caprice, and many jurists have claimed with regard to numerous Sunnah reports that they are abrogated—either because they were unable to reconcile them with what they supposed to be a conflicting text, or because they were unaware that the alleged contradiction is in fact groundless, or in order to bolster their own school and fend off objections raised against it on the basis of non-compliance. Yet we find that other scholars have pointed out the correct view in each instance, for this religion is safeguarded and the ummah can never agree upon misguidance.¹

He—may Allah have mercy on him—spoke the truth in all that he stated. You can observe that the narrations pronouncing prohibition do not, in any way, clash with the hadith permitting gold for women, for the latter is general while those are specific, and the specific takes precedence over the general, as is well established in legal theory. On the strength of this very principle, Imām al-Nawawī—may Allah have mercy on him—ruled in his commentary on Muslim and in al-Majmūʿ that ablution is obligatory after eating camel meat, even though this contradicts his own school and the position of the majority. One self-styled scholar in our own times even imagined that no Muslim scholar has ever held that ablution is required after eating it, and he publicised this claim in