and we have never heard that the practice of the people is an independent proof. If the people were to persist for a long time in doing things that are prohibited, until they came to see them as nothing but lawful, would we then say that they are lawful because this is the practice of the people? No one would say this.

Rather, what is meant by “the practice of the people” is the practice of those engaged in orchard-sharing and farming from the time of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, because the basis of the matter was his arrangement with the people of Khaybar. This arrangement continued during the lifetime of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and during the caliphates of Abu Bakr and Umar, may Allah be pleased with them, until Umar, may Allah be pleased with him, expelled them, because they had done what warranted their expulsion, so he expelled them.

Yet the practice of the people may indeed be taken as corroborating evidence when scholars who are firm in upholding Allah’s cause live among them; for had the matter been objectionable, they would have condemned it. But if only scholars of the masses live among them, then their practice carries no evidentiary weight. You should know that scholars fall into three categories:

The first: scholars of the state.

The second: scholars of the masses.

The third: scholars of the faith.

Scholars of the state are those who look to see what the state wants, then seek out equivocal proofs for it. They follow whatever is ambiguous in the evidence in order to please the state. There are many examples of them in both earlier and later times. Thus socialism emerged in the Arab countries, along with the nationalization of people’s private property and the oppression of the people, so they tried