2 – Others have said: “If disagreement in matters of religion is forbidden, what do you say about the differences that arose among the Companions and the imams who succeeded them? Is there any distinction between their disagreements and those of later scholars?”

The answer is: Yes—there is a great gulf between the two kinds of disagreement, and this becomes clear in two respects: its cause and its effect.

As for the Companions, their differences arose only out of necessity and from the natural divergence of their understanding; they did not choose to disagree deliberately. Added to this were other factors unique to their time that compelled them to differ and that later disappeared (1). Such disagreement can never be eliminated altogether, nor does the censure mentioned in the preceding verses and the like apply to those involved, because the condition for blame—deliberate intent or stubborn persistence—is absent.

By contrast, the disagreements that exist among present-day blind imitators are rarely excusable. One of them may come to know the decisive proof from the Qur’an and the Sunnah, realizing that it supports a school (madhhab) other than the one he usually follows, yet he abandons that proof for no reason except that it conflicts with his own school—acting as if his madhhab were the very religion brought by Muhammad ﷺ and the other school a different, abrogated religion!

Others go to the opposite extreme: they regard these schools—despite the wide differences among them—as if they were multiple, equally valid sets of divine law, as some have openly declared.