[Do Circumstances Have an Effect in Ijtihādī Matters]

Answer: Circumstances and conditions, as they appear to me, are of various types:
1. Circumstances that are a cause and rationale for rulings—such as the state of travel, fear, or illness. These are made by the Lawgiver an excuse for concessions in leaving off some religious obligations.
2. When a scholar-mujtahid is in a community that follows a particular madhhab—such as the Shāfiʿī madhhab, or that of Mālik, or Abū Ḥanīfah, or the Imāmiyyah. That community sees its madhhab as truth and correctness. In such a case, it is permissible for the mujtahid in that community to issue fatwās to the people according to their madhhab, and to judge among them according to their madhhab. This serves as a reason for preference, because opposing what the people are accustomed to in madhhabs is strongly rejected by the common folk, and may lead to hostility and great harm. The scholars of madhhabs have said: “A layman is to be given fatwā according to the madhhab of his locality.”
As for the mujtahid, in what pertains to himself and his close ones, he may act upon his own madhhab in private. In what appears to people: if he feels safe from corruption, he acts upon his own madhhab; but if he fears harm—such as that people turn away from him, accuse him, or refuse to accept from him—he leaves his own madhhab and follows theirs. This is in the case where the scholar in that society is a model and an exemplar whom people refer to, take from, and benefit from his knowledge.
But if that community already has another exemplar whom they follow, and they do not accept from him nor take from him, and he is not in the position of inviting and guiding them, then it is not appropriate for him to abandon his own madhhab in deference to theirs. What we have mentioned here pertains to subsidiary ijtihādī issues.