here it is known with certainty that the ruling is not confined to the case addressed by the text. Thus, by unanimous agreement, it cannot be denied in other cases, whereas such denial is possible in cases of pure analogical reasoning, known as deriving the operative basis of a ruling (takhrīj al-manāt). For when he prohibited unequal exchanges involving the six categories of commodities, it was not known that other commodities shared their ruling without evidence establishing this.
For this reason, when some who reject analogical reasoning held in such a case that the ruling applied only to a mouse that had fallen into clarified butter, and not to other dead animals or impurities that had fallen into other liquids, their error was evident beyond doubt. The Lawgiver—may Allah bless him—did not, in his pronouncement, make the ruling contingent upon a mouse falling into clarified butter; rather, that was what the questioner asked him about. When someone asks about the ruling on a particular individual case or a kind identified by name, the ruling need not be tied exclusively to what he asked about. Rather, the matter he asked about may fall under a general ruling. Just as a question about a particular individual case does not make the ruling exclusive to that case, there is no difference here between asking about an individual case and asking about a kind. Nothing in his answer implies that the ruling is confined to the subject of the question. This is therefore a most serious error.
Here the differing levels of scholars become apparent through the knowledge Allah has granted them. Whoever identifies the operative basis indicated by the Quran and Sunnah demonstrates his understanding of what the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, intended. For example, one might say:
The ruling here is not tied merely to a dead animal, but to what is unwholesome, concerning which Allah Most High says:
“He makes lawful for them the good things and forbids them the unwholesome things.”
For a dead animal, although