Tawatur Not Recorded
‘ People assuming something ‘ is exactly what ijma and tawatur negates ( or doesn’t let that happen ). We are so used to books and information in recorded form now a days, that we prefer written akhbar-i-ahad over ijma and tawatur. In the absence of dictionaries, we would still be speaking the same language as we do today, at least I and people I know of never learned language through dictionaries, rather we all learnt language through the same tawatur transmitted by one generation to another. Same is the case with religious tawatur. The definition of ijma incorporates two things: ( which in this current time is very difficult to grab onto ) 1 ) The number of people transmitting it so large that it doesn’t depend on any written form and the possibility that all of them would gather on a single lie is minimal. 2 ) Information transmitted through akhbar-i-ahad is dependent on ijma and tawatur and not the other way round. Rest assured, if even after all these measures, something was erased by some magical means through this ijma and tawatur, we will not be held accountable for that.
But an unclear belief could be held. For example the prayer in this way was never fard. The sahabah just prayed this way out of respect. But as generations wen ton it degenerated into becoming fard. We think the ijma and tawatur was that it’s alway fard but the not fard ruling is simply not present. I remember that on one of the discussions here it was said that we rule out bidahs like adhan in child’s ear by consulting fiqh books. If there was no fiqh books what do we do?
Why going through the effort of calling it ijma and tawatur if you have to rely on written books? Ijma and Tawatur are a medium themselves, they don’t need an inferior written medium.
I have already responded to this kind of questions in the discussion I referenced above.