Ahmad ibn Hanbal

"If my soul were in my hands, I would have released it."

"'If the scholars remains silent the grounds of dissimulation (Taqiyah), and the ignorant do not know, when will the truth be manifested?'"

"How would anyone be whose Lord is demanding that he carry out the obligatory duties, and his Prophet (Muhammad) is demanding that he follow the Sunnah), and th two angels (Kiraman Katibin) are demanding that he mend his ways, and his Nafs is demanding that he follow its whims and desires, and Iblīs is demanding that he commit immoral actions, and the angel of death (Azrael) is watching and waiting to take his soul, and his dependents are demanding that he spend on their maintenance?"

"There is no choice but the Sunnah and following it. And analogy should only be based on comparing something to an established principle (a precedent from the time of the Prophet Muhammad). But to come to the principle and demolish it and then say this is by analogy - on what basis are you making your analogy?"

"If Zoroastrian and idolatrous women are taken prisoner, they are coerced into Islam; if they embrace it, sexual relations with them are permissible and they can (also) be used as maidservants. If they do not embrace Islam, they are used as maidservants but not for sexual relations."

"Say to the followers of innovation (Bidʻah): the judge between us and you is the day of funerals."

"For centuries, scholars from the four different schools of Islam had taught in the Holy Mosque and crowds of students had traveled from near and far to gather in halaqas, circles of study, around their preferred teachers. The faithful prayed, at slightly different times, behind their imams; there was a prayer station for each school: Shafi’i, Maliki, Hanafi, and Hanbali. When King Abdelaziz took control of Mecca in 1924, the Wahhabi clerics objected to the arrangement that had prevailed so far in the Holy Mosque. If the community of Muslims was one, and the call to prayer was one, why not pray behind one imam? The Wahhabi clerics won the debate, thereby dealing themselves all the power. But there was no rotation or compromise: the sole imam who would lead all five daily prayers in the Holy Mosque came from Wahhabi circles, with all that that entailed in puritanical intolerance. The number of halaqas dwindled rapidly, from several hundred to around thirty-five in the late 1970s. The Sufi sheikh that Sami had consulted that first day of the Mecca attack, Mohammad Alawi al-Maliki, was still drawing crowds, lecturing in his corner of the courtyard of the Holy Mosque, on the chair he had inherited from his father in 1971, the chair that been passed through generations. But few others were able to resist the onslaught of Wahhabi zeal. Harmony could be brought back, Sami thought, only if diversity was allowed to thrive again in the House of God. But this was not how the Al-Sauds would proceed. That was not the deal they had cut with Bin Baz to save their throne."

"My eyes never saw anyone better than Ahmad bin Hanbal, and I have never seen anyone among the scholars of Hadith who shows more respect for the sacred limits of Allah and the Sunnah of His Prophet (Muhammad), if (a report) if proven to be Saheeh. And I have never seen anyone more keen to follow (the Sunnah) than him."