—to the man who once asked him about a legal question, and whom he answered with a hadith. The man retorted, “Abu Bakr and ʿUmar said….” Ibn ʿAbbās replied, “Stones from the sky are about to rain down upon you! I say to you, ‘The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said,’ and you answer, ‘Abu Bakr and ʿUmar said’?!”

Now, because a scholar may abandon a report for any of the reasons mentioned earlier, whenever an authentic hadith reaches us establishing a permission, a prohibition, or some ruling, it is impermissible to assume that the scholar who left it—owing to the excuses we have described—is thereby liable to punishment for having declared the unlawful lawful, the lawful unlawful, or for ruling by other than what Allah has revealed. Likewise, if the hadith contains a threat concerning a certain act—such as a curse, divine wrath, punishment, and the like—it is not permissible to claim that the scholar who permitted or practiced that act is included in that threat.

On this point there is, to our knowledge, no dispute within the ummah, save for an opinion ascribed to a few of the Muʿtazilites of Baghdad, such as al-Marīsī (1) and those of his ilk, who alleged that a mujtahid (independent jurist) who errs is punished for his error,