Analysis of the Authority of the Four Sources of Ijtihad from the Perspective of Nasir al Din al-Albani

As a pioneer of the Salafi school, al-Albani's views deserve attention in various areas of the methodology of Salafi thought. al-Albani's aggressive and anti-Shia fatwas are perceptible in many of his jurisprudence books. Such fatwas arise from his view towards the sources of inference; however, the scope of the authority of sources from aL-Albani's point of view is not fairly clear due to the lack of an extensive and coherent research in this regard. al-Albani has a specific approach in using the four sources of inference i.e. Book, Sunna, consensus and intellect for his own jurisprudential ijtihad. The present paper has been written with the aim of identifying the extent of the authority of those sources from the view point of Nasir al-Din al-Albani. This research, using a descriptive-analytical method, shows that al-Albani considers Quran and Sunna to be of equal ranks in the process of ijtihad and believes in no priority in using these two sources and does not accept a preference between verses and hadiths. In addition, he believes that a hadith narrated by one person has authority with regard to precepts and beliefs. al-Albani defends hadith in a way that, in his opinion, hadith has authority even in case it contradicts Quran. Moreover, he weakens the category of hadiths according to which, all hadiths should be compared to Quran, since he considers their content to be against Quran. Intellect has no proper place in al-Albani’s system of jurisprudence and ijtihad and he generally advocates narration and is anti-intellectualist. In addition, al-Albani considers the consensus which is accepted among Usulis as controversial.