Taqlid

The madhabs, the schools of Islamic law that developed methods for deriving rulings from the Qur'an and the Sunnah. Four Sunni schools and the Shi'a traditions have guided Muslim practice for over a millennium; they are schools of method, not sects.

A nineteenth-century Indian Sunni movement that set aside the authority of the historic schools of law in favour of direct recourse to the Qur'an and hadith. Led by scholars at Delhi and Bhopal, it was marked by its manner of prayer and an austere standard of interpretation.