Nor can anything that is intrinsically repulsive in every unaltered heavenly religion ever be abrogated—such as idolatry, disbelief, injustice, vile acts, and reprehensible character traits—for all the revealed laws concur that whatever benefits people must be maintained and whatever harms them must be warded off.

Conditions for abrogation

1. It must be impossible to reconcile the two pieces of evidence.
2. Certainty that the abrogating text came later.
3. The abrogating text must be soundly established.

The difference between abrogation and, respectively, qualification (taqyīd) and specification (takhsīs) is only apparent during the Prophet’s lifetime. A text may come in general terms accompanied by another text that specifies it, indicating from the outset that the general ruling applies only to what remains after specification. Likewise, a text may appear absolute but be accompanied by another that qualifies it, showing from the outset that the absolute ruling is operative only together with the stated qualification.

Wisdoms of abrogation

1. Safeguarding people’s interests by legislating what is appropriate for them and beneficial to them in this world and the next.
2. Gradualism in legislation, allowing people to adopt the rulings step by step—as in the prohibition of wine and in the progressive imposition of the various acts of worship.

There are other wise purposes as well, yet these two are the most evident in the history of legislation.

It is also well known that no abrogation can occur after the death of the Prophet ﷺ, for only the Lawgiver Himself can repeal a ruling.

Once this is established, it follows that after the Prophet’s passing we must examine the Qur’an and Sunnah from the perspectives of specification and qualification—as though all the texts had been revealed together—so we specify the general and restrict the absolute, without concerning ourselves with the chronological order of the revelations from the standpoint of