Would be grateful for more advise
my honest advise: either somehow get them to stop acting so stubborn and reach a middle way: i.e i respect you for following your mathhab and you likewise mine, just leave me to follow mine and dont pester me about it...if i find a mistake on a certain ruling in mine, i'll take up that opinion whether its of your mathhab or another one
OR
if they both feel that passionate abut their mathhab, just leave it...really it's not going to get anywhere...
But he would expect the sister to choose the stricter one as well. And he said it doesnt matter which madhab they are, but he expects the both of them to choose the "stricter" ruling.
why the "stricter" ? stricter doesn't make it anymore correct...?
He really believes that hanifi madhab is the strongest overall, and he has reseached enough to notice the difference.
researching is something, and understanding is another. if you dont understand what you have researched (and only a scholar who understands the contexts of the ayahs/hadiths is able to do that), than how do you know which is strongest, etc? would i be right in assuming he isnt a scholar...
Regarding the kids, he doesnt want them to be confused, and taught different rulings for the same action etc etc.
in all honestly, i don't think the kids will be that badly affected...if they see their parents co-operating and respecting each others mathhaby opinion, then "automatically" they'll understand that it isn't a big deal...if however they see their parents arguing and not reaching a compromise/understanding one another, than of of course they'll grow up confused...
and either way, whether they pick it up from their parents or otherwise, they are going to come across differences of opinions later on...in fact i think it will be better if the kids
did grow up with both their parents following two different mathhabs because they will grow up understanding that there is differences of opinion...when i was growing up, i grew up in a town where there was only a handful of Muslims so there was only one masjid/one imam in town. as a result I grew up thinking that there wasn't a variety of opinions...it was quite a shock to me when i realized the various opinions scholars had on a certain issue...it was so confusing at first...and it still very much is.
and also, something else to take into account...is there
that much of a difference between the mathhabs on various rulings...i mean for eg the rulings on how to perform wudoo, there cant be that much of a difference on how to perform wudoo, right?
and i also thought that the hanbali mathhab was the strictest, not the hanifi one :?