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.
Our previous discussions had reached this point: many of our great scholars have stated explicitly that the principal foundation of taqlid in matters of fiqh and the rulings of the Shari’ah is the same rational practice by which the ignorant refer to the knowledgeable. The ordinary person, since he is unable to derive the rulings of the Shari’ah himself, refers to the mujtahid, who has access to the sources and knows the method of derivation, and performs taqlid of him.
This is a general foundation. It is not restricted to obtaining rulings from mujtahids. Rather, every ignorant person, in every craft and discipline, refers to the knowledgeable person in that field. Referring to an expert is a rational practice.
This foundation, however, faces an objection that we clarified in the previous session. The objection is this: yes, the ignorant refers to the knowledgeable, but only where error and mistake on the part of that expert are slight. Where error and mistake are abundant, the ignorant does not refer to the knowledgeable, or, put differently, no such practice exists among rational people in that case.
We examined this objection in the previous session. The essential point is that there is a specific criterion governing the referral of the ignorant to the knowledgeable, and the substance of that criterion is this: the opinion of the knowledgeable person, the expert, must be capable of corresponding to reality; that is, it must generally correspond to reality, with error and mistake within it being very slight.
This point has attracted the attention of some of our scholars under the following heading: what exactly is the basis of the ignorant person’s referral to the knowledgeable? Imam Khomeini, in his own discussions, accepted that the basis is the rarity of divergence from reality in the opinions the expert expresses. Let me read you his statement as one instance of this, from his book Muhadarat fi al-Usul, page 446. This book, Muhadarat fi al-Usul, consists of the lecture notes of Imam Khomeini’s classes in Usul al-Fiqh, recorded by Aqa Muntaziri.
He states, in essence, that the apparent reason for this referral is the rarity of divergence from reality. When referral to the knowledgeable occurs — whether in the discussion of fatwa or in taking up other indicants, as for example when possession (yad) is taken as an indicant of ownership — the reasoning is that these indicants rarely turn out to be contrary to reality. In their view, the probability of error is weak; the probability that their opinion diverges from reality is so slight that it is not worth attending to. The probability of error, in short, is of a magnitude that carries no weight in the rational practice.
This is why, when one refers to an expert, a sense of confidence and assurance arises — the rational practice here in reality operates on the basis of that assurance, and the possibility that the diagnosis is mistaken is simply not attended to. Correspondence to reality predominates over deviation from it — and by “predominance” here is not meant fifty-one percent, or fifty-five, or sixty, or seventy, or eighty percent. No — correspondence to reality in the case of the knowledgeable person is so extensive that it is nearly comprehensive, covering almost every case. This has become the basis for rational people relying on such matters, except where they take particular care regarding the state and conduct of the expert in question.
Now, if we take the matter in this way, we face a difficulty in the case of taqlid of jurists. The difficulty is this: given the abundant disagreement that exists among jurists on questions of fiqh, this matter of the predominance of correspondence to reality becomes disrupted. Beside every fatwa there stands another, opposing fatwa, and we are not unaware of that opposing fatwa, nor unaware of the possibility that our own fatwa fails to correspond to reality. These disagreements, moreover, are abundant disagreements. It follows that in the matter of taqlid we cannot simply appeal to that rational foundation. This is a serious objection, and it has been discussed extensively among later scholars.
Several responses have been offered to resolve this objection.
The first response is that we ought to measure the probability of error relative to a single mujtahid. Take a mujtahid who has, say, ten thousand fatwas to his name, and ask how many of those particular issues carry a probability of error. Considered this way, we arrive at the conclusion that the probability of error is indeed small relative to the totality of a given mujtahid’s output. But if instead we take the matter differently — if we pool together the errors of all mujtahids across all of their fatwas — then the number of errors rises considerably, and the credibility of referring to a mujtahid collapses. Yet we are not obligated to act upon the totality of all mujtahids’ fatwas taken together; we restrict ourselves to the fatwas of one particular mujtahid, and that mujtahid’s errors, measured against the far greater number of cases where his fatwas correspond to reality, remain few. The same rational foundation therefore stands intact, and on that same criterion — that instances of error are few — referral to the fatwas of a mujtahid does not lose its credibility.
This response we draw from the teaching of the founder of the seminary of Qom, the late Shaykh ‘Abd al-Karim Ha’iri Yazdi, whose student, the late Aqa Araki, recorded his teacher’s position in his treatise Ijtihad wa Taqlid, published at the end of one of his books. His statement runs roughly as follows: if we take the error of one mujtahid and combine it with that of a second, a third, a fourth, and so on, the instances multiply — the first mujtahid contributes so many, the second so many, the third so many — until we arrive at many thousands of errors in total. But if each mujtahid is considered individually, in relation to the totality of his own fatwas, the picture is different: the instances of error for any single mujtahid, set against his instances of correctness, remain few. This, he says, is true of practitioners of any craft: whichever one you examine individually, his errors are few relative to his successes; it is only when the errors of all practitioners are pooled together that the number becomes large, and this pooling cannot be avoided when we speak of “experts” as a collective. The same applies to mujtahids. Furthermore, he adds, a great many of the apparent disagreements among jurists are not disagreements in fatwa at all — one mujtahid issues a fatwa while another exercises precaution and withholds a fatwa altogether. Set these aside, and genuine disagreement in fatwa is in fact quite limited.
This is one response, and it is not, in my view, a sound one, nor is it one that can be adopted. Why not? Because the relevant criterion for us is not the raw number of a mujtahid’s errors — whether he has fifty errors or some other count. The relevant criterion is the ratio between error and correctness: what proportion do they bear to one another? When we refer to a mujtahid’s fatwa, what matters is his error measured against his own correctness. Now, one might object: if we pool the errors of different mujtahids together, of course the total rises — but we are not proposing to pool them. The real difficulty is this: how do we know that the probability of error among a mujtahid’s fatwas is in fact high? We have no access to the Preserved Tablet containing the actual divine rulings, so how can we claim the probability of error is high? We judge the probability of error to be high precisely because, on many issues, other opinions exist as well — and given that not all of these competing opinions can be correct, even granting that the majority position corresponds to reality, the very abundance of disagreement among opinions tells us that the instances of error are abundant. And once the instances of error are abundant, the credibility of the fatwa, from the standpoint of the rational foundation, is inevitably disrupted.
As for the point that many apparent disagreements are not disagreements in fatwa at all, since one mujtahid issues a fatwa while another merely exercises precaution — such cases, set beside the cases of genuine, multiple, conflicting fatwas, are few, and do not resolve the problem. We may set the precautionary cases aside; what remains — issues on which two, three, four, or more distinct fatwas exist side by side — remains abundant, and how is this to be justified?
It is worth noting that the late Aqa Araqi, who himself attended these lessons of Ha’iri Shaykh and recorded this very point from him, adds that this was the position the teacher held, though most of those present in the lesson disagreed with him. This is a telling observation: the transcriber himself flags it, and it is clear that most of the students who heard Shaykh Ha’iri present this argument raised objections and did not accept it. And indeed, it really is unacceptable — for even Imam Khomeini, in his own discussions, when he cites this very position from the late Shaykh Ha’iri, raises objections against it and ultimately rejects it. I will give you the precise reference for this later.
This, then, was one response, and it is not an acceptable one.
The second response given to this objection is as follows: we are not, in fact, fundamentally concerned with whether the fatwa corresponds to reality or not. We are not asking whether the jurist, through his fatwa, has grasped the actual divine ruling, or whether we, through taqlid of him, arrive at that ruling or not. What we are seeking, rather, is a proof — a hujjah — that we may invoke before God, the Exalted. If God were to ask me why I performed an action in a particular way, why I prayed as I did, I would answer that I myself was not a mujtahid, that the mujtahid instructed me to act in this way, and that even if there was error involved, I would necessarily be excused. Whether mujtahids err or not, and whether that error is little or much, has no bearing on my being excused. Suppose the error were abundant — the muqallid would still be excused, and being excused, he cannot be held to account before God, regardless of whether correspondence to reality was actually achieved. This too is drawn from the statements of the late Ha’iri Shaykh: that the discussion should be shifted from error to being excused. If the criterion is the abundance of error, taqlid becomes untenable; but if the criterion is being excused, then referral to the knowledgeable person renders the muqallid excused, and taqlid remains permissible for him. This point, in brief, is likewise found in the same lecture notes that Aqa Araqi records from him.
This second response is also open to objection. Why? Because our discussion concerns the rational foundation, and the subject of that foundation is precisely the referral of the ignorant to the knowledgeable, on the premise that a knowledgeable person whose error in ijtihad and derivation exceeds the ordinary measure, such that one cannot arrive at confidence in his statement, carries no credibility and is not a path to reality. Our discussion, then, is not about being excused before God; the criterion for being excused is not the same as the criterion of being a path to reality. Our concern is that with abundant error, the credibility of this path is lost. To say “well, we are excused regardless” does not address this, because being excused is itself something we arrive at only by first following the rational method — so that if reality is not reached, we are excused as a consequence of having followed it. But the very question at issue is whether referring to a knowledgeable person whose error is abundant is rational in the first place, such that being excused could follow from it as an effect.
We cannot separate the question of being excused from the question of correspondence to reality. What, after all, is the criterion for being excused? If the expert generally corresponds to reality, he is excusing; if he generally does not, on what basis would he be excusing? Such a referral would not be rational to begin with. It is true that the mujtahid himself, when he does not fall short and exerts his full effort, is excused — he has no other course open to him; he exerts his utmost effort, reaches a fatwa, and acts upon it, and this makes him excused. But the muqallid, who wishes to refer to him on the strength of the rational foundation, depends on that foundation as a link — and it is precisely this link that is missing wherever error is abundant. This second response, then, is likewise unacceptable.
There is a third response as well. In the specific matter of referring to jurists, it is said, we have a specific proof: the Imams (a) themselves directed people toward this guidance, and the Shi’a community in the time of the Imams used to refer to jurists. The taking of fatwas from jurists was thus endorsed and approved by the Imams, and this suffices for us. For instance, it is narrated — the report appears in Wasa’il al-Shi’a, volume 27, page 142 — that a Shi’i asked Imam al-Sadiq (a) whom he should consult when a religious question arose, and the Imam told him: ask Asadi, meaning Abu Basir. Likewise, ‘Ali ibn al-Musayyib asked Imam al-Rida (a): my distance is great, and when a matter arises, from whom should I learn the teachings of my religion? The Imam replied: from Zakariyya ibn Adam al-Qumi. These narrations show that this matter has precedent and history, that this method was endorsed by the Imams, and that it carries genuine credibility. Now, one might say, but there is abundance of error. Very well, let us examine this.
This third response is one that Imam Khomeini addresses in his own work on Ta’adul wa Tarajih, in the discussion of Ijtihad and Taqlid. His statement there is open to objection on two counts.
The first is this: even granting the soundness of this argument, we have left the discussion of the rational foundation altogether and moved instead to the practice of the religiously observant community, the mutasharri’ah. The rational foundation, in the face of abundant error, tells us that rational people do not rely on, and do not trust, the opinion of the expert. But here you are saying that the religiously observant community, in this specific domain of obtaining religious rulings, had its own established practice, and that the Imams endorsed referral to jurists even in the presence of abundant disagreement. In that case, the rational argument for taqlid is effectively abandoned, and you are no longer appealing to the practice and foundation of rational people at all — you have, in effect, conceded the objection rather than answered it, and you are instead relying on a devotional proof rooted not in the rational foundation but in the fact that the Imams themselves made the fatwas of jurists, disagreement and all, a binding proof.
This third response, then, is not really a response — it is a concession to the objection. Once we concede this, the credibility of the rational foundation in the matter of taqlid falls away, and the whole matter takes on a devotional character. And this creates its own difficulty: if taqlid can no longer be grounded in the muqallid’s own rational instinct, then on what basis does the muqallid become a muqallid in the first place? Can he rely on his own reason and understanding to justify becoming a muqallid? No — for even to become a muqallid, on this view, he must already engage in taqlid, and this generates a problem of its own. This is the first, foundational, objection.
The second objection is this: was taqlid at the time of these narrations — referral to Abu Basir or to Zakariyya ibn Adam — the same, in scope and complexity, as taqlid in our own age? Or was it, at that time, a simple and straightforward matter, one that fit comfortably within the bounds of the available texts, such that a person could attain genuine confidence and assurance — so that someone asking Zakariyya ibn Adam a question could act on his answer with real certainty? Can that kind of taqlid, suited to that era, simply be extended and generalized to taqlid in our own time, with its thousands of issues, and with the muqallid’s own awareness of the extent of disagreement that exists, and his own observation of just how much the practical manuals differ on a given question? This is the second difficulty. The criterion at stake is whether ordinary knowledge — a state in which the possibility of error simply does not register with the muqallid — is present or not. Measured against this criterion, taqlid in the past differs from taqlid in the present: there, it could carry rational credibility; here, it may not be able to.
Imam Khomeini passes over this difficulty, and it appears he himself was aware of it, since he concludes by saying only that the matter requires further reflection. In the rest of his writings, we do not find any further treatment or any new solution to this problem, and the furthest he takes it is what I have presented to you here. So, for now, we have not arrived at a clear and satisfying answer to the objection that was raised. We will continue this discussion further.
May Allah bless our master and prophet Muhammad and his pure family.