The root of the dispute between those who require a judicial decree and those who do not is that the ruling of separation vacillates between two analogies: on the one hand, it resembles verdicts whose validity depends on a judge’s pronouncement, and on the other hand, it resembles rulings that stand without such judicial intervention.

The fourth issue is this: granted that separation does in fact occur, is it deemed a dissolution (fas­kh) or a divorce (ṭalāq)? Those who affirm the separation differ. Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī maintain that it is a dissolution, whereas Abū Ḥanīfah holds that it constitutes an irrevocable divorce. Mālik’s proof is that the spouses become permanently forbidden to one another, making the case analogous to a woman made unlawful by kinship. Abū Ḥanīfah, by contrast, likens it to divorce by analogy with the separation ordered in the case of the impotent husband, which in his view also occurs only by a judge’s ruling.