Principle Fifteen
A command that the Lawgiver directs to one person applies to every member of the Ummah.

When the all-wise Lawgiver addresses a single individual from the community or issues a ruling concerning him, is that ruling to be regarded as general and binding upon the entire Ummah unless there is evidence of restriction, or is it confined to the individual addressed?

The scholars of legal theory have differed on this issue. The correct view is the first, and it is the opinion preferred by al-Shawkani and other investigators.1 Ibn Ḥazm says in Al-Aḥkām, 3/88–89:

“We are certain that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, was sent to every person alive in his era throughout the inhabited world—human and jinn alike—and to all who will be born after him until the Day of Resurrection, so that he might rule concerning every entity and every attribute that Allah creates until that Day. This is established by the definite, undisputed consensus of the Ummah—traceable to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him—and by the explicit texts we have cited about the permanence of the religion until the Day of Resurrection and its binding nature upon humans and jinn. Moreover, by the very necessity of sensory perception we know that those who come after him have no way of witnessing him; therefore, whenever he issues a command to a single member of the species and with respect to a single individual…"