—those whose learning the community itself has borne witness to, whose knowledge people have tested firsthand, whose schools have been served and preserved by countless Muslims; not individuals who cannot tell an abrogating report from the one abrogated, nor grasp the real meanings of the Arabic language. To imitate such unqualified people is a blameworthy and disastrous form of taqlid, for whoever does so moves from day into night, from light into darkness, from what is right to what is wrong. The Prophet ﷺ ordered us to take knowledge from scholars who are scholars in their character and in their conduct.

Yet he mocks these very scholars, claiming that they are hirelings in the service of some “Wahhabi” agenda, that they are self-styled mujtahids! In truth, they are scholars whose thought is free; they are not exploited for any movement, nor are they on anyone’s payroll. They are independent: were a ruler to press them to issue a fatwa that served his interest, they would spurn the ruler and his throne. They gave their pledge and endured torture—gladly.

Let me cite for you a man—not on the level of Abu Hanifah or al-Shafi‘i, but one of their followers—Shams al-A’immah al-Sarakhsi, an imam who lived in the ninth century AH. A sultan of his time usurped power, and Imam al-Sarakhsi issued a legal opinion against him. The sultan cast the imam into a well and kept him there for nearly twenty years—yes, almost twenty years, perhaps even longer. While imprisoned in that well, he composed—without so much as a sheet before him, without reading from a book or holding pen or ruler—a flood of knowledge Allah poured into his heart: he dictated to his students thirty-six volumes that, when stacked, rise a full meter off the ground. He dictated them straight from memory, and despite the vastness of his learning he never departed from following those earlier imams.