This is a section on what the ḥāfiẓ, Taqī al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Taymiyyah, wrote when discussing claims of consensus, including his comments on the statements of the eminent Shaykh, Imām Abū Muḥammad Ibn Ḥazm.

Abū Muḥammad Ibn Ḥazm says in his book devoted to the questions of consensus:

To proceed:

Consensus is a foundational principle of the upright religion. It is to be referred to, sought out, and whoever rejects it—once proof has been established that it truly is consensus—is deemed an unbeliever.

With Allah’s help, we have resolved to gather the issues for which consensus has been soundly established and to set them apart from the other questions over which the scholars have differed (1)… until he said:

Certain people have introduced into the category of consensus matters that do not belong there:

• Some have counted the view of the majority as consensus.
• Others have considered an issue about which they know of no disagreement to be consensus, even though they are not sure that disagreement does not in fact exist; yet they still ruled it to be consensus.
• Some have regarded the well-known, widely transmitted opinion of a Companion—when they know of no other Companion opposing it—as consensus.
• Others have deemed the agreement of the second generation on one or more of the two positions that existed in the first generation before them to be consensus (2).

All of these positions are unsound. It is sufficient proof of their invalidity that, in many cases, they themselves abandon what they had earlier claimed to be consensus. They applied the label “consensus” to the kinds of cases we have just described only out of obstinacy and contentiousness when the force of evidence and proof compelled them to relinquish their faulty preferences.