Moreover, he knows that this matter either falls within judicial jurisdiction or it does not. If it does, the defendant has no right to choose a particular judge to rule on it; rather, he must appear before someone who judges with knowledge and justice. If it does not concern the judge, then that is all the more untenable.

Furthermore, no claim has been brought against me concerning prescribed punishments or individual rights—matters within a judge’s jurisdiction—such as homicide, an accusation of unchastity, a financial claim, or the like. Rather, the dispute concerns general questions of knowledge, such as Quranic exegesis, hadith, jurisprudence, and other such fields. These include matters on which the Muslim community agrees and others over which it disagrees.

When the Muslim community disagrees over the meaning of a verse or a hadith, or over a declarative or prescriptive ruling, the correctness of one position and the invalidity of the other cannot be established merely by a judge’s ruling. His ruling is enforceable only in particular cases, not in general matters. Were this permissible, a judge could rule that Allah Most High’s words,

“They shall wait for three periods,”

refer to menstrual periods and intervals of purity, and make his interpretation a ruling binding on everyone. Or he could rule that the touching mentioned in Allah Most High’s words,

“Or you have touched women,”

means sexual intercourse and physical intimacy short of it; or that the one in whose hand is the marriage tie is the husband, or the father and the master. No one maintains this.

Likewise, when people disagree over His words,

“The Most Merciful rose over the Throne,”

one says: “It means that He Himself, in His very essence, rose above the Throne. The meaning of rising above is known, but its manner is unknown.”

Others say: “There is no Lord above the Throne, nor is there anything there at all. But