Second: Even if he really did have that authority, why did he carry out the ḥadd on the man but not on the woman when, in that offence, the two are equal?
Third: Under the Sharīʿah, the ruling for a muḥṣan adulterer is death by stoning; execution by any other means is not prescribed.
From all this it becomes clear that the shaykh in question contravened the Sacred Law in several ways—and so did the “spiritual guide” who built on that tale the principle that the disciple must obey his shaykh even when the Sharīʿah is outwardly violated. He even told them: “If you see the shaykh with a cross hanging from his neck, you are not allowed to censure him!”
Despite the blatant falsehood of such talk and its conflict with both Sharīʿah and sound reason, there are still people—among them some well-educated youths—who fall for it. I once debated one of them about this story; he had heard it from that guide together with the ruling derived from it. The debate achieved nothing: he clung to the story, claiming it was one of the karāmāt (saintly miracles). He said, “And you people deny karāmāt!” When I asked him, “If your shaykh ordered you to kill your own father, would you do it?” he replied, “I have not yet reached that station!” So much for a “guidance” that disables the mind and surrenders people, in blind submission, to those who mislead them until they reach this state. Who, after that, can blame anyone for describing the religion of such people as “the opiate of the masses”?
The second group consists of the blind imitators (muqallidūn) who prefer the pronouncements of their madhhab to the words of the Prophet ﷺ, even when the latter are perfectly explicit. If, for example, you say to one of them, “Do not perform the two-rakʿah Sunnah of Fajr after the iqāmah (the commencement call to prayer) has been given, for the Prophet ﷺ clearly forbade that,” he will refuse and reply, “Our madhhab allows it.” Or if you say to him, “A tahlīl marriage (nikāḥ at-taḥlīl) is invalid because the Prophet ﷺ cursed the one who contracts it,” he will retort, “No, it is permissible in such-and-such a madhhab!” And so it goes in hundreds of issues. For this reason many of the verifying scholars have said that people of this sort of blind imitation fall under the saying