Between Personal Ijtihad and Legitimate Taqlid
A Response to the Claim of Worshipping by What Settles in the Heart
This article responds to a contemporary claim that a person may worship God according to what personally settles in his heart, without binding himself to the inherited method of the scholars. It argues that this idea mistakes private inward comfort for a valid religious proof and opens the door to individualistic religion detached from revelation.
The article’s first point is foundational: no act of worship is accepted merely because it feels right inwardly. Worship must conform to what God legislated. A heart may feel calm toward falsehood, especially when desire, confusion, or poor training shape its intuitions. For that reason, private inner settlement is not an independent criterion of truth in religion.
The article then criticizes the broader claim that every person has a full right to learn, reflect, and then worship according to whatever he personally concludes. Taken without limits, that view turns religion into a field of personal preference and makes the individual mind a source of legislation. Against this, the article invokes the Qur’anic command to ask the people of knowledge when one does not know and to follow the path of the believers rather than private inventiveness.
It also distinguishes between legitimate and blameworthy taqlid. Legitimate taqlid is the ordinary Muslim’s reliance on trustworthy scholars because he lacks the tools of independent ijtihad. That is not condemned, but required. Blameworthy taqlid is the imitation of falsehood, such as following ancestors against revelation. The article argues that critics of scholarly reliance often blur these two categories in a misleading way.
The conclusion is that the religion is preserved by revelation, sound method, and the guidance of qualified scholars, not by each person turning himself into an independent legal and theological authority. Learning is praiseworthy, but it does not erase the need for disciplined return to those who know.
All parts of The Falsity of Measuring the Sunnah Against the Qur'an
Original publication
Originally published on Alukah Network
This is an English version of an article first published in Arabic on Alukah Network.