you will have severed your bonds of kinship.”

Although the causal element is more apparent in this example than in the previous one, that is only because no other suitable attribute for the prohibition presents itself here.

Sabr—systematic examination and elimination—is a specialized proof for identifying the operative cause. A comparable illustration in everyday language would be for someone to say, “Do not give this pauper anything, for he is an innovator.” Later another poor man who is likewise an innovator comes, and he again says, “Do not give to him.” Yet that second pauper might, in fact, be his personal enemy. Should we then conclude that innovation is the real cause, or remain uncertain because enmity could equally be the motive?

Now, suppose we observe that the Lawgiver has issued a ruling and we notice within it an attribute that plausibly accords with the ruling, while the Lawgiver has neither stated this attribute nor employed it as a rationale for a comparable ruling elsewhere. This is called a “lone suitable attribute.” It has no parallel in the Sharīʿah, and nothing in the wording or indications of the Lawgiver points to it. The first school allows one to follow such an attribute, whereas the other two reject it. Here we are discerning the Lawgiver’s cause purely through our own reason without any textual indicator from Him—just as, in the preceding case, we discerned it by analogy with His words, and in the earliest case we discerned it directly from His explicit statement.

Nevertheless, the cause of a particular ruling can still be discovered through sabr and through other lines of evidence.