Support for this will appear shortly in a quotation from Ibn al-Qayyim—may Allah have mercy on him—at the close of this discussion. Furthermore, even a scholar may on occasion be forced to engage in taqlid concerning certain questions: when he can find no explicit text from Allah or His Messenger and has before him only the opinion of someone more learned, he follows that opinion out of necessity, exactly as Imām al-Shāfiʿī—may Allah have mercy on him—did in some matters. Hence Ibn al-Qayyim—may Allah have mercy on him—said (2/344):

“This is the practice of the people of knowledge, and it is what is obligatory. Taqlid is permitted solely for the one who is compelled. Whoever turns away from the Qur’an, the Sunnah, and the sayings of the Companions, and from discovering the truth through evidence while he is able to do so, and instead resorts to taqlid, is like a man who leaves lawful slaughtered meat, though he can obtain it, and eats carrion instead. The underlying rule is that no one’s statement is to be accepted without proof; the imitators have made the exceptional allowance of necessity their entire stock-in-trade.”