and because they did not persist in sin. They are not higher in rank than the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them. The same applies to the Companions regarding the scholarly judgments they exercised in issuing fatwas, deciding cases, the bloodshed that occurred between them, and other matters.

Nevertheless, knowing that someone who refrains from acting upon a hadith in the circumstances described is excused—indeed, rewarded—does not prevent us from following authentic hadiths for which we know of no countervailing evidence that would override them, or from believing that the Muslim community is obliged to act upon them and that they must be conveyed. This is something about which scholars do not disagree.

These hadiths fall into two categories: those whose import is definitive, being certain in both transmission and meaning—that is, we know with certainty that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said it, and that he intended it to apply to the case in question—and those whose import is apparent but not definitive.

As for the first category, one must accept what it establishes as knowledge and act accordingly. There is no disagreement among scholars about this as a general principle. They may, however, disagree over particular reports: Is their transmission certain or not? Is their meaning definitive or not? An example is their disagreement concerning a non-mass-transmitted report that the Muslim community has accepted and affirmed as true, or upon which it has agreed to act. Jurists generally, and most speculative theologians, hold that such a report yields certain knowledge, whereas some groups of speculative theologians hold that it does not. The same applies to a report transmitted through several mutually corroborating channels from people