the person who could know every single soul in both the East and the West? And how could one ever be sure that there is not some man hidden away in a cellar of whom we have no report? If we are fair, we must admit that the people of the East have no information about any of the scholars of the West, let alone detailed knowledge of each one of them and of the exact contours of his school of thought.

Moreover, even supposing that we somehow possessed knowledge of every scholar on earth, we still could not be certain of their agreement, for that would require returning to each individual in turn—and such consultation does not establish consensus, since it remains possible that some of them issued the ruling contrary to their real conviction out of dissimulation (taqiyyah), fear, or other motives hidden from us.

Furthermore, even if we were to question each of them and ascertain that every last one had given that ruling from the depths of his heart, this still would not prove consensus, because it is conceivable that the scholars of a particular town, after issuing a judgment, might retract it while travelling to another town, and do so before the scholars of that second town have issued their own ruling. In such a case no agreement has been achieved; for if we imagined the community splitting into two groups, one declaring a verdict and the other the opposite, and then the affirmers becoming deniers and the deniers affirmers, no consensus would ever exist. Given the persistence of such a possibility, how can one attain certainty that a consensus has actually occurred?

Indeed, there is another dimension: even if all the scholars of the world were to assemble in one place, raise their voices in unison, and proclaim, “We have issued this ruling”—an event whose occurrence is itself impossible—this would still not yield certain knowledge of consensus. One of them might in fact disagree but fear opposing so vast a gathering, or fear the ruler who convened them, or he might voice his dissent yet have his words drowned out by the others. Thus it is established that certain knowledge of consensus is unattainable.

He continues (4/44): “In all fairness, we have no means of knowing that consensus has occurred except in the time of the Companions, when the believers were few enough that each could be known individually.”

I say: It is evident that this discourse is not free of contrivance, yet on the whole he has argued well for the position that knowing any consensus after the era of the Companions is impossible.

Shaykh Muḥammad ibn ʿUthaymīn states in al-Uṣūl min ʿIlm al-Uṣūl (p. 83) that consensus