This chapter examines a premodern salafī precedent for modern theonomy taken from the field of uṣūl al-fiqh (jurisprudential theory). It traces a polemic waged since the eleventh century CE in Islamic legal writings which argues that categorical adherence to the juridical precedent of a given law school – a practice known as taqlīd – constitutes a form of polytheism. According to these authors, obedience to law is a form of worship, and thus obedience to the ruling of a human jurist, in contravention of a ruling found in a divinely revealed text, is tantamount to worship of that jurist. In contrast with a widespread misconception in the academic literature, premodern opposition to taqlīd was not a condemnation of textual literalism, and in fact the authors who engaged in the polemic could be generally described as fundamentalists who leaned toward ahl al-ḥadīth literalism (Ḥanbalīs, Ẓāhirīs, and eighteenth–nineteenth century revivalists). This polemic’s castigation of taqlīd as adherence to man-made law furnished an important precedent for modern salafīs’ characterization of democracy and parliamentary legislation as inherently polytheistic.