Samizdata

This is a real tweet from the European Commission:

https://x.com/EU_Commission/status/2004462313508950137f

One port, one cable, one Europe.

This holiday, unwrap the power of one: USB-C for all.

Yes, not just phones, tablets, and laptops. In three years, every charger will be under the same tree.

Because less waste, smarter choices, mean more for everyone, all year long.

https://link.europa.eu/QDMFTh

This is an excerpt from a scholarly article about the history of Islam:

By the beginning of the fourth century of the hijra (about A.D. 900), however, the point had been reached when scholars of all schools felt that all essential questions had been thoroughly discussed and finally settled, and a consensus gradually established itself to the effect that from that time onwards no one might be deemed to have the necessary qualifications for independent reasoning in law, and that all future activity would have to be confined to the explanation, application, and, at the most, interpretation of the doctrine as it had been laid down once and for all. This ‘closing of the door of ijtihad‘, as it was called, amounted to the demand for taklid, a term which had originally denoted the kind of reference to Companions of the Prophet that had been customary in the ancient schools of law, and which now came to mean the unquestioning acceptance of the doctrines of established schools and authorities.

– Joseph Schacht, quoted by Wael B. Hallaq in Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed?

If you think that the ability of the European Commission to recognise when something has reached a point where no improvement is possible is good enough to allow it to safely close the door of ijtihad on charger cable design, consider the evident fact that none of the multiple people in the Berlaymont building over whose desks the draft of that tweet must have passed knew enough history to veto that title.