from accepting guidance; so they said, “We are disbelievers in whatever you have been sent with” (43:24).

The Almighty also reproaches and censures the unbelievers, saying: “What are these statues to which you remain devoted?” They answered, “We found our fathers worshipping them” (21:52–53).

Passages of this sort abound in the Qur’an, all of them condemning the imitation of forefathers and leaders. The scholars have taken these verses as proof that taqlid is invalid, and the fact that those earlier people were disbelievers did not prevent them from citing the texts, because the comparison is not between one party’s disbelief and the other’s faith; rather, it is between the two acts of blind-following themselves—1 both of them mere following without any evidence for the follower. If someone were to imitate a man and thus fall into disbelief, or imitate another and thereby commit a sin, or imitate yet another in a specific issue and arrive at the wrong ruling, each one would be blameworthy for following without proof, for all of it is taqlid, each case resembling the other even though the resulting offenses differ in gravity.

It is related from Ibn Masʿūd that he used to say: “Begin the morning as either a scholar or a learner; do not start it as an immaʿa—a yes-man—in between.” In another route from him he said: “In the Days of Ignorance we used to call a man immaʿa if, when invited to a meal, he would go along without knowing why; today such a person is the one who hands over his religion to men” 2—meaning: the blind follower.

And Ibn ʿAbbās said: “Woe to the followers because of the slips of the scholar.” It was said: