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The decisions of Ijma' were therefore to be ascertained only in a vague and general way. The speakers were individuals whose own authority depended on Ijma', whereas Ijma' should have been their collective decision.
The stamp of Ijma' was essential to every rule of faith and life, to all manners and customs. All sorts of religious ideas and practices, which could not possibly be deduced from Mohammed's message, entered the Moslim world by the permission of Ijma'. Here we need think only of mysticism and of the cult of saints.
But, of course, dogmatists and mystics had also their own "agreements" on the questions concerning them, and through the compromise between Law, Dogma, and Mysticism, there could not fail to come into existence a kind of mixed Ijma'. Moreover, the standards and definitions could have only a certain theoretical value, as there never has existed a body that could speak in the name of all.
But Ijma' did more even than tradition and mysticism to make the veneration of legions of saints possible in the temples of the very men who were obliged by their ritual law to say to Allah several time daily: "Thee only do we worship and to Thee alone do we cry for help." In the tenth century of our era Islam's process of accommodation was finished in all its essentials.
Even the differences between the schools of law may be based on this theory of the Ijma'; for, does not the infallible Agreement of the Community teach us that a certain diversity of opinion is a merciful gift of God? It was through the Agreement that dogmatic speculations as well as minute discussions about points of law became legitimate.
Of course only "true" mysticism is justified by Ijma' and confirmed by the evidence of Qoran and Sunnah; but, about the bounds between "true" and "false" or heretical mysticism, there exists in a large measure the well-known diversity of opinion allowed by God's grace.
Islam has no clergy, as we have seen; the qualification of a man to have his own opinion depends entirely upon the scope of his knowledge or rather of his erudition. There is no lack of standards, fixed by Mohammedan authorities, in which the requirements for a scholar to qualify him for Ijma' are detailed.
In the orthodox expectation of the Mahdi the Moslim theory has most sharply expressed its condemnation of the later political history of Islam. But just as beside this legislative agreement, a dogmatic and a mystic agreement grew up, in the same way there was a separate Ijma' regarding the political government, upon which the canonists could exercise only an indirect influence.
That the partisans of all these different conceptions could remain together as the children of one spiritual family, is largely owing to the elastic character of Ijma', the importance of which is to some extent acknowledged by catholics and protestants, by moderns and conservatives.
Politically inclined interpreters of the law might try to justify their compulsory assent to the facts by theories about the Ijma' of the notables residing in the capital, who took the urgent decisions about the succession, which decisions were subsequently confirmed by general homage to the new prince; but they had no illusions about the real influence of the community upon the choice of its leader.
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