A word on the hadith of (the one who killed ninety-nine souls).

The Shaykh : It seems fitting for me to mention the outcome of righteousness that is not accompanied by knowledge. The outcome of this righteous person was that he ruled upon himself with execution, as the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) informed us in the authentic hadith agreed upon by al-Bukhari and Muslim, narrated by Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him). He said: The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) said: It appears from the details of the story and its context that the man was indeed sincere in his repentance, but he wanted a scholar to guide him to the methodology he should follow. He kept asking until he was directed to a scholar. He came to him and said, "I have killed a hundred souls without right. Do I have any chance of repentance?" He said, "What prevents you from repenting? But you are in a land of evil." This is the scholar's answer. "But you are in a land of evil, so leave it for such-and-such a land whose people are righteous." So he set out walking, and death overtook him on the way. The angels of mercy and the angels of punishment disputed over him, each claiming that it was their right. Allah sent an angel to judge between them. He said, "Measure the distance between him and each of the two towns, the one he left and the one he was heading to. He belongs to whichever is closer." They measured and found him closer to the town he was heading to. So the angels of mercy took charge of extracting his soul. The point is, I think that if this man was righteous, as we hope, he was not a jurist. It is inconceivable that he was one. And this is not unique. I think this is a very important benefit. Many people distinguish between error in the branches and error in the principles. This is a technical distinction where they say that error in the branches is forgivable if it comes from independent legal reasoning, but error in the principles is not forgivable. This is wrong. The reason is, first, there is no evidence for this division, meaning dividing the Shari'ah into principles and branches and assigning this ruling to this division. This has no basis.