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Independent legal judgment consists in making every effort to seek the correct ruling. This definition accords with the view that only one position is correct, and that a person accountable under religious law is charged with seeking the truth but is not required to attain it. This is the position of a number of scholars. Some scholars of our school have argued that it was also Mālik’s position, citing his reply when asked about the disagreements among the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace: “Some were mistaken, and others correct.” This, however, does not establish their claim. He may have meant their disagreements over matters admitting of certain knowledge, such as those over which they fought one another. Alternatively, he may have meant that some arrived at what the revealed text stipulated, while others missed it through their independent legal judgment in matters open to such judgment. The first interpretation is more apparent—and Allah knows best.
As for those who maintain that every scholar exercising independent legal judgment is correct, they define it as making every effort to arrive at the correct ruling. This was the position of Judge Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī, may Allah have mercy on him. He related that this was also Mālik’s position, citing as evidence Mālik’s response when al-Mahdī instructed him to compile his legal opinions into a book that everyone would be required to follow. Mālik, may Allah have mercy on him, said: “The Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, dispersed throughout the lands, and the people of each region learned from those who reached them. So leave the people to what they follow.” Had Mālik, may Allah have mercy on him, not considered every scholar exercising independent legal judgment to be correct, he would not have thought it right to leave them following what he considered erroneous. The scholars of al-Shāfiʿī’s school also hold this view.
Both positions have been reported from Abū Hanīfah, and both have likewise been reported from Abū al-Hasan al-Ashʿarī, may Allah have mercy on him. The reliably established position from him is that every scholar exercising independent legal judgment is correct. This is the true and correct view. For when a scholar exercises independent legal judgment concerning a matter on which there is neither an explicit revealed text nor a consensus, and his reasoning leads him to deem it permissible or forbidden, he knows with certainty that he is religiously bound to act upon that conclusion and is commanded to do so. It cannot be that Allah Most High commands him to do something and makes it his religious duty while it is erroneous in His sight.
Some who maintain that only one position is correct have adduced the disagreement of those exercising independent judgment to determine the direction of the qiblah. This is a manifest error. Disagreement among scholars exercising independent legal judgment over rulings is not like disagreement among those seeking to determine the direction of the qiblah. The Kaʿbah occupies a single location: whoever determines its direction correctly through his judgment is correct, while whoever fails to do so is mistaken, since it is impossible for the Kaʿbah to occupy two locations. But the same is not true of