The Ruling on Answering a Question About One’s School of Jurisprudence

Question:
Honorable Shaykh, this questioner says: If a person asks me, “What is your madhhab (school of jurisprudence)?” Is it sufficient for me to say that I am from the people of the Sunnah and the community and follow their creed? Or is it obligatory for me to say that I am a Salafi? Because the Ash'aris, the Maturidis, and others also claim affiliation with the people of the Sunnah and the community? In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

Answer:
Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may Allah send prayers and blessings upon our Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and all his Companions. If a questioner asks you, “What is your madhhab?”
Then you answer him, for your madhhab in creed and tawhid (the oneness of Allah) is the madhhab of the people of the Sunnah and the community, from the Companions and the Tabi'un (the generation after the Companions), the best of the generations, and the four Imams.
And those who followed their methodology. As for fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), you mention to him the madhhab you follow among the four madhhabs: the Hanafi, the Maliki, the Shafi'i, or the Hanbali. And you tell him: “I follow what is stronger for me based on evidence from this madhhab, and I do not take the madhhab as a settled matter as long as I have the capacity to weigh the evidence and know the proof.” So you clarify this to him by saying: “My madhhab in creed is what the Salaf (the earliest generations) of the Ummah were upon. Yes. And my madhhab in philosophy is with one of the four madhhabs, but not through blind following; rather, I take what is stronger based on evidence. Yes.”