As for the later authorities, the position of the dissenters carries no weight, nor is any significance attached to the fact that most people of Transoxiana, Khurasan, Iraq, Rum, and the lands of India have abandoned this sunnah; blind imitation has prevailed among them and they have missed the careful verification and firm support that come from adhering to the sound view. He then cited the statements of the shaykhs confirming the pointing gesture and describing how it is to be done, after which he said (18): “Al-Kaydani went so far as to say: ‘The tenth of the prohibited matters is pointing with the forefinger like the hadith scholars.’ In other words, like the gesture practiced by a group bound together by their knowledge of the Messenger’s hadith! This is a grave error and a serious offence, rooted in ignorance of doctrinal fundamentals and of the hierarchy of derivative rulings. Were it not for maintaining a good opinion of him and interpreting his words charitably, it would amount to explicit disbelief and clear apostasy! Can a believer be so ignorant as to forbid an act whose performance by the Prophet is almost mass-transmitted and to deny the permissibility of a practice upheld by leading scholars generation after generation? The fact is that the Greatest Imam, the earliest champion, said: ‘It is not lawful for anyone to adopt our opinion unless he knows its source in the Book, the sunnah, the consensus of the umma, and the clear analogy relevant to the issue.’ Al-Shafi‘i said: ‘If a sound hadith is authenticated that contradicts my view, then cast my opinion against the wall and act on the reliable hadith.’ Having understood this, know that even if no explicit statement from the Imam on the matter had reached us, it would still be incumbent upon his scholarly followers—let alone the laity—to act on what is authentically reported from the Prophet. Likewise, were it hypothetically proven that the Imam denied the gesture while its affirmation were authentically established from the Bearer of Glad Tidings, the authenticated affirmative report attributable to the Prophet would unquestionably take precedence—how much more so when the Imam’s own explicit transmission coincides exactly with what is soundly established from him.”