This is that other circuit of reasoning, for virtually all the texts that forbid cursing also include a threat of punishment. Consequently, if it is impermissible to cite the threatening texts with respect to the disputed issue, it is likewise impermissible to use them to forbid a form of cursing over which there is disagreement, as has already been stated.

Should someone claim, “I base the prohibition of this curse on scholarly consensus,” he would be told: Consensus applies only to forbidding the cursing of a particular, praiseworthy individual. As for cursing those described by a certain attribute, you already know that the scholars differ on that point. Moreover, it has been explained earlier that cursing a described class does not necessarily reach every single person included in that description; it applies only when the requisite conditions are fulfilled and the impediments are removed—and that is not the case here.

He can also be reminded that all the proofs previously advanced to show that these hadiths may not be confined to the point of agreement are equally relevant here. Those proofs invalidate this objection just as they invalidated the original one.

Nor is this a matter of turning one piece of evidence into nothing more than a premise within another proof, so that someone might say, “Despite the lengthiness, it is really only a single argument.” Rather, the purpose is to demonstrate that the hazard they imagined is—