His words were revealed, according to one of the two interpretations:

“And whoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed—it is they who are the disbelievers.”

That is, the one who considers it lawful to judge by something other than what Allah has revealed.

In common usage, the term “religious law” has three meanings:

The first is “revealed religious law”: what the Messenger brought. This must be followed, and whoever contravenes it must be punished.

The second is “interpreted religious law”: the opinions of scholars qualified to exercise independent legal reasoning, such as the school of Mālik and others like it. Following this is permissible, but neither obligatory nor forbidden. No one may compel people at large to follow it or prohibit them from doing so.

The third is “altered religious law”: lies about Allah and His Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, or lies against people through false testimony and the like, as well as manifest injustice. Whoever says that this is part of Allah’s religious law has disbelieved, without dispute. This is like someone saying, “Blood and carrion are lawful”—even if he says, “This is my school of thought,” or something similar.

Even if the ruling issued by Ibn Makhlūf had been the position of Mālik or al-Ash'arī, he would have had no right to impose it upon everyone and punish anyone who did not agree with him on it, by the consensus of the Muslim community. How much more so, then, when the position he professes and imposes contradicts the explicit statements of Mālik and the leading scholars of his school, and those of al-Ash'arī and the leading scholars of his school, such as al-Qādī Abū Bakr and Abū al-Hasan al-Tabarī,