ABSTRACT
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. The first set of discussions concerns the window of consensuses and whether it may be, while itself an instance of agreement and reconciliation, the outcome of heated disagreement. Popular consensus is not consistently of a lower rank than scholarly consensus. The basis for considering consensus a safe source for the law was, as we learned earlier, a few verses that warn the believers from abandoning the path set by the Prophet and the rest of the believers. Consensus is a useful, rather than restrictive, quality in a legal system. The consensus may have been held over a view that would be said to function in the new conditions but for the fact that it would achieve the opposite purpose for which the consensus came to being.
