| 520 |
|
|
|b The umrah is from among the righteous actions through which a Muslim seeks to draw close to his Creator, Exalted be He. It is a journey to Allah dur¬ing which the soul is elevated and the self purified. Many indeed are those who yearn to visit the Sacred House of Allah. Some perform umrah every year, others every month or maybe even every week or every day. This paper is a juristic study of the preponderant scholarly opinions on this issue and explores the question of whether it is permissible to perform umrah several times. The paper comprises the lexical and technical definitions of umrah, its prep¬arations, manner of performance and the ruling on performing it more than once. There are two scholarly opinions on repeat umrah: The first opinion: The majority of scholars have maintained the permissibil¬ity of performing umrah more than once and laid down certain stipulations, citing evidences form the Sunnah, athar (non-Prophetic reports), qiyas (anal¬ogy) and the ma'qul (rationale). The second opinion: It is disliked to perform umrah more than once in a sin¬gle year. However, scholars have unanimously agreed that if a person enters ihram for a second umrah, it is obligatory upon him to perform it and his ih- ram is effected. This is the mash-hur (well-known) opinion within the Maliki school of jurisprudence and the opinion of some scholars which they based on athar, qiyas, and the ma'qul. The preponderant opinion: The permissibility of performing umrah more than once and in abundance. This is the opinion maintained by the majority of scholars due to the uncontested evidences used, their strength and the weakness and disputability of the evidences used by those holding a differ¬ent opinion. Moreover, the Prophetic reports on the merit of making umrah and those encouraging its performance are general and thus include the per¬missibility of making repeat umrah and encourage it. The principle with regards to general rulings is that they must remain of gen¬eral applicability until they become restricted by evidence. In addition, it was mentioned in athar from many of the Prophet's Companions and Tabi'in that they spoke in favor of and performed repeat umrah, all of which points to the permissibility of performing umrah more than once and in abundance. It is not permissible to analogize umrah with hajj because it is possible to per¬form umrah throughout the course of a year whereas hajj is time-restricted.
|
