For this reason, some scholars used to say:
“Their consensus is conclusive proof, and their disagreement is a vast mercy.”
ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz used to say:
“It would not please me if the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, had never differed. For if they agree on a position and someone opposes them, he is astray; but if they differ, and one person follows one opinion while another follows the other, there is latitude in the matter.”
Likewise, leading scholars other than Mālik said:
“A jurist may not compel people to follow his school of law.”
For this reason, scholars of the Shāfiʿī school and others who wrote on enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong said:
“Practices in such matters open to juristic interpretation are not to be suppressed by force, nor may anyone compel people to follow his opinion concerning them. Rather, these matters should be discussed through scholarly arguments. Whoever comes to recognize the correctness of one of the two opinions should follow it, while someone who relies on the scholars holding the other opinion is not to be censured.”
There are many comparable matters, such as disagreement over selling fresh broad beans in their pods; selling melon and cucumber crops as a single lot; sales concluded by exchange without a verbal offer and acceptance; advance-payment sales with immediate delivery; using a large quantity of water into which an impurity has fallen without altering it; performing ablution after touching the penis or women, after impurities leave the body through somewhere other than the two usual outlets, or after laughing aloud—or not performing ablution on account of these things; reciting “In the name of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful” silently or aloud, or omitting it; regarding the urine and dung of animals whose meat may be eaten as impure, or holding them to be pure; selling specific goods that are not present on the basis of a description, or refraining from such sales; performing dry ablution with one strike or two, wiping as far as the wrists or the elbows; and performing dry ablution for each prayer or