“indeed, Allah does not withdraw knowledge by snatching it from the people; rather, He removes knowledge by taking away the scholars.”⦗1⦘

Those scholars are only the ones grounded in the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger. Yet how often we hear many of them cite this ḥadīth when one of the leading shaykhs of blind-following dies, while at the same time they misunderstand the remainder of the narration: “When no scholar is left, the people will take ignorant leaders; they will be asked and will issue verdicts without knowledge—in al-Bukhārī’s wording, ‘according to their own opinion’—so they go astray and lead others astray.” They suppose that the passage concerns common folk who know nothing of the traditional schools of jurisprudence. In truth, however, it also includes the blind-followers who are content with knowing only the ijtihād of the earlier imams and imitating them without insight, as Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr of al-Andalus has already pointed out.

That our reading is correct is further supported by the scholars’ use of this very ḥadīth to argue that an era may indeed be devoid of a mujtahid—a discussion detailed in Fatḥ al-Bārī (13/244). They thereby indicate that “the scholars” intended in the narration are the mujtahidūn, while the “heads” are ignorant imitators.

The root cause of this all-encompassing ignorance is their failure to grasp the true nature of knowledge, and to recognize who the “scholar” is whenever the verses and ḥadīths mention the term—such as His words, “Are those who know equal to those who do not know?” (Q 39:9); His words, “Allah will raise in rank those of you who believe and those who have been granted knowledge” (Q 58:11); and the Prophet’s words, “The superiority of the scholar over the devout worshipper …”