to the Quran and Sunnah in disputed matters, and issued a ruling endorsing this rejection, which contradicts consensus. Such a ruling is invalid by consensus.

The eleventh ground:

The fatwa sets out matters on which there is consensus, such as the recommended form of visitation, matters scholars unanimously prohibit, and matters on which they disagree. This is the most that can be expected of those who issue fatwas. Yet these people classified it among the fatwas that scholars consider invalid. No Muslim scholar considers this distinction invalid, yet they declared it invalid and ruled accordingly. Such a ruling is invalid by consensus.

The twelfth ground:

No judge is entitled to settle a matter disputed by scholars through a judicial ruling. If no judge is entitled to say, “I have ruled that this view is correct and that the other view is to be rejected,” then, rather, on matters disputed by Muslim scholars or agreed upon by them, a ruler’s opinion is like that of any individual scholar, if he is himself a scholar. If he merely follows scholarly authority, he is no different from ordinary people who do likewise. Office and authority do not turn someone who is not a scholar qualified for independent legal reasoning into one. If the right to speak on knowledge and religion depended on authority and office, the caliph and the sultan would have the greatest right to speak on such matters, and people would have the greatest reason to seek their fatwas and refer to them concerning difficulties in knowledge and religion.

If, then, neither the caliph nor the sultan claims this for himself, nor compels his subjects to accept his ruling in favour of one view over another except on the basis of the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger, someone whose authority is beneath that of the sultan has all the more reason not to overstep