provides an answer to the objection raised by some speculative theologians against this principle: that matters which people have every reason and incentive to transmit cannot go unreported. They have challenged it by citing the hadiths concerning recitation aloud, the qunūt supplication, the call to prayer, and the call to commence the prayer. As for the call to prayer and the call to commence it, both practices have been transmitted. As for qunūt, he sometimes performed it and sometimes omitted it. As for recitation aloud, a report of it would concern a positive act, yet it has not been transmitted; it therefore falls under the principle.

Second, when the need arose to transmit reports of things not done, they were transmitted. Once the era of the Rightly Guided Caliphs had ended and some prayer leaders, such as Ibn al-Zubayr and others, began reciting the basmalah aloud, some people questioned the surviving Companions, such as Anas. Anas then reported to them that it had not been recited aloud. While the caliphs were still alive, however, the Sunnah was manifest and well known, and none of them recited it aloud. There was therefore no need to ask about things not done so that their nonoccurrence might be reported.

Third, the absence of recitation aloud has been transmitted authentically and explicitly in the hadith of Abū Hurayrah, whereas reciting it aloud has not been transmitted authentically and explicitly—even though ordinary practice and religious duty require that things actually done should be more deserving of authentic, explicit transmission than things not done.

Anyone who reflects on these arguments and is knowledgeable about conclusive evidence will conclude with certainty