A powerful admonition by Imām al-Shawkānī on the grave dangers of issuing legal verdicts without knowledge, highlighting accountability before Allah and the severe consequences of ruling without evidence.
If you have put yourself forward to issue legal verdicts to those who seek them, and to judge between disputing parties, then know that you are being tested and afflicted, and that others are likewise being tested and afflicted through you. This is because blood is being shed as a result of your verdicts, wealth and rights are being taken away from their rightful owners, what Allah has declared unlawful is being declared lawful, and what Allah has declared lawful is being declared unlawful. You are attributing statements to Allah ﷻ which He never uttered, without any legal proof from the Book of Allah or the Sunnah of His Messenger ﷺ. Rather, you are stating matters which, by your own admission, you do not know to be true or false.
So what answer will you give when you stand before Allah ﷻ? Allah ﷻ has commanded the rulers among the servants of Allah to judge between them according to what Allah has revealed, yet you do not know what Allah has revealed because you do not know the manner in which it was revealed. Allah ﷻ commanded the Muslim rulers to rule by the truth, and you do not know what the truth is. You merely heard certain people saying something, so you repeated it. Allah ﷻ commanded the Muslim rulers to judge between people with justice, yet you do not know justice from oppression, because justice is that which accords with what Allah ﷻ has legislated, and oppression is that which contradicts it.
These commands do not apply to you. Rather, those who are commanded with them are others, namely the scholars. So how did you undertake a task which you were not commanded to perform, nor appointed as a deputy to carry out in the absence of someone else? How did you proceed to issue legal verdicts based upon principles other than what Allah ﷻ has revealed? In doing so, you have become among those concerning whom Allah said: “And whosoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed, then such are the wrongdoers,” and “whosoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed, then such are the evildoers,” and “whosoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed, then such are the disbelievers.”
Reference
Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Shawkānī (d. 1250 AH / 1834 CE), al-Qawl al-Mufīd fī Adillat al-Ijtihād wa al-Taqlīd, Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿah al-Salafiyyah, n.d., vol. 1, p. 97.
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