…the very pattern to be imitated; rational argument can also establish it, and the proofs are abundant. When the innate disposition (fiṭra) is sound, it acknowledges this truth with even greater certainty; it recognizes it more immediately and is driven to affirm it with a need surpassing that invoked by the illustrative analogy.

Disagreement among the uṣūl scholars regarding the legal cause (ʿilla)

The scholars of uṣūl have differed over the issue of whether an affirmative ruling may be explained by a privative attribute, even though they concur that a privative ruling may be explained by a privative cause. One group held that such an explanation is permissible; another denied it; and a third distinguished between two kinds of analogy. They said: what cannot serve as a cause for existence in qiyās al-ʿilla (analogy of cause) may nevertheless act as its cause in qiyās al-dalāla (analogy of indication), though in that latter framework it is not directly ascribed to the attribute itself. This, then, is the decisive clarification: in qiyās al-dalāla the absence of a quality may constitute the cause—or part of the cause—because the lack of one attribute can point to the presence of another positive attribute that necessitates the ruling.

By contrast, in qiyās al-ʿilla pure absence can never serve as a complete cause; it can only be a component of the complete cause, a condition attached to the affirmative cause that by itself is incomplete. Thus our statement that it is “a part of the complete cause” simply means that it functions as a condition enabling the positive cause to produce the ruling,