—inevitable under either assumption, and therefore entails no real danger. Consequently, one and the same proof shows, first, that the very point under dispute was indeed intended by the texts, and second, that citing them involves no objection.

Nor is it strange that the evidence establishing one ruling should itself become a premise in the argument for another, even though the two rulings are inseparable.

Eleventh: The scholars are unanimously agreed that one must act upon the threat-hadiths in so far as they entail prohibition. A minority differed only with regard to acting upon certain individual reports in respect of the threat itself. As for the prohibition they convey, there is no significant or creditable disagreement at all.

From the time of the Companions, the Followers, and the jurists after them—may Allah be pleased with them all—the scholars have constantly cited these reports in their sermons and writings, whether in issues of disagreement or otherwise. Indeed, when a hadith carries a threat, the heart feels its implication of prohibition all the more forcefully.

It has also been noted earlier that the position of those who employ these texts both for issuing rulings and for affirming the threat is the stronger view, and it is the opinion held by the majority.

Accordingly, any question that contradicts this consensus is inadmissible.

Twelfth: The passages of threat found in the Quran and the Sunnah