228 – I said, “Suppose all the jurists together numbered ten, and you maintained that you would accept only the opinion held by the greater number. Six of them concurred while four dissented. Have you not, then, borne witness that the six are correct and the four mistaken?”

229 – He said, “And if I were to say, ‘Yes’?”

230 – I said, “Then picture another case in which those four hold one view; two of the original six side with them, and the remaining four oppose them. What would you do?”

231 – He said, “I would follow the six.”

232 – I said, “So you abandon the judgment of the two who are right and adopt the judgment of the two who are wrong—men whose error was already established once—while you reject any view in which error is possible. That is a contradictory position.”

233 – I also said to him, “Consider your statement that binding proof exists only in what all the jurists in every land unanimously affirm. Can you find a way to ascertain the agreement of every single one of them? Does no proof stand against anyone until you yourself have met them all, or until the common folk transmit from one multitude to another on behalf of each of them?”

234 – He said, “That is impossible.”

235 – I said, “If you accept their positions on the basis of transmission by a select few, you have accepted precisely what you condemned. Yet if you refuse to accept anything from any one of them unless it is conveyed by the general public, then according to your own principle we find nothing on which the lands agree, because you reject transmission by individuals. From the outset your requirement is unattainable: they will never gather for you in one place, nor will you ever obtain their views through mass-to-mass transmission.”

236 – I said, “Furthermore, I hear that you have adopted the views of the hadith specialists, even though you regard them as erring in their very practice of accepting hadith. How, then, can you trust them not to err in the fiqh they have adopted and attributed to it? You are thus following people whom you do not approve. Yet, in our estimation—and in that of most scholars—the most learned are those who adhere most closely to hadith, whereas in your view they are the most ignorant, for you define ignorance as accepting a khabar al-infirād (an isolated report).”