3اتَّبِعوا ما أُنزِلَ إِلَيكُم مِن رَبِّكُم وَلا تَتَّبِعوا مِن دونِهِ أَولِياءَ ۗ قَليلًا ما تَذَكَّرونَMuhammad Asad"Follow what has been sent down unto you by your Sustainer, and follow no masters other than Him.1How seldom do you keep this in mind!Some of the great Muslim thinkers, and particularly Ibn Hazm and Ibn Taymiyyah, maintain that the expression awliya' (here rendered as "masters") denotes, in this context, "authorities" in the religious sense of the word, implying a prohibition of attributing legal validity - side by side with Qur'anic ordinances - to the subjective opinions of any person below the Prophet. See in this connection 5:101, and the corresponding notes.