on the very day they look at it, and they know what counts as a defect that diminishes its price and what does not?”
145 – He said, “Yes.”
146 – I said, “And no one other than they knows that, correct?”
147 – He said, “Yes.”
148 – I said, “And the way they know it is through ijtihad—by comparing one item with another in light of that day’s market?”
148 – He said, “Yes.”
150 – I said, “And their comparison is an act of ijtihad, not the result of exhaustive knowledge?”
151 – He said, “Yes.”
152 – I said, “So if some other intelligent people were to say, ‘We too shall engage in ijtihad, since you yourselves do not possess full certainty that those appraisers have hit the mark,’ would you not tell them, ‘Those people exercise ijtihad as experts, whereas you attempt it in ignorance; you are merely forcing matters’?”
153 – He said, “They would have no answer to that, and such a reply is enough to establish the proof.”
154 – I said, “And if the experts were to say, ‘Since we do not have complete knowledge, we will speak without recourse to analogy, relying instead on conjecture about today’s price and a bit of reflection,’ that would not be permissible for them, would it?”
155 – He said, “No, it would not.”
156 – I said, “Accordingly, anyone who is not versed in the Book of Allah, the Sunnah of His Messenger ﷺ, and the statements of the scholars—no matter how intelligent—is not entitled to speak on the basis of analogy, nor to suspend judgment altogether.”
157 – “And if it were lawful for a scholar to abandon inference by analogy and the ijtihad it entails, it would likewise be lawful for the ignorant to speak—and they might even be more excusable, for an error committed deliberately without…"