muscle that carries out a mechanic function. It has nothing to do with people’s ideas, beliefs or sensations. These are related to the brain. Please comment.

F.H. Chowdhry, Jeddah

A. It is true that the heart, as a body organ, is no more than a muscle which is central to the blood circulation system within the human body. Its function is similar to a pump, and it receives blood and pumps it to either the lungs or to the body. As such, the heart has nothing to do with beliefs, ideas or sensations. However, human languages have always spoken about the heart as the center of feelings, passion and thought. When people express their deep love, they say that it is “love from the bottom of their hearts”. People also express their conviction by saying that it goes deep into their hearts. This does not apply to Arabic only, but to human languages generally.

The Qur’an is God’s book which addresses human beings in one of their languages, Arabic. It does not merely use the vocabulary of that language, but also its grammar, style and modes of expression. Hence, when God describes hypocrites as having “sickness in their hearts” every Arabic speaker understands it fully, without ever thinking that hypocrisy is a physical sickness that affects the heart, or influences its function of pumping blood into the circulation system.

The scholars of Hadith

Q.1. Could you please let me know which schools of thought were followed by the six scholars who compiled the six most famous collections of Hadith, and to which school of thought did Imam ibn Taimiyah and Imam ibn Hajar belong.

Q.2. As I was offering my Isha prayer, I sat for finishing the prayer after completing the third rakaah. This I did, feeling that I have completed four rakaahs. However, as I was sitting, a friend of mine who was near by alerted me to my mistake and I stood up to complete the fourth rakaah.

He told me later that I should do two prostrations in compensation for the mistake, which I did. However, I read in a book that if a mistake is corrected during the prayer, there is no need for such prostrations. Please clarify.

M. Shamsul Haq, Riyadh

A.1. Those scholars of Hadith lived at a time which was too close to the scholars who founded the four schools of thought. In fact, all of them were contemporaries of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the founder of the fourth school of thought. We know that Al-Bukhari had shown his collection of Hadith, i.e. the Sahih, to Imam Ahmad for comments and what we call today, “peer review”. Imam Ahmad approved it all, raising question marks about four Hadiths only in that collection. You may be aware that a school of thought is not established only by the imam who starts it. It comes into being only when generations of scholars have followed, taught and added to it over the years.

Hence, we do not find followers of these schools of thought very close to the founders. What we find is students who had studied under the imam or under his immediate students. Thus is the status of those scholars of Hadith.

Imam Ibn Taimiyah is well-known to be a follower of the Hanbali school of thought, although he was a main scholar of that school who issued independent rulings, views, fatwas, which were at variance with all schools of thought.

Thus, he was what we call a mujtahid, or a scholar of independent discretion within the Hanbali school of thought. To the best of my knowledge, Imam Ibn Hajar belonged to the Shafie school of thought, although I am not absolutely certain on that point.

A.2. Since you complied with what your friend informed you, recognizing your mistake and rectifying it, you needed to add two prostrations in compensation for a mistake or forgetfulness. This you did as your friend told you. Your prayer, the way you offered it, is correct. May God accept it from you.