Wa `alaykum salaam wa rahmatullaah
Yes it is fine. It is permissible for a layman to do taqleed of any imaam he wants- as long as he trusts his imaam's knowledge, piety.
Wa `alaykum salaam wa rahmatullaah
Sorry to be blunt but the bit in bold sounds very ignorant. I really advise brothers and sisters to speak with knowledge.
Can you tell me who this 'majority' of scholars are, that rejected Taqleed? In fact it was a very very small minority who rejected Taqleed completely- including the laymen being prohibited from doing taqleed and this view was rejected by the vast majority.
To make it brief folks... General muslims do NOT have the tools to do ijtihaad. Ijtihaad is when a one is able to derive rulings. Thus, they have to resort to taqleed. For a person to be able to do ijtihaad, he must be very strong in the Arabic languange (which includes mastering nahw, sarf, balaaghah, mantiq etc.), he must have very strong knowledge of usool al-Fiqh, he must have very strong knowledge of Mustalah al-hadeeth, strong knowledge of the Qur'aan, Sunnah & Ijmaa`etc. How can a person even tell one opinion is not correct, because it is based on a weak narration... and this person does not even know how to check the authenticity of a chain of narration. As for the layman he does is only able to taqleed and not do ijtihaad and what is upon him is what Allaah commanded him to do:
فَاسْأَلُوا أَهْلَ الذِّكْرِ إِن كُنتُمْ لا تَعْلَمُونَ
"Then ask the People of Knowledge if you do not know" (Soorah al-Nahl: 43)
Following is something I posted in another thread, which I believe is relevant:
Shaykh Saalih al-Fawzaan categorized people into four categories and the last category is that of the general Muslim (laymen, i.e. all of us)... and he said:
The above in essence is 'Taqleed'. In a fatwa of the Lajnah al-Daa'imah (Signed by Shaykh Ibn Baaz, Sh. `Abdul Razzaaq al-`Afeefee, Sh. Ibn Ghudayaan etc.), one of the points mentioned was:
Here is the link to the original fatwa:
http://www.alifta.com/Fatawa/FatawaDetails.aspx?View=Page&PageID=1377&PageNo=1&BookID=3
2) Following one of the four madh-habs is permissible and in fact if a person wants to tread a path in seeking knowledge- then it is advised for him to study books from one particular madh-hab and build up on it untill he becomes a strong student of knowledge or scholar. This was the path that was taken by nearly all the scholars of the past and present. For example, if one was to even see the books that Ibn al-`Uthaymeen studied, teaches and the teachers he studied under- they will know that he was a Hanabli who reached the level of ijtihaad after mastering the madh-hab.
3) There is the other extreme where people obligate laymen to do taqleed of one of the 4 madh-habs. This is not correct, as the according to the majority of scholars... the layman has NO Madh-hab and he just follows whatever scholar he finds trustworthy to follow and he follows them.
4) No one here can claim that they are following the most correct opinion in an issue and no one should ever think that they are able to determine what is the strongest opinion by reading a few fataawa in english. Rather, a person is blind following a scholar, and it is according to THAT specific scholar that such and such is the strongest opinion and not according to YOU. Which essentially means you are blind following him.
So in conclusion, the layman just does taqleed of a scholar he finds to be trustworthy and follows him. If he finds the fatwa of another scholar whom he trusts more in a specific field (for example: Fiqh), then he can choose to do taqleed off him, if he wishes.