They are unanimously—and with absolute certainty—agreed on the obligation to follow the Messenger ﷺ, and on the principle that every person’s statement may be accepted or rejected except that of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. If, therefore, one of the imams is found to have expressed an opinion that an authentic hadith contradicts, he must have a legitimate excuse for having set the hadith aside. All possible excuses fall into three categories:

1. He does not believe that the Prophet ﷺ actually said the hadith.
2. He does not believe that the hadith was intended to address that specific question.
3. He believes that the ruling contained in the hadith has been abrogated.

These three categories branch into a number of particular causes. The first cause is that the hadith had not yet reached him; and whoever has not received a hadith is not required to know what it entails. If the hadith has not reached him—while he had already ruled on that issue on the basis of the apparent meaning of a verse, another hadith, analogy, or the presumption of continuity—his view may sometimes agree with the hadith and at other times disagree with it.

This is the predominant reason why one finds statements of the early scholars that seem to conflict with certain hadiths, for no one in the ummah ever encompassed all of the hadiths of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ would, on different occasions, relate traditions, issue legal verdicts, render judgments, or perform particular actions;