And they are the leaders whom the revealed texts establish will never agree upon falsehood or misguidance, and whom the Quran and Sunnah require us to follow. They also disagreed over questions of knowledge and belief, such as whether the dead hear the voices of the living, whether the deceased is punished because his family weeps over him, and whether Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, saw his Lord before his death, while maintaining their unity and mutual affection.

Among these questions are some in which one of the two positions is certainly wrong. In others, according to the majority who follow the early generations, only one disputant is correct in reality, while the other has fulfilled his duty according to his powers of understanding. Whether the latter should be called correct or mistaken is disputed. Some people consider all the disputants correct and hold that there is no objective ruling on the matter. The position of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamā‘ah is that whoever exercises independent judgment incurs no sin, even if he errs.

This type therefore resembles the first type in one respect but differs from it in another. The difference is that the prophets, peace be upon them, are protected from being allowed to persist in error, unlike individual scholars and rulers, who have no such protection. Thus, it is permissible—indeed, obligatory—to explain the truth that must be followed, even when doing so entails exposing an error committed by a scholar or ruler. As for the prophets, neither sets forth anything that exposes the other as mistaken.

The resemblance lies in the fact that each is commanded to follow whatever truth has become clear to him through scriptural evidence, just as the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, was commanded to follow what was revealed to him.