Lesson #4 is from June 27, 2026
In the Name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate.
All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the worlds. May Allah bless our master and prophet Muhammad and his pure family.
In recent days, we passed through the days of the martyrdom of Abu ʿAbdillah al-Husayn (a), his companions, and his supporters. I extend my condolences and sympathies to our dear friends and companions. May Allah, the Exalted, accept everyone’s mourning ceremonies, and may He grant us the success to take influence from that great Imam in our lives.
We will continue the discussion. Our Saturday discussions have been about taqlid. Perhaps it would have been appropriate to postpone the continuation of the discussion to a later time, and today, because of the fatigue from the dense programs of the past days, to suspend the discussion. However, I preferred to remain faithful to the arrangement we had made. Although there is fatigue, we will begin the discussion and continue some of the previous points.
You will recall that in the previous session, the discussion was this: if the foundation of taqlid is the practice of rational people, is the rational practice regarding taqlid of jurists and referring to jurists like other cases where people refer to experts, or not?
If we regard the ignorant person’s referral to the learned as one of the rational practices, just as a sick person refers to a physician, can we say that referring to a jurist is also like referring to a physician? Each of them possesses expertise in a discipline, and the ignorant person must refer to the expert, whether the expertise is in medicine or in fiqh. The criterion is one and the same.
In the previous session, I mentioned that some university professors considered this analogy to be flawed because of a relevant difference. They listed certain differences between referring to a jurist and referring to a physician. We discussed those differences, and you observed that those differences were not acceptable. They could not clarify a substantial difference between the jurist and the physician, nor could they prove that referring to a physician is permissible in the view of rational people, while referring to a jurist in order to obtain religious rulings is not permissible.
However, as I indicated at the end of the previous session, it appears that the issue requires further reflection. It may surprise you to hear that some of our scholars and great figures also consider this analogy to be flawed because of a relevant difference. They believe that the referral of a patient to a physician is based upon a rational-conventional principle and that reason permits it, but that referring to a jurist does not conform to such a rational-conventional principle. These two kinds of referral do not return to one principle, namely, the ignorant referring to the learned. Rather, a different basis must be explained for referring to a jurist, one that differs from referring to a physician.
In these discussions, referring to a physician is treated as a clear instance of the rational practice. By contrast, the referral of an ordinary person to a jurist is the matter under discussion: is it like referring to a physician, such that it is permissible, or is it different?
One of the objections raised here, which makes it difficult to rely upon the rational practice in the discussion of taqlid in juristic issues, is this: the practice of medicine is based upon an empirical science whose errors are very limited, whereas the practice of jurisprudence is based upon conjectural premises. Therefore, disagreement within it is abundant. For this reason, one cannot infer from examples such as referring to a physician that referring to a jurist is also rationally permissible in the same way.
This analogy is undermined by a difference, and that difference is the smallness or abundance of error. Error in those sciences is limited. We take our car to a mechanic so that he may remove its defect. If our phone or laptop is defective, we take it to someone who possesses that knowledge and profession so that he may fix the defect. We go to an architect or builder so that he may prepare a building for us, and likewise in other matters.
In the various fields of the human sciences, experts may have disagreements, but these disagreements are very limited. It is not that they have no disagreements at all, but their disagreements are few. In other words, error in these sciences is at a level that can be overlooked. By contrast, in the matter of ijtihad and jurisprudence, error is very, very abundant.
The source of this difference is that in those sciences, the expert is dealing with sensory matters. When a patient visits a physician, the physician takes his pulse, checks his blood pressure, and examines his tests. These are all sensory and empirical matters. On the other side, the medicines that he prescribes also fall within the domain of sense and experience. Error occurs less often in sensory and empirical matters, and discovering such error is easier.
But in sciences such as jurisprudence and ijtihad, we are not dealing with sensory matters. The jurist uses conjectural matters. He goes to the Qur’an and Sunnah and performs ijtihad, and these are conjectural and probabilistic matters. Disagreement is abundant, and error is frequent.
You can see that sometimes in a single juristic issue at one time there are ten opinions, and sometimes even more than this. For example, regarding the ruling of khums during the occultation, there are around fifteen views among jurists. In many other issues, this disagreement also exists. One person says Friday prayer is forbidden. Another says it is obligatory. The one who says it is obligatory sometimes says it is a determinate obligation and sometimes says it is an optional obligation. Other opinions also exist, with further restrictions and conditions. This is the very texture of ijtihad and deduction.
Now the question is: do rational people also refer to the learned in such cases? Is this also an instance of the ignorant referring to the learned, or not?
What problem is there in raising the principle of the ignorant referring to the learned here and relying upon it? Is there any reason to find it implausible?
Yes, the implausibility arises from this angle: in sciences like medicine, where error is limited, when an ignorant person refers to the learned person, namely the physician, the probability of error is small because errors are few. A person who consults a physician takes the physician’s prescription. It is true that he does not have certainty that the physician has made a correct diagnosis, and he cannot definitively eliminate every possibility of error and mistake. But the possibility of error is so small that it is not given attention or weight, and the person acts upon the physician’s prescription with confidence.
In juristic matters, however, disagreement is so extensive that the possibility of error cannot be treated as insignificant. It is not a weak possibility. When the probability of error increases, does reason permit us to say: refer to someone whose error is abundant? How could it permit that?
Even now, various issues arise that are subject to disagreement. For example, how is the first day of the month established? We know that Muharram this year was a serious point of disagreement. We began Muharram in our country under conditions where the crescent was not visible in this country and region with the naked eye. Therefore, Ayatullah Sistani said that Wednesday was the first of Muharram, and he regarded ʿAshura as falling on Friday. By contrast, those who believed that sighting with an unaided eye was not necessary said that since the crescent had been sighted with optical instruments, Tuesday was the first day of the month, and ʿAshura was on Thursday of the following week. This produced a difference between us and the Iraqis. Furthermore, these are only two fatwas in this issue, while other fatwas also exist.
How, in such a case, can a person disregard the possibility of error and, by disregarding it, arrive at a kind of relative confidence?
In principle, why does the ignorant person refer to the learned? In order to arrive at knowledge. But here there is no knowledge. In an issue where disagreement exists, for example where there are three opinions alongside one another, those possibilities that stand alongside the view of our mujtahid are not possibilities that can be ignored. You might say that one fatwa has a thirty percent probability, another fatwa has a thirty percent probability, and the mujtahid whom we regard as learned has a forty percent probability of being correct. At most, this gives a preference among several possibilities. But is the rational practice based upon validating such relative preferences? Can this become the basis for the ignorant referring to the learned? This is the difficulty that exists here and makes the analogy between fiqh and medicine an analogy with a relevant difference.
Of course, we must pay attention to the point that we have studied in Usul al-Fiqh: such indicants possess the quality of being paths. For example, a solitary report is a path. The fatwa of a mujtahid is a path. That is, it is a route by which we may reach reality. If these paths arrive at reality and correspond to it, then we have indeed attained the real interest. But if they are mistaken, meaning that through this path, through this apparent meaning, through this narration, or through this fatwa, we have not reached reality, then naturally this fatwa would not possess real validity. At most, we would have an excuse before God.
Therefore, the basis of probativity is pathhood, not causality. It is not that with every mujtahid’s fatwa an interest is created, and whoever acts according to any fatwa has thereby attained an interest, so that we may then conclude that ten fatwas produce ten types of interests. No. The real divine ruling is one. In the most optimistic case, one of these ten fatwas corresponds to that reality, which is the divine ruling, while the other nine are mistaken and erroneous. This is the theory of pathhood.
Now, when jurists disagree and the probability of error increases in different opinions, does there still exist a rational practice of accepting the fatwa?
The rational practice was this: we refer to the learned because the probability of their error is small, and in reality we are acting upon knowledge. We disregard the probability of error in their opinion because that possibility is very small. But in fiqh, the probability of error is not small and cannot be overlooked.
This is not a technical problem like the problems raised in the previous session, which, as we noted, were not difficult to answer. Answering this technical problem, however, is indeed difficult.
Among those who noticed this difficulty in the present discussion was the late Ayatullah Shaykh ʿAbd al-Karim Haʾiri Yazdi, the founder of the seminary of Qom. After him, his student Imam Khomeini also noticed this problem. The late Ayatullah Haʾiri offered a solution to this problem. Imam Khomeini did not regard that solution as sufficient and presented another solution.
I will first read for you the essence of the problem. Then, God willing, we must reflect on its solution.
The problem is presented by Imam Khomeini in his book Ijtihad wa Taqlid, page 59. After indicating that the foundation of taqlid is the practice of rational people, which he mentioned on page 46, he says that the well-known position is that the principal evidence for the obligation of taqlid is the settled practice of rational people. This is because it is among the natural practices of rational minds that every ignorant person refers to the learned, and every person in need in a craft or discipline refers to the one who is expert in it. If there exists such a practice among rational people, and the Lawgiver has not rejected it, then it is discovered that it is permitted and approved.
Thus, the basic claim is that among rational people there is such a practice: in every discipline and every craft, people refer to the expert in that field. Such a practice exists. In religious matters too, the Lawgiver did not reject this practice of referring to the learned, knowledgeable persons, mujtahids, and jurists. Therefore, it has validity.
After accepting this basic foundation, Imam Khomeini then discusses the limits of this rational practice and the criterion by which the ignorant refer to the learned. We must see what the criterion is in this practice, and then apply it to the issue at hand to see whether this criterion exists in the matter of taqlid of jurists or not.
Pay attention, dear friends. When we are dealing with a verbal proof, we can easily rely on its generality and absoluteness. If there is a verse or narration, we take its generality or absoluteness. But when something is based upon the practice of rational people, there is no verbal proof. We must investigate in order to determine the scope of that rational practice. Why do rational people refer to the learned? Why is it their practice that the ignorant refer to the learned? Only after that may we say that jurists are learned and ordinary people are ignorant, and therefore ordinary people must accept the fatwas of jurists. In this subtle discussion, one must identify the criterion in the practice.
Thus, on page 58, Imam Khomeini says: why does the ignorant person refer to the learned? There are various possibilities. For example, he may refer because of blockage, since he has no path to knowledge. Or he may refer because it is a general rational-conventional rule. But what is clearer among these possibilities, from the perspective of the rational practice, is that the ignorant person wants to reach reality, and through referring to the learned he sees himself as reaching reality and discovering it. Therefore, the discussion is one of pathhood, not the other possibilities.
How, then, does this path gain validity? A path gains validity in the view of rational people, and they accept it and act upon it, when the probability of its being contrary to reality is low. Whose statement do you accept? The statement of someone trustworthy. What does trustworthy mean? It means that the probability of his error and mistake is low. If someone forgets often, he is not trustworthy. You do not accept his statement. If someone makes many mistakes, you do not accept his statement.
There is no doubt that the initial referral, meaning the referral of the ignorant to the learned, is for the sake of its pathhood to reality and its disclosure of reality. People go to experts because they regard the expert’s opinion as a path to reality. They want to know what the illness is. They want to know how this illness should be treated. They want to understand realities, and so they say that the physician knows. They disregard the possibility of error and the possibility of not reaching reality because that possibility is small.
The reason is the predominance of correspondence between the expert’s statement and reality. In most cases, the physician diagnoses correctly. If once or twice he makes a mistake, that is disregarded. Because his statement usually corresponds to reality and rarely contradicts it, rational people do not pay attention to that possibility.
Indeed, more than this, rational people in practical action upon the opinion of an expert are usually heedless of the possibility of disagreement with reality. They act according to it and, by their instinctive understanding, regard themselves as having reached reality through it. This is ordinary knowledge. It is not certainty or absolute conviction. Ordinary knowledge still contains the possibility of not corresponding to reality, but that possibility is small and not given attention. Such is the rational practice, the practical conduct of rational people in accepting the statement of the learned.
This is the rational practice at the level of the major premise.
Now, can we apply this and say that in the matter of taqlid in juristic issues, where one refers to the jurist and accepts his fatwa, it is like referring to a physician? No, we cannot say this. Why? Because in the circumstances where the disagreements among jurists are very abundant, and indeed where one jurist may have different opinions in different books, and sometimes several fatwas even within one book, meaning that his fatwa has changed, can it still be said that the rational practice here is to disregard the probability of error and mistake? Has that probability decreased here? Is it unworthy of attention? No.
Thus, Imam Khomeini raises this objection: how can one claim that the practice of rational people is based upon disregarding the probability of disagreement and error, given the many observed disagreements among jurists, and indeed even from a single jurist in his various books, and even in a single book?
Therefore, if we see that an ordinary person refers to a jurist, he may be imagining that fiqh, like other sciences and disciplines, contains little error. He thinks this is like architecture. He thinks it is like physics, chemistry, or medicine, whereas in reality it is not so. Error here is abundant.
Alternatively, those who refer to jurists may have nothing to do with the rational practice at all. They may have received this as a devotional matter from their fathers and ancestors. Their fathers performed taqlid, and so they also perform taqlid. In either case, we have moved away from the foundation of rational practice. But we are supposed to establish the permissibility of taqlid by relying on rational practice, whereas this is an escape from rational practice.
Therefore, the ordinary person’s referral to jurists must be either due to his assumption that the discipline of fiqh is like other disciplines in which error is rare, in which case his referral is based upon a false premise and his assumption is mistaken, or it is because they refer to jurists while knowing that error is abundant here, yet they say that such error must be disregarded religiously. In that case, they treat the matter as devotional, something inherited from predecessors. Every generation has received this devotional matter from the previous generation. Earlier people performed taqlid, so this generation also performs taqlid. In that case, we should not say taqlid is rational-conventional. Rather, we should say that it is a devotional matter that has flowed within the religious community. This would then be a matter other than rational practice.
Up to this point, the objection has been presented: we cannot use the rational practice in the matter of taqlid. The referral of the ignorant to the learned, which rational people practice, has an essential difference from taqlid of jurists.
Some have accepted this objection. Others have answered it. Some have submitted to it, and the result of this submission is that they have gone in search of another path and another foundation for permitting taqlid. Others, however, have tried to answer the objection and establish that taqlid is indeed rational-conventional.
Among those who submitted to this objection was the late Aqa Qadiri, one of Imam Khomeini’s students, who also debated the issue of chess with Imam Khomeini. He has a book in Usul entitled al-Mabahith fi ʿIlm al-Usul. In it, he accepts that the question of a sick person referring to a physician and the question of followers referring to a jurist are completely different. In the former case, the physician uses sensory premises whose error-rate is low. In the latter case, the jurist uses conjectural principles whose error-rate is high. These belong to two different categories. The proof for referring to a physician is the practice of rational people, and that does not cover our present issue.
His statement is that as for the rational practice, it is not known to exist in this case. There is no rational practice in the discussion of taqlid that is like referring to a mufti whose principles and fatwas are conjectural and ijtihadi, especially with the abundance of error. Even if such a practice existed, given the abundance of error, we have no proof that in the time of the Lawgiver, meaning the era of the Imams, such error-prone forms of ijtihad existed and that the Imams approved them. No. To compare this issue to the case of a sick person referring to a physician is an analogy with a relevant difference.
The objection raised in the previous session by some respected university professors, namely that the patient’s referral to a physician is different from the followers’ referral to jurists, appears here in the same form. To compare the issue to the referral of a sick person to a jurist, or rather to a physician, is an analogy with a relevant difference. Do not say that referring to a jurist is like referring to a physician. This analogy is flawed by a relevant difference.
Thus, rational people have no hesitation regarding a sick person’s referral to a physician, and that is correct. But referring to a jurist is not of this category. Another proof must be presented for it.
In any case, some have accepted this objection and some have answered it. God willing, in the next session, we will refer to some of the answers that have been offered in this regard, such as the answer given by the late Shaykh ʿAbd al-Karim Haʾiri and the answer presented by Imam Khomeini.
At first, we imagined that the issue was very clear and obvious, and that referring to the rational practice would solve the problem of taqlid and its validity. Gradually, however, it is becoming clear that the matter is not so simple and obvious. It contains significant objections.
May Allah bless our master and prophet Muhammad and his pure family.