far easier to grasp than your alleging a unanimous consensus of the whole community spread across the earth!
263 – He replied, “We blamed him only because, in every generation, we find disagreement in Medina over the very points for which he claims consensus. Genuine consensus, as you defined it, can exist only when there is absolutely no dissent. Perhaps what he calls consensus is merely that the majority agree while a minority differ; in that case he ought to say ‘the majority,’ not ‘consensus.’ And since he transmits nothing from those dissenters, anyone from whom no report is preserved cannot rightly be counted among those who agreed—just as he cannot be counted among the objectors.”
264 – I said to him, “If what you have stated is as you have stated it, then the obligation upon you is even greater; for if consensus cannot be found within a single faction of specialists, it is all the more unlikely to be found throughout the entire world.”
265 – He said, “Yet you—and others—have asserted that ‘consensus itself contradicts consensus.’”
266 – He then asked, “Show me what you mean by that.”
267 – I answered, “If the consensus you speak of is that of the Companions, the Followers, the generation after them, and the people of your own time, then you are attributing to them something you label ‘consensus.’”
268 – He said, “What is that? Give me an example so I may understand it.”
269 – I said, “It is as though you have regarded Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyab as the leading scholar of Medina, ʿAṭāʾ as the leading scholar of Mecca, al-Hasan al-Baṣrī as the leading scholar of Basra, and al-Shaʿbī as the leading scholar of Kufa—men from among the Followers—and then defined consensus as whatever these men unanimously agreed upon.”
270 – He said, “Yes.”
271 – I said, “Yet you claim that they never once gathered together in a single session, as far as you know; rather, you inferred their consensus from the reports transmitted about them. When you found them expressing views on matters for which no text could be traced to the Book or the Sunnah, you concluded that they held those views on the basis of…"