"The Caliphate and Imamate in Islamic Thought" Series
By the writer and thinker Thaer Salama - Abu Malek
Part Thirty-Eight: The Importance of God's Succession to the Islamic Nation and the Power of the Caliphate to be a Fundamental Reason for Preserving the Religion1 - Part 2
Here is the detail, let's start with consensus, then semantic recurrence:
Consensus in language: Determination to do something and insistence on it, or agreement.
As for consensus in the terminology of the fundamentalists, it is the agreement on a ruling on an incident as a Sharia ruling, in an era other than the era of the Messenger ﷺ. Consensus takes the place of Sharia evidence (from the Sunnah).2 Consensus after the era of the Companions: It is the agreement of the jurists in the era of the successors or their successors, and so on, from the nation of Muhammad ﷺ on a matter,
It is necessary to differentiate between consensus and the Sharia ruling that is reached through ijtihad, as in the mentality of many scholars today, as well as in the past, is the idea of collective ijtihad, so that the multiplicity of opinions gives strength to ijtihad, so they imagine consensus in this way, as if it is the ijtihad of many crowds, or the application of jurists in an era to a specific Sharia ruling, so it is a Sharia ruling that is distinguished by the strength of the many who derived it. With this perception, they take consensus out of the description of evidence, to the description of the Sharia ruling! Consensus thus becomes a tool to favor ijtihad, no more, due to the large number of people who agreed on that opinion!
This perception is not the concept of consensus. Consensus is the transmission of a ruling, or more accurately: agreement on a ruling on an incident as a Sharia ruling. In conclusion, its authority means establishing the agreement that occurred in any era on a matter, or a religious matter, or a declarative ruling as Sharia evidence for rulings! What the Companions agreed upon, or what the scholars of the nation agreed upon - according to those who say this form of consensus - is installed as evidence for rulings! It is inferred from it, just as it is inferred from the Qur’an or Sunnah. It reveals the existence of evidence. Consensus is one of the evidence from which it is inferred, and this is what distinguishes it from the Sharia ruling that we reached through ijtihad!
Remember, may God protect you, that judgment belongs to God alone, and judgment is only taken from revelation, and warning can only be established by revelation, and a speck of work cannot be described as good or evil and it is permissible to account for it unless it is based on revelation, and proof is not established against people except by what was revealed in revelation, and people were not left aimlessly, and all of this indicates that we do not expect people to agree on something "neglected by Sharia" or "forgotten," and therefore consensus must connect opinion with revelation in order to be legitimate, and revelation has ceased after the Messenger ﷺ, so the meaning of consensus remains only: revealing evidence, or transmitting evidence from the Sunnah!
Perhaps the most important problems related to consensus are:
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What is the considered consensus? (Consensus of the Companions, consensus of the nation, consensus of the progeny, consensus of the jurists of an era...)
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By whom is consensus concluded? And how to consider the opinion of the مخالف.
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Is the ruling resulting from consensus a statement or transmission of evidence of a Sharia ruling connected to revelation, or is it the creation of a new ruling whose source is the opinions and minds of the assemblers?
1- Professor and thinker Youssef Al-Sarissi.
2- See Facilitating Access to the Principles of the Scholar Ata Abu Al-Rashta, Part One, p. 82. As we mentioned earlier, the Companions transmitted the Qur’an and the Sunnah. There is no doubt that the Holy Qur’an was transmitted in full, so the material for ijtihad to derive rulings from it is available in its texts, which any jurist in any era can do. It does not contain an unknown interior. The Sunnah was transmitted to us in word, deed, and approval, and some of this Sunnah is represented in issues that have become obvious in society, so that it is not necessary to say that the Messenger of God ﷺ said such and such, so it was transmitted in the form of a consensus that revealed to us the existence of evidence from the Sunnah on which the Companions relied when they agreed!
