Abū Ḥanīfah said, “This is my opinion; if someone brings us an opinion better than it, we accept it.”
Al-Shāfiʿī declared, “When a ḥadīth is sound, hurl my opinion against the wall,” and he also said, “Whenever I see the proof set out on the path, I follow it.”
Al-Muzanī opens his Abridgment with the words: “This is a book I have condensed from the knowledge of Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Shāfiʿī for anyone who wishes to know his school, while also informing him that the Imam forbade his own blind imitation as well as that of any other scholar.”
Imām Aḥmad said, “A jurist ought not force the people to adopt his school or be harsh with them,” and he added, “Do not entrust your religion to men, for they are bound to err.”
If this was their position regarding practical matters and the subsidiary branches of the religion—refusing to oblige people to follow their schools despite supporting them with textual evidence—then how much more reprehensible is it to compel and coerce people to accept statements that are found neither in the Book of Allah, nor in any report from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, nor in the sayings of the Companions, their Followers, or any of the imams of the Muslims?
For this very reason Imām Aḥmad said to Ibn Abī Duʿād the Jahmite—who, while chief judge under al-Muʿtaṣim, summoned people to the Jahmite creed, ordering them to say that the Qur’an is created, punishing them for refusal, dismissing whoever would not comply, and cutting off their stipends during the famous ordeal—during their debate, when the caliph pressed Aḥmad to concur that the Qur’an is created:
“Bring me something from the Book of Allah or from the Sunnah of His Messenger, and I will answer you with it.”
Ibn Abī Duʿād retorted, “Do you insist on speaking only according to the Book of Allah or the Sunnah of His Messenger?”
Imām Aḥmad replied, “Grant that you have adopted an interpretation—and perhaps you understand it better than anyone else—how can you deem it lawful to force people to accept it by imprisonment and flogging?”
Thus he clarified that punishment is permissible only for abandoning what Allah has made obligatory or for committing what Allah has forbidden. If a statement is absent from the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger, people are not obliged to affirm it, for obligation can be taken only from the Lawgiver. Even if the statement is, in itself, true—or its proponent believes it to be true—he has no right to compel people to utter what the Messenger never required them to say, whether by explicit text or by inference.
Accordingly, when someone says, “What is required of