Following a School and Question about Witr

I do not think there is any thing wrong with not following a particular school of thought blindly and/or completely. I have already talked about this in some of my conversations with my Shi'ite brothers.

With respect to understanding Quran and narratives of the Prophet (pbuh) directly, there are many important things that have to be kept in mind. Firstly, either you have to know that the person who interprets Quran must have mastery on classical Arabic language so when Quran uses a certain style, they must understand why Arabs used that style of language, what are the implications, moods, tones, emotions etc that are conveyed through that style. These styles exist in our languages too and we usually have a good understanding and command of those in our mother tongue. If you do not have that command of the language, then you have to know that what you are studying is actually a translation and an interpretation of the translator. In other words, you are already reading some scholars opinion. There are many examples where the Quran's translations differ drastically because of difference of translators. Same is the case with narratives of the Prophet (pbuh). When you make a decision based on that translation, you have indeed made the decision based on an interpretation of a scholar already.

This is not the only thing, although it is the most important thing. There are many other things to consider too, for instance, both the Quran and narratives of the Prophet (pbuh) demand a very good understanding of the culture and lifestyle of the Arabs, the history of the previous nations, the life of the Prophet (pbuh) and many other things. One must also have a deep understanding of the books of Bible and beliefs of the people of the Book. Circumstances under which various verses and chapters of the Quran were revealed are also amongst some of the things that you need to understand and opinion of the companions and their practices. In addition, there are many practices instituted by the Prophet (pbuh) that made it later to the books but he instituted in practice, those have to be known too. These are various fields of knowledge that one has to have a command over in order to understand Quran and narratives of the Prophet (pbuh) better.

It is for this reason that we find that those people who become scholars in this field spend many years just learning the language and related fields.

All of this guides us to one conclusion, which is that either we must understand all these fields, or we end up relying on scholars. However, that does not mean that we cannot address the issues that you were facing and for which you ended up coming to the conclusion that you did.

The approach that I was recommended when I started studying Islam has worked for me very well. This is how I will recommend it to you. Whenever there is an issue that you need to find a solution to, take it to a scholar and get their opinion. At the same time, do ask them on what basis are they giving this opinion. If you find something that you do not agree with, question them and keep questioning until you are satisfied. Even if you are satisfied, to get a second opinion you can go to another scholar. They may agree or disagree. If they disagree, ask their reasoning. Once you keep investigating, there will come a time when you will know which reasoning is higher on merit. You may just accept the reasoning that you think is more closer to the Quran and the practices of the Prophet (pbuh). That way, you will be satisfied that you are doing it according to the Quran and, at the same time, you will not be worried that you may have misunderstood a Quranic verse or a narrative of the Prophet (pbuh) incorrectly. In addition, when a scholar gives an opinion, he has looked through all the knowledge available to him, he usually tries to make sure his understanding is not contradictory to the Quran, not contradictory to any other narrative of the Prophet (pbuh) or his instituted practices and similarly, he tests that against other sources of knowledge available to him.

You can stop relying on them in the sense that do not take them blindly. Then, while you are not relying on them, you will be taking full advantage of the knowledge that already exists, which is what we do in real life anyway. We go to multiple doctors, get their opinion and then go with what we think is the best opinion. We do not rely blindly on them, but we know they are experts in their field and we take full advantage of that.

The second part of your question deals directly with the issue. The issue of witr is divided for the reason that the Prophet (pbuh) prayed witr in the tahajjud prayers. In some of the narrations, the tahajjud prayer is actually called the 'witr' prayer. For instance, consider the following narrative:

In the above narrative, it seems that the mention is to the prayer that is called as 'witr'. Later when some of the companions asked the Prophet (pbuh) that they could not offer tahajjud, he asked them to offer it with the Isha prayer. Since tahajjud was at least three rakahs, those scholars who opine that witr cannot be one rakah, do it on this basis.

In some of the narratives of the prophet, the last rakah that is called 'witr'. The last Rakah of the 'witr prayer' was called 'witr' because it made the prayer odd. So for instance:

In the narration above, the Prophet (pbuh) is mentioning how to offer the tahajjud prayer and calls the last rakat as 'witr'. It becomes clearer with the following narration of the same issue:

Consider the phrase "this will be a witr for all the Rakat which he has prayed before." In other words, a person should continuing offering in multiples of two prayers and add one more prayer to make it a 'witr prayer'. If you go by the opinion that I have mentioned, then it becomes the case that the 'witr prayer' should be offered in more than one rakat.

However, the other opinion is that the second narrative and all the similar ones, it really is the 'witr prayer' that is offered as one rakah and therefore one can offer the 'witr prayer' in one rakah. In fact, there are a few other narratives of the Prophet (pbuh) which, especially if taken in isolation, lead an impression that one can offer a single prayer of witr:

I have attempted to provide some background in order to demonstrate, using the same issue that you mentioned, why the scholars differ. It is indeed a difficult situation at times, such as this one, and the oinion of the scholars then ends up distributed. I, however, am inclined towards the opinion that 'witr prayer' should be at least three prayers or more.