Is the fact that al-Shafi'i does not pray behind a Hanafi a matter of ijtihad, or are they the opinions of individual scholars of the madhhab?

The questioner : The clarification I would have liked to hear from the honorableThe Shaykh : The hadith you mentioned was not said by al-Shafi'i or the Hanafi, but rather by some Muslims whose thoughts and understanding of Islam have declined. As for Imam al-Hanafi and Imam al-Shafi'i, may Allah protect them from saying such a thing, namely that it is not permissible to pray, and that it is not permissible to pray?

The Shaykh : We hope that is the case, but I am sorry it is not. It is merely ijtihad. And then, I want you to agree with me on the following: if we revere Imam Abu Hanifa, al-Shafi'i, Malik, and Ahmad, we also revere their followers at the same time. We revere, for example, al-Rafi'i from the Shafi'is, whose statement we mentioned earlier, and al-Nawawi who came after him as a corrector, and so on. We also revere those who came after Abu Hanifa from his followers, such as Imam Ibn al-Humam, the author of Fath al-Qadir, and others. But it is these people who spread these ideas. We do not hold them accountable, but we do not agree with them. This is the difference between one who seeks justice and fairness: he does not elevate the Imams to the level the Shi'ah claim for their Imams, meaning he does not elevate them to the level of infallibility, nor does he belittle them, criticize them, or declare them misguided, as some ignorant people do. No, rather, the truth is as Allah the Exalted said: Such things exist, unfortunately, from ancient times. But if a judge rules and is correct, he has two rewards; and if he errs, he has one reward. We know from the great companions of the Imams those who said things that astonish the beginner student of knowledge. Among them is one who said that a fasting person in Ramadan, if he eats hail to quench his thirst and cool his stomach, is still fasting. This is a story that actually happened; it is not fictional. It occurred with the authentic chain by which we know the authentic hadith narrated from the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) He did this based on his own opinion, and he was a noble Companion, but he was mistaken. We do not agree with his action, nor do we hold him accountable for his action, because he was a mujtahid. One of the Rightly Guided Caliphs—and I will not name him—said that if a man exerts himself with his wife and exhausts her, and then does not ejaculate, he only has to perform wudu. And so on, there are very strange opinions whose error we have come to know from their correctness after the scholars' opinions and their evidence were compared, and it became possible for us to perform the filtering that we always and forever order: filtering and education. Only then can we say so-and-so was correct and so-and-so was mistaken. And when we say so-and-so was correct and so-and-so was mistaken, we do not blame him or declare him sinful, but rather we say to him: you have a reward with Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He. As for the others.