Ibn Taymiyyah on Blind-Following, Compelling and...

Ibn Taymiyyah on Blind-Following, Compelling and Forcing People to Follow the Opinion of an Imam and to Show Loyalty and Enmity Based Upon It

The Shaykh of Islam, the Remnant of the Salaf, Ibn Taymiyyah, may Allah have mercy on him, said, “… and for this reason one of the distinguishing marks of the people of innovation is to make up a statement or action and then compel the people to take it up and force them to adopt it, and to show loyalty based upon it and enmity for leaving it.

Just as the Khawarij innovated their opinion and compelled the people to follow it and showed loyalty and enmity based upon it.

And the Rafidah innovated their opinion and compelled the people to follow it and showed loyalty and enmity based upon it.

And the Jahmiyyah innovated their opinion and compelled the people to follow it and showed loyalty and enmity based upon it.

So whoever punishes [someone] for doing an act or leaving it without an order from Allah or His Messenger and legislates that as part of religion then he has set up a peer to Allah and has set up an equal to the Messenger just like the polytheists who set up partners with Allah, or like the apostates who believed in Musailamah the Liar, and he is from those about whom it was said, “Or have they partners with Allah, who have instituted for them a religion which Allah has not allowed?” [Surah ash-Shura 42:21]

And for this reason the Imams of Ahlus-Sunnah wal-Jama’ah would not compel the people with what they would say in issues of ijtihad, and they would not force a single person.

And for this reason when Harun ar-Rashid consulted [Imam] Malik ibn Anas about making the people follow his [book] Al-Muwatta, he said to him, ‘Don’t do that, O Chief of the Believers, for verily the Companions of Allah’s Messenger ﷺ have spread out throughout the lands, and each nation [to which they went] has taken from those [Companions] who were among it, and I have only collected the knowledge of the people of my land,’ or words to that effect, and he also said, ‘I am only a man, I am correct and make mistakes, so refer my statements back to the Book and the Sunnah.’

And Imam Ahmad said, ‘It does not befit a faqeeh that he forces the people to follow his madhhab or that he insists on them [complying],’ and he said, ‘Don’t blindly-follow any men concerning your religion, for indeed they will not be safe from making a mistake.’

So if these are their statements about the fundamentals [usul] of knowledge and subsidiary issues [furu’] of the religion, [i.e.,] that they do not permit forcing the people to follow their madhhabs even though they deduced the [rulings of their] madhahib with legislated proofs—then what is the case about compelling people and forcing statements upon them which are not found in the Book of Allah, or a hadeeth from Allah’s Messenger ﷺ, and nor have they been transmitted from the Companions or the Tabi’een, and nor from a single one of the Imams of the Muslims?”


Al-Fataawaa al-Kubraa, vol. 6, p. 340, summarised.