Is it permissible to leave off acting upon a hadith in following the opinion of one of the imams?

The questioner : When I stood up, I said to him that when he hears an opinion and has the hadith with it, if he accepts it in his mind, he takes it, and he makes no distinction if it was said by Abu Hanifah, or said by al-Shafi'i, or said thus or so. What do you think of this philosophy of his? I want to avoid giving people the idea that I am a Wahhabi or something like that, meaning I want to distance myself from sectarianism?

The Shaykh : It is good, but your expression is wrong.

The questioner : Is it the last abode?

The Shaykh : The last abode and the first abode... I mean your saying that if an opinion comes to me from Abu Hanifah, you naturally mean, for example, that the meaning of the hadith before it is my intellect, which I am reassured by. So you paired the hadith with the opinion of Abu Hanifah, and your expression: "and my intellect accepted it" is wrong. The error is that when a Muslim is presented with only the hadith, the obligation, as Allah the Exalted said: , the obligation, as is known for the Muslim, is that when the hadith from the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) comes to him, he must submit in submission, and it is not a condition that it agrees with his intellect. If the hadith comes with the opinion of an imam, it can be said that it is light upon light. But when the hadith is paired with the opinion of Abu Hanifah, it is not permissible for the Muslim to say, "If my intellect accepts it." If the opinion comes alone, not paired with the hadith of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), from any scholar of the Muslims, and he says, "By Allah, if my intellect accepts it, I accept it," this can be said because it is not the speech of the Infallible. But if the opinion of the imam comes paired with the hadith, and we treat it as if the imam's opinion were not paired with the hadith, and we subject it to our intellect, accepting it if it agrees and rejecting it if it does not, here lies the error. This is one of the verbal errors we often and very often dwell upon, as we mentioned earlier regarding the error of "his last abode." There is no doubt that when a Muslim says about the deceased that he was transferred to his last abode, it does not mean that he denies the resurrection and the re-creation; rather, this came from imitation and negligence regarding the fact that this expression is insufficient to express the Muslim's belief, because the grave is a stage of life and a barzakh (the interval between death and resurrection) between the fleeting worldly life and the eternal hereafter. Likewise, people often fall into verbal errors that do not express the belief latent and settled in the chest. It is not possible for a Muslim with correct Islam to say this, even though some deviants may say it. Therefore, it is not possible for a Muslim with correct Islam, by Allah, to say, "If the hadith comes and my intellect accepts it, I accept it; otherwise, I reject it." It is not possible for a Muslim to say this, even though some deviants from the Sunnah may say such things and even narrate a fabricated hadith about the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family): or, "If a hadith comes to you that agrees with the Qur'an, take it, whether I said it or not." From this, many people were influenced, especially modern intellectuals, and they began to measure Prophetic hadiths by their intellects, accepting what agreed with their intellects and rejecting what contradicted them. This is undoubtedly a serious deviation from Islam, and this deviant may not be safe from exiting the religion of Islam, just as a hair exits dough. This is what I observed in this statement.

The questioner : If my expression was that if it agreed with the opinion of Abu Hanifah or Imam al-Shafi'i regarding the hadith, then I am a Shafi'i, that was my intention.

The Shaykh : Yes, indeed.

The questioner : The second time, we need to be careful.

The Shaykh : But look, here is a slightly delicate issue. This is relatively more correct. Let us now address the issue and distinguish it a bit from the previous hadith. Two Muslims, one is a scholar and the other is ignorant. The scholar said to him, "This is not permissible," or said to him, "It is permissible." The scholar said something, and the layman said, "This opinion did not agree with my intellect." Is this correct or wrong? Many people think this is correct and free of blemish, and the truth is that it is wrong. Why? Because the Lord of the Worlds says in the Noble Qur'an: The verse divides the Muslim community, in terms of being scholars or ignorant, into two groups: the scholar and the non-scholar. It obligated a ruling for each of the two groups. It obligated the non-scholar to ask the scholar, and it obligated the scholar to answer.The questioner : As he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: There is no third group. This third group is what we are discussing: the non-scholar who is not convinced by the scholar's opinion. What is his ruling? There is no ruling for him He must accept the ruling of the scholar unless you have evidence against this opinion. In that case, you are not ignorant as long as you have evidence. This evidence justifies you to refute the opinion of this scholar, even if he is generally more knowledgeable than you, but regarding this specific question, as long as you have the evidence, it is permissible for you to reject the opinion of that scholar. But if you have nothing, you are first ignorant and secondly have no evidence. Therefore, the opinion of that scholar takes precedence over your ignorance and your saying that the opinion of this scholar did not enter my mind. That is why we see that the righteous Salaf were raised in light of this noble verse. How? We have the story of that Companion who was in a military expedition sent by the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) to fight the disbelievers. Many of them were wounded, and one of these wounded men became severely injured. He asked those around him if they found a dispensation for him not to perform ghusl (the full ritual bath). They said to him, "No, you must perform ghusl." If we now measure this story by ourselves and by our selves, which have some freedom of expressing opinion before the scholar, and the one who has this freedom is accustomed to saying, "By Allah, this statement did not enter my mind," look, if this type we are referring to today... they would find for him a dispensation that he does not perform ghusl because he is wounded and fears that water will harm his body and that he will die. They said to him, "No, you must perform ghusl." If the story were with one of us, or in other words, if that wounded man carried the logic of one of us, what would his position be? He would not say that this is not reasonable, "I am wounded and I fear for my life, how can I bathe and perform ghusl?" We do not find his position to be this position; on the contrary, he submitted to the words of those who issued the fatwa for him, and yet in his submission, he died. When his news reached the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), he cursed those who issued the fatwa for him, saying (peace and blessings be upon him): We take two important benefits from this story: that the ignorant person has no choice but to follow the scholar, whether the scholar's fatwa agrees with his mind or not. The second benefit is that the scholar must not rush in issuing a fatwa and must be scrupulous about rushing into it, fearing that his fatwa may be the cause of the misguidance or destruction of the one who asked. That is the meaning of his saying (peace and blessings be upon him): It would have been sufficient for him to strike the ground with his palms and be done with it. Also, here we take a third benefit, which is that the more the scholar is acquainted with the Sunnah, the closer he is to correctness, because the Sunnah details the Noble Qur'an in a way that sometimes requires the use of opinion and ijtihad (independent legal reasoning) based on the rules and principles of the Shari'ah, but ijtihad is subject to error and subject to correctness. To the extent that he has abundance of the Sunnah, he dispenses with the use of qiyas (analogical reasoning) abundantly, and the less the material of the Sunnah he has, the more he resorts to the use of opinion and qiyas, much and very much, and he must then be exposed to error. For that reason, we observe among the four imams that the one who was more than his colleagues in memorization and acquaintance with hadith was more accurate, and the opposite is the opposite. Therefore, Imam Ahmad was the closest of them to the Sunnah... who?

The Shaykh : And upon you be peace, welcome Abu Ahmad... Since you rule that he is still a Muslim, his slaughter is halal, and you ask for guidance for him regarding what he missed from the Sunnah. Is that clear?

The questioner: Yes.