Is the Shafi'i not praying behind the Hanafi a matter of ijtihad, or are they the opinions of individual scholars of the madhhab?

The questioner : The clarification I would like to hear from the honorable Shaykh is that the hadith he 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, meaning the permissibility of praying and the impermissibility of praying?

The Shaykh : We hope that is the case, but I am sorry it is not. It is ijtihad. And then, I want you to be with me in what follows: if we revere Imam Abu Hanifah, al-Shafi'i, Malik, and Ahmad, we at the same time revere their followers. 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. Likewise, we revere those who came after Abu Hanifah 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, nor does he elevate them to the level of infallibility, nor does he belittle them, criticize them, and declare them misguided, as some ignorant people do. No, rather, the truth is as Allah the Exalted said: . So, unfortunately, such things have existed since 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 one who said something that surprises the beginner student of knowledge. Among them is one who said that the 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 of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) . He did this on his own, 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 among the Rightly Guided Caliphs. I do not name the one who said that if a man strains his wife and exhausts her, and then does not ejaculate, he only has to perform wudu. And so 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. We do not blame him or declare him sinful; rather, we say to him that he has a reward with Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He. That is the case with others.