Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks Yea, but you must not make the full show of this till you may do it without controlment. You have of late stood out against your brother, and he hath ta'en you newly into his grace; where it is impossible you should take true root but by the fair weather that you make yourself: it is needful that you frame the season for your own harvest. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special o'erstep not the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. [hamlet, shakespeare]
"Thus it has been established by the majority of scholars that he who opposes the ijmâ`a [consensus] is a disbeliever" thoughtful. surely, ijma is a source of belief and law. but there are many types of ijma. the one that makes one a non-believer is the explicit ijma; where all unanimously have agreed upon by declaration in words such as sahaba kiraam. this would be ijma qati and there are very few instances of it. on the other hand, all other forms of ijma are not-definate. for example, ijma sukuti. the silent ijma. imam ghazali does not consider this type of ijma valid, and i think, this is also the shaf'i position. imam taqi subki(d. 746) and imam taj subki were also shaf'i. it would be interesting to see how speculative the ijma is, itself. there is big difference between aqida scholars and fiqh scholars in terms of ijma definition and consequences. that is why there is diffrerence between fiqhi-kufr and itiqadi- kufr because the basis of fiqh are generally dhanni. and basis of aqida are qati. an example of one type of ijma is that being a qarshi is a shart/condition of being a khalifa like wudu for salah. idha fata as-shart fatal mashrut. when hazrat abu bakr sidiq said imam is from quraysh and everyone agreed upon it-hence ijma. now, hizb at-tehrir deny that qarshi is a necessary condition for khilafa. does this mean that we declare them and whoever denies this condition kafir?
as-salamu alaikum sayyidi abu Hasan could you please quote the reference from which you have translated the above
Thus it has been established by the majority of scholars that he who opposes the ijmâ`a [consensus] is a disbeliever; It is among the conditions for a mufti that he shouldn't issue a fatwâ that contradicts the consensus of earlier scholars. And if he does so, his verdict is rejected and it is disallowed to quote him [such a scholar who opposes the ijmâ`a] and the Qur’ân and the Sunnah of the Prophet SallAllâhu `alayhi wa sallam bear evidence that it is not permitted to oppose the ijmâ`a. Allâh subHânahû wa ta`âla has said: 'and he who has defied the Messenger after the truth has been manifest and follows a path other than that of Muslims, We shall cast him into hell and what a bad place it is to be in!'. When the dissent from the path of Muslims and treading a path contrary to theirs invites such wrath [due to dissent from the way of Muslims] can his word be reliable anymore? It is said, that the general public can be broadly classified into two kinds: the mujtahid scholar who is able to derive rules and solve questions by the book [Qur’ân] and the sunnah; and the muqallid, the follower of the knowledgeable. The job of the Mujtahid is that when he encounters a problem he should derive the answer from the `adillah of Sharia`ah [the documents of the canon law] and the job of the common man to follow the scholars opinion. It is not right for a non-mujtahid to abandon acting upon the words of scholars even if he encounters a verse or a Hadîth [seeming to contradict the scholar’s opinion]. Even though he finds their opinion contradicting the Hadîth or âyah [outwardly], yet [the mujtahid scholar has] a document that compels them to say so. And Allah `azza wa jall has said: "ask ye of the people who know if you don't know" and has also said: "and if they were to turn towards the Messenger and the men of authority amongst them, verily they wouldst have known the right thing derived by them" There is no need for further explanation of this âyah. The purpose is to demonstrate that for a non-mujtahid scholar it isn't permissible to derive rules directly from the sources [naSS]. The commoner is obviously not permitted either; if he encounters an âyah and in it there seems to be a general rule [âm] or an absolute one [muTlaq] he should never consider it so by himself unless verified by the scholars. Neither should he act upon its being generic or absolute unless he has sufficient knowledge of the abrogator and the abrogated verses [nâsikh - mansûkh]; the knowledge of verses which are generic and the specific [âm - khâSS]; knowledge of absolute and the dependent [muTlaq - muqayyad]; concise and the elaborate [mujmil - mubayyin]; expressed and implied [Haqîqah - majâz]. Suppose a commoner takes the verse of Qur’ân: "..and all those women who are your bondmaids" and generalizes it to be permissible to cohabit with two sisters who are his bondmaids, he is obviously mistaken. Because, if he had considered the verse "[it is Haraam] for you to keep two sisters at the same time" he would have seen that the general rule here is not to cohabit with two sisters at the same time either as bondmaids or as wives. Now, if one is confused as to which verse he should take and supersede the other, he must know that sayyiduna `Uthmân raDiyAllâhu `anhû has said: "if a verse permits something and another prohibits, the one that prohibits is given preference". If he had heard this he would have known that he should act on that which forbids. There are many other reasons why he should act on one and not the other, which the scholars know but it should be known that a commoner is not capable of deriving rules absolutely from the original sources.
