an intercessor whose intercession is accepted, and the mercy of the Most Merciful. If all these means are absent—and they will be absent only in the case of someone who defiantly rebels and strays from Allah as a camel bolts from its owners—then the threatened punishment will befall him. For a threat of punishment essentially states that a particular deed is a cause of a particular punishment. This establishes that the deed is forbidden and reprehensible. But the claim that everyone in whom that cause is present must necessarily suffer its consequence is certainly false, since that consequence depends upon the requisite condition being fulfilled and all impediments being removed.

To clarify this, anyone who does not act upon a hadith falls into one of three categories:

First, his not acting upon it may be permissible by the agreement of the Muslims. This applies, for example, to someone whom the hadith has not reached and who has not been negligent in seeking it when needing to issue a fatwa or a judgment, as we have mentioned concerning the Rightly Guided Caliphs and others. No Muslim doubts that such a person incurs no blame for not acting upon it.

Second, his not acting upon it may be impermissible. This scarcely ever occurs among the leading scholars, Allah willing. Yet there may be grounds to fear that some scholars have an inadequate grasp of a particular issue: a scholar may express an opinion without sufficient grounds, even though he has examined the issue and exercised scholarly judgment; or he may fall short in examining the evidence and express an opinion before his inquiry has run its full course, although he is relying on an argument; or a habit or personal motive may prevail over him, preventing him from examining the matter fully and considering what conflicts with the evidence he has, even if he has spoken only