Asking for Forgiveness

Bismi Allahi ar-Rahmani ar-Rahim

When a person ask a question to a religious teacher and the question is on a new problem; and the religious teacher answer the question immediately, is the answer an opinion or a ijtihad?

According to al-Ghazali, to do ijtihad is to strive hard like a man carrying a big boulder on his back while climbing up a steep hill.  This means that to do ijtihad is to do an extensive research until all available resources on the problem are exhausted.  The result of this extensive research is knowledge or ruling on certain issues.

I told my students the other day that one should not advice others to do things that one has not done extensive research or one has not find any evidence or foundation on such action.  For example, should a mother or parents ask forgiveness from their children when they did something wrong? 

The findings by Hadith of Psychology Research Team revealed that Prophet Muhammad did not ask his companions to ask forgiveness when they did something wrong to their children.  In the case of the conflict between Abdul Rahman bin Auf and Khalid al-Walid, the Prophet also did not ask them to ask forgiveness from each other.  The same is true when Allah reminded the Prophet of his wrong action toward Ibnu Makhtum, the blind man in surah Abasa.  Prophet Muhammad did not ask for forgiveness from Ibnu Makhtum...And when Prophet Muhammad beat a person wrongly, he did not ask for forgiveness but he said to the man to beat him back. 

This got me wondering on the wisdom behind this.  I wonder why Prophet Muhammad did not ask a mother who lied to her child to ask for the child's forgiveness for lying?  The wisdom could be many but the most important thing is the advice that we give to others should be grounded on a firm foundation, that is, Qur'an and Hadith not on mere opinion or popular practice.