If Ahmad or another scholar says that oaths involving divorce and manumission admit no expiation because they do not admit qualification by ‘if Allah wills,’ this statement entails a conclusion concerning such qualification in oaths involving them.

As for those among Ahmad’s followers who distinguish between the two, saying, “Qualification by ‘if Allah wills’ is valid in oaths involving them, but expiation is not,” I know of no explicit statement from Ahmad making this distinction. They are, however, excused for understanding his words in this way, since they did not find two explicitly reported positions from him concerning expiation for oaths involving them, as they did concerning qualification by ‘if Allah wills’ in such oaths. Nevertheless, the permissibility of expiation necessarily follows from one of the two positions reported from him—the very position they defend.

Anyone other than the prophets may make a statement whose necessary implications he does not recognize. Were he to recognize them, he might accept them; or, if he did not, he might retract the statement from which they follow, or retain it while believing that those implications do not follow.

When jurists of our school and others derive rulings from the implications of a scholar’s statements and his analogical reasoning, either he has made no explicit statement affirming or denying the implication in question, or he has explicitly denied it. If he has explicitly denied it, he may or may not also have explicitly denied that it necessarily follows from his position.

If he has explicitly denied that implication, yet they derive from his position a ruling contrary to his express statement on that issue, this may occur, for example, when he gives two different rulings on two similar issues, or bases a ruling on a rationale that he contradicts elsewhere. Thus, Ahmad here explained the absence of expiation by the absence of qualification by ‘if Allah wills,’ although two positions are reported from him concerning that qualification.

This rests on the question of deriving a ruling on a matter concerning which he has expressed neither affirmation nor denial: may that ruling be called his position, or not? There is a well-known disagreement among the scholars of our school concerning this.