God’s blessings and peace be upon him, making them “the best community brought forth for people” [Al ʿImran 3:110].
Through Muhammad, God’s blessings and peace be upon him, He sealed all messengers, peace be upon them, and through his Revealed Law He sealed all Revealed Laws. No messenger legislates after him, nor does any Revealed Law descend from God after his Law, except what his Law established concerning the independent judgment of his community’s scholars in deriving rulings from His Book and His Prophet’s Sunna.
(Independent Judgment, Analogy, and Consensus)
By Sunna I mean the report, not analogy. By analogy here I mean comparing a branch with a branch, not a branch with a root, for comparing the branch with the root is the derivation established through independent judgment.
The jurists made it a fourth foundation, just as they made consensus a third foundation, meaning the consensus of the first generation.
They said that, whenever they agreed upon a matter, they must have known an authoritative text concerning it to which they referred, although it has not reached us despite our certainty of it. It is impossible for them to agree upon a ruling for which they have no text, for their reflection and original dispositions differ, making disagreement inevitable, yet they have agreed upon a matter.
We are therefore certain that, concerning that ruling, they relied upon a text from the Messenger, God’s blessings and peace be upon him. No ruling by consensus follows the consensus of the first generation.
Since the matter is as we have established in this chapter, we have occupied ourselves with mentioning the Muhammadan Poles,
