[Positions Held Exclusively by the Schools Affiliated with the Sunnah among the Practitioners of Speculative Theology and Reasoned Opinion]

Likewise, among the schools affiliated with the Sunnah are practitioners of speculative theology and reasoned opinion, such as the Kullābiyyah, Ashariyyah, Karrāmiyyah, and Sālimiyyah, as well as the legal schools of the Hanafiyyah, Mālikiyyah, Sufyāniyyah, Awzāiyyah, Shāfiiyyah, Hanbaliyyah, Dāwūdiyyah, and others. While holding in high esteem the well-known positions transmitted from the followers of the Sunnah and the community *) (1), no school among them has a correct position that it alone holds to the exclusion of the rest of the Ummah. Rather, whatever correct position any one of them holds is also found among other (2) schools. A school may uniquely hold an error not found among the others, though it may also be alone in holding the correct view relative to the schools that debate it.

This is the case with the four legal schools: each one (3) of them may hold positions peculiar to it in which the correct view conforming to the Sunnah lies with it rather than with the other three. However, that position will also have been held by others among the Companions, the Successors, and the remaining scholars of the Ummah. By contrast, a position they alone hold and which has not been transmitted from anyone else can only be an error. The same applies to the Zāhiris: every position in which they stand alone against the rest of the Ummah is an error. As for a correct position in which they differ from the four schools, others among the early generations also held it.

Correct views in which one school stands alone against the other three are numerous (4), though some adherents of those other three generally agree with it. An example is Abū Hanīfah’s view that a pilgrim in ihram may wear cut-down leather socks and similar items, such as the low-cut footwear known as jumjum and midās. This is also one position within the school of Ahmad (5) and others. Another is his view that (6) a grandfather excludes siblings from inheritance; some followers of al-Shāfiī and Ahmad agreed with him on this. Another is his view that ritual purity through wiping