—the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, once told Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him, that he had erred when interpreting a dream related to him by a man. The Prophet said to him, “You have been right in part and wrong in part.”(1) Does anyone imagine that by these words the Prophet was disparaging Abu Bakr?
One of the strangest effects of this illusion upon its victims is that it bars them from following a Sunnah that clashes with their school’s position. In their minds, to follow that Sunnah would amount to belittling their imam, whereas clinging to the imam—even in opposition to the Sunnah—constitutes honoring and exalting him. For that reason they insist on copying him, fleeing from a disparagement that exists only in their imagination.
These people have forgotten—if not deliberately ignored—that this very delusion has cast them into something worse than what they sought to avoid. Suppose someone were to ask them: “If following someone signifies respecting him, and differing with him signifies disparaging him, how have you allowed yourselves to contradict the Sunnah of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, abandoning it in order to follow the imam of your school in his opposition to that Sunnah, when your imam is not infallible and critiquing him is no act of unbelief?”
If, in your view, opposing the imam counts as disparaging him, then opposing the Messenger of Allah is even more clearly a disparagement of him—indeed, that is sheer disbelief, Allah forbid. Were this objection put to them, they would have no answer save one oft-repeated phrase we have heard from some of them: “We left the Sunnah only out of trust in the imam of our school; he knew the Sunnah better than we do.”
Our reply to this claim has many facets, too numerous to explore fully in this preface. I shall therefore confine myself to a single, decisive response, by Allah’s permission: Not only is the imam of your school more knowledgeable of the Sunnah than you are; there are scores—indeed, hundreds—of other imams who likewise surpass you in their knowledge of the Sunnah. Therefore, whenever an authentic Sunnah comes