And Allah Most High has forgiven this community for error even when they do not retract it; so what, then, of one who has retracted(1) it?

It has been established elsewhere that the exercises of independent legal judgment undertaken by the early generations—the Companions and the Followers—were more complete than the independent legal reasoning(2) of later scholars; that their correct conclusions were more complete than those of later scholars; and that their errors were less serious than those of later scholars. Thus, the error of those Companions and Followers who held temporary marriage to be valid was less serious than the error of later scholars who held valid an intervening marriage intended to render a divorced woman lawful again for her former husband. This is so for more than twenty reasons, which we have set out in a separate work. Likewise, the error of those Companions and Followers who held it permissible to exchange one dirham for two was less serious than the error of later scholars who permitted usurious legal stratagems.

The position of those who rejected what the Companions—Umar and others—said regarding the wife of a missing man, namely that if her husband returned he should be given the choice between taking back his wife and receiving her dower, is weak. The position of the Companions is correct and accords with the fundamental principles of sacred law. Those who deemed this contrary to analogical reasoning and said that a judge’s ruling to that effect would not be enforceable said so because they did not understand the grounds on which the Companions based their position or the subtlety of their understanding(3). For this is based on holding contracts in abeyance when necessary, which is one of the noble principles of sacred law.

Similarly, Umar was correct in treating land conquered by force as property held for the Muslim community, unlike those later scholars who failed to understand this. Likewise, Ali ibn Abi Talib—may Allah be pleased with him—was correct in the course he advocated regarding fighting fellow Muslims, unlike the Khawarij and others who objected to him for it.