The twentieth ground:

Even if a scholar who issued many fatwas were to make mistakes in a hundred questions, that would not discredit him. Everyone other than the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, is sometimes right and sometimes wrong.

If anyone were to prohibit a scholar from issuing fatwas altogether and order his imprisonment because he had made mistakes in certain questions, that would be invalid by consensus. Thus, the ruling prohibiting him from issuing fatwas and ordering his imprisonment is invalid by consensus. How much more so when the mufti’s answer accords with the Sunnah of Allah’s Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and the position of the scholars of his community!

The twenty-first ground:

Suppose a mufti issues fatwas on questions of Islamic law—“questions of legal rulings”—according to one of two positions held by Muslim scholars, adducing evidence from the Book and the Sunnah and explaining that this position, rather than the other, is what the Book and the Sunnah indicate. Whatever the subject—sales, marriage, divorce, pilgrimage, visitation, or anything else—no one is entitled to compel him to adopt the other position without evidence from the Book or the Sunnah. Nor, by consensus, may anyone rule that he must adhere to a particular position or prohibit him from holding a different one. How much more so if someone imposes a blanket prohibition on him and orders his imprisonment! By the consensus of the Muslims, this is among the most invalid of rulings.

The twenty-second ground:

If a judge supposed there to be consensus where none existed, and compelled people to adopt that position because he believed it to be agreed upon, without adducing evidence from the Book or the Sunnah, while there was disagreement of which he was unaware, he would be mistaken in compelling people