Nasai

(1) In the verse, by ﴿أُولِي الأمْرِ﴾ is meant the rulers and authorities. According to some Imams, it also refers to the scholars. Whether they are scholars or rulers and authorities, obedience to all of them is conditional upon the Qur’an and Sunnah. If any of their commands are contrary to the Shari‘ah, then obeying them in that matter is impermissible and unlawful.

(2) Some people have dared to extract the issue of personal taqlid (imitation of a specific jurist) from this verse. However, in reality, this blessed verse actually refutes personal taqlid, especially in matters that are explicitly established (mansus); in such matters, it is absolutely not permissible to follow anyone, no matter how respected, venerable, learned, or great a person may be. In the face of a textual proof (nass), everyone is insignificant. The same ruling applies to rulers: their obedience is only in what is right (ma‘ruf), not in what is wrong (munkar), as has been mentioned multiple times in the benefits of previous ahadith.

(3) This hadith is agreed upon (muttafaqun ‘alayh), i.e., it is found in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. In Sahih al-Bukhari, its full detail is present, the summary of which is that the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) sent a detachment and appointed a man (Abdullah ibn Hudhafah Sahmi radi Allahu anhu) as the leader of that detachment. For some reason, the leader became angry and ordered his subordinates to gather wood, light a fire, and jump into it. Some people were ready to jump into the fire, while others said, “We became Muslims to save ourselves from the fire,” and they rushed to the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam) and were not willing to enter the fire. Eventually, when this matter reached the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam), he said at that time: [ لو دَخَلُوها ما خَرَجُوا منها إلى يَومِ القِيامَةِ ] “If these people had entered the fire, they would have remained in it until the Day of Resurrection and would not have been able to come out of it.” And he further said: [الطّاعةُ في المعروفِ ] “Obedience is only in what is right (i.e., in matters that are in complete accordance with the purified Shari‘ah).” (Sahih al-Bukhari, al-Maghazi, Hadith: 4340) Those who present this verse as evidence for personal taqlid have fallen into a great error, because at the time of the Qur’an’s revelation, the mujtahids whom today’s followers imitate did not even exist in the world. So how could their imitation be intended? Even in the times of those mujtahids, there was absolutely no established practice or even concept of their imitation. In fact, the innovation of taqlid only became prevalent four hundred years after the Hijrah of the Prophet (sallallahu alayhi wa sallam), as Shah Waliullah rahimahullah has explicitly stated in Hujjat Allah al-Balighah. In the religion of Islam, there is absolutely no room for the idea that in all religious matters, one should follow a single, specific, designated mujtahid from the Ummah, let alone declare it obligatory.