enemies, and He brought your hearts together, so that by His favor you became brothers. You were on the brink of a pit of Fire, and He saved you from it. Thus Allah makes His signs clear to you, so that you may be guided.”
“Let there be among you a group calling to good, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong. It is they who will be successful.”
“And do not be like those who became divided and differed after clear proofs had come to them. For them there is a tremendous punishment.”
“On the Day when some faces will turn white and some faces will turn black.”
Ibn ‘Abbās said: “The faces of the people of the Sunnah and unity will turn white, while the faces of the people of innovation and division will turn black.”
Whatever falls within this category of partisanship, division, disagreement, and speaking without knowledge that Allah and His Messenger have forbidden must be prohibited. No one may engage in what Allah and His Messenger have forbidden.
As for someone who, on the basis of his own independent judgment, considers one imam superior to another, or one shaykh superior to another, this is comparable to the disagreements among Muslims over which is preferable: repeating the testimonies of faith in the call to prayer or not repeating them; saying the phrases of the call immediately before prayer once or twice; performing the dawn prayer while it is still dark or when it has grown light; offering the qunūt supplication in the dawn prayer or omitting it; reciting “In the name of Allah” aloud, reciting it quietly, or not reciting it; and similar questions.
These are matters of independent scholarly judgment over which the early generations and the imams differed, each allowing the others to follow their own judgment. Whoever reached the correct conclusion receives two rewards; whoever exercised independent judgment but erred receives one reward, and his error is forgiven. Thus, whoever considers following al-Shāfi‘ī preferable does not censure someone who considers following Mālik preferable; and whoever considers following Ahmad preferable