The position of those who say, “Analogical reasoning requires all such prostrations to be performed before the salām, but textual evidence overrides that reasoning in certain cases, while the remaining cases continue to follow it,” requires two things: first, evidence establishing that all such prostrations should be performed before the salām; and second, an explanation of the distinctive factor in the exceptional cases that warrants distinguishing them from the others. Otherwise, if the reason requiring prostration before the salām applies to every case, the Lawgiver could not prescribe prostration after the salām in some of them. If He has distinguished between them for a reason, that reason must be specific to the exceptional cases. If the difference between the cases excluded and those retained is unknown, distinguishing between them has no evidential basis.
If he says:
“I know that the reason requiring prostration before the salām applies generally. However, when the text made its exceptions, I knew that a countervailing consideration existed in those cases.”
He is told in reply:
In a case not addressed by a text, there may be a reason requiring prostration before the salām, or there may be a reason requiring it after the salām. You do not know that the reason requiring prostration after the salām in those particular cases is absent from all others. Moreover, since some prostrations are performed after the salām, the complete set of grounds requiring prostration before the salām cannot apply universally. You therefore no longer have a general rationale on which to base a categorical assertion that prostration in an unresolved case must precede the salām, or that the reason requiring it after the salām is confined to the case addressed by the text. Thus, denying a distinction is an assertion made without evidence warranting the distinction. It amounts to allowing exceptions to the operation of the legal cause without showing that a condition is absent or an impediment is present. This is pure juristic preference