to all of them or to some of them. The person who drew this distinction has acknowledged that the imams stated this without qualification and that he himself introduced the distinction. Thus, nothing may be attributed to the imams except what they actually said.

As for the legal rulings, if someone says, “By Allah, I shall certainly strike Zayd, then Amr, then Bakr—if Allah wills,” the exception applies to them all.

Likewise, if he says, “On pain of divorce, I shall certainly strike this one, then this one, then this one.” Or he says, “I shall certainly accept the blood money; I shall certainly slaughter the sheep; I shall certainly cook it”—and other such cases.

As for the evidence he cited, he said:

“When the coordination uses a particle that indicates sequence, extending the exception to all those mentioned earlier is somewhat questionable and unclear. The exception certainly applies to those immediately preceding it, whereas its extension to all those mentioned earlier, when coordination uses a particle indicating sequence, is possible but not certain.

“When entitlement has been explicitly established by the wording of the endowment’s founder, and nothing has been established that would alter it, that entitlement must be upheld. It may not be altered on the basis of an uncertain possibility.”

We reply that this may be answered in several ways.

First, precisely the same holds for coordination with wāw. The exception’s extension to all those mentioned earlier is possible but not certain, whether the coordination uses a particle indicating sequence or one conveying shared participation without sequence. This is precisely the argument of those who maintain that the exception must be confined to the final clause.