They differed, however, concerning deferred divorce. This issue rests upon the principle stated earlier: no contract is valid unless a revealed text or consensus establishes that it is obligatory or permissible. That principle, in turn, rests upon three disputed premises:

First, that contracts are presumptively prohibited.

Second, that only what is equivalent in meaning to something expressly addressed by a text may be permitted.

Third, that deferred and conditional divorce do not fall within the general scope of the texts.

As for the foregoing argument that this resembles a vow made in obstinacy and anger, [this is the implication of the position of those who permit expiation for a vow made in obstinacy and anger] and who distinguish between a devotional vow and a vow made in anger. For this distinction necessarily entails distinguishing between a conditional pronouncement intended to take effect when its condition is fulfilled and a conditional pronouncement used as an oath and intended not to take effect—unless the aforementioned distinction can be sustained according to whether what is made conditional is actual occurrence or obligation. We shall discuss this below.

We have already mentioned that this position may be derived from Ahmad’s legal principles in several ways. It likewise follows necessarily for anyone who holds that expiation is due for a vow made in obstinacy and anger, as is the apparent position of al-Shāfiʿī, one of the two reported views from Abū Hanīfa—preferred by most of his later adherents—and one of the two reported views from Ibn al-Qāsim—preferred by many later Mālikīs. The consistent conclusion is to place swearing by means of a vow on the same footing as swearing by manumission. This is therefore among the strongest arguments advanced by those who hold that a vow used as an oath must be fulfilled: they analogized it to swearing by divorce and manumission, and some Mālikīs believed that ruling to be a matter of consensus.