214 – I said, “How would you carry out the stoning? Some scholars have expressly maintained that an adulterer is not to be stoned, citing Allah’s words: ‘The adulteress and the adulterer—flog each of them with a hundred lashes’ (al-Nur 24:2). So how do you stone him without first returning to the basic rule that his blood is inviolable until they all concur in permitting it? Whoever espouses that view argues that, being an adulterer, he falls under the verse and must therefore receive one hundred lashes.”

215 – He said, “If I grant you this point, it will draw upon me consequences whose scope far exceeds all limits.”

216 – I said, “Indeed.”

217 – He said, “So I will not concede it, and I will answer you as I did at first.”

218 – I said, “Then speak.”

219 – He said, “I do not look at the few among those who issue fatwas; I look to the majority.”

220 – I said, “And how do you describe that ‘few’ whom you disregard—are they fewer than half the scholars, a third, or a quarter?”

221 – He said, “I cannot set a precise figure; I simply follow the greater number.”

222 – I said, “Is ten more than nine?”

223 – He said, “Those numbers are practically the same.”

224 – I said, “Then fix the line wherever you wish.”

225 – He said, “I am unable to set any line at all.”

226 – We said, “So you mean to leave the claim without limit: whenever you adopt a disputed opinion you say, ‘The majority supports it,’ and whenever you wish to reject an opinion you say, ‘That is the minority.’ Would you accept such an answer from anyone else?”

227 – Do you now see how, once you reached this point, you have fallen into the very divisiveness you condemned?