Their work is less suspicious of compromise with ideological...

Their work is less suspicious of compromise with ideological controversy which reduces religious polemics, in all of its shades, into terms of extreme triviality and doubtful scientific integrity.

It is the ancient affliction that appears to worsen in the West, especially in recent times, in which a host of “opinion-makers,” turned into “specialists” of Islām, have come forth like black heralds repeatedly croaking the same mistakes ad nauseam **.**[^4] Without doubt, the knowledge and analogical application of these theological principles must have seemed very convenient to Gibb in his work of comparing the Islamic concept of ijmā‘ as a consensus of scholars with that of the Christian council as a consensus of ecclesiastics.

This is even more evident when Gibb alludes to the role of analogy in his comparison and confesses that such a comparison is possible despite the external differences of the Christian councils. This is absolutely false. Regardless of such esoteric formulaic divergences, there is no Church in Islām. Furthermore, there is no organized clergy in Islām in the ecclesiastic sense of the priesthood because Islām does not accept the mediation between God and man.

In Islām, there does not exist a religious establishment lead by a Pope with a hierarchy of bishops, cardinals and priests, all ranked according to their level of merit and the closeness to the central power of the Church.

We must not forget that any attempt to look for examples of consensus in Islām comparable to the Christian councils of Nicea, Lyon, Letran, Trent, and the Vatican, would be useless.[^5] In the entire history of Islām, there has never been a case in which qualified scholars and jurists gathered in diverse synods to examine a doctrine that they considered erroneous and who then related their conclusions in letters to a prelate in which they asked for this error to be condemned as a heresy by the entire Islamic community.

There were many times, however, when Caliphs or mujtahidūn reacted on the basis of arbitrary and erroneous decisions of incompetent authorities, ignorant of the very basis of the discussed doctrine. We are not claiming that “heretical” doctrines or misunderstood minorities have never been challenged, refuted, condemned and persecuted in Islām because the facts speak for themselves.[^6] We have the examples of martyrs for whoever would categorically deny any affirmation to the contrary.