Without consensus among scholars or professionals in any area of expertise, very little can be achieved. Each social community also needs a few points about which all agree and no one argues.
What complicates theories of consensus in the religious law is that they must develop an answer to the question of whether consensus can be reversed. That is, whether and under what conditions a community of lay followers of a given religion or of scholars of the religious laws may simply change their mind (or practice) about a matter, which they held without any, or at least no significant, disagreement.
The reversibility or irreversibility of consensus is both the central question of Islamic theoretical jurisprudence’s treatment of consensus and the key to testing the value of this consensus in a modern environment.Let’s back up and demand conceptual clarity. What is consensus? In the manuals of theoretical jurisprudence, two types of consensus are identified, occasionally overlapping or converging, demanding that the reader possess a considerable measure of caution. The first is popular consensus and the second juristic or scholarly consensus. When you ‘rewind’ the clock to the first Islamic century, the distinction between the two, while it does not disappear, clearly thins out. One definition of consensus, reported in an eighth-/14th-century source unequivocally excludes popular consensus. Zarkashi’s Bahr states
it is the agreement of all the qualified jurists (mujtahids) of the Prophet Muhammad’s nation... this excludes the agreement of laypeople; their agreement or disagreement. It also excludes the agreement of some [as opposed to all] scholars of the law.1
Disagreement by someone who achieved scholarly qualification to be part of the community of juristic consensus after an agreement has been held about a matter does not breach the consensus. When the subject of consensus is enlarged, as Zarkashi himself goes on in his effort to collect all views on the matter, one must question the assumption that only scholarly agreement matters. Zarkashi relates that the subject of consensus may be a matter of law (shariyydt), but it may also be a natural or theological doctrine (‘aqliyydt), a matter of social standards (‘urfiyydt), or language standards (lughawiyydt). If these ‘conventions’ are all included in consensus, it is a subject that encompasses the agreements of the scholarly minority and the broader majority of the Muslim community.2
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