“Consensus cannot be proven by any of its recognized avenues, and whoever upholds the authority of consensus would never uphold the authority of something like this; it is nothing but the conjecture of a lone individual of the ummah, and Allah has not charged any of His servants to worship Him on the basis of such conjecture. Suppose a researcher were to say, ‘I know of no proof for this question from the Sunnah or from the Qur’an.’ No intelligent person—much less a scholar—would claim that this statement itself constitutes evidence. Once this is clear to you, the matter will seem trivial whenever you hear someone recount an alleged consensus.” — End of al-Shawkānī’s words.

This is not the kind of consensus about whose probative force the Muslim community has disagreed. Moreover, the majority of the scholars of legal theory maintain that solitary reports (khabar al-āḥād) are inadmissible for establishing consensus, as al-Qāḍī stated explicitly in al-Taqrīb and al-Ghazālī affirmed throughout his works, and so on.

I have laid out the proofs on this issue in my book Ḥuṣūl al-Maʾmūl min ʿIlm al-Uṣūl, and my two righteous sons have gathered them in al-Iqlīd and al-Ṭarīqah al-Muthlá. Whoever desires to put his mind at ease should consult those works, as well as Dalīl al-Ṭālib and the rest of our writings. ⦗85⦘