Or, if you wish, you may say: An unqualified affirmative proposition is contradicted only by a universal negation. This, however, is not a universal negation, so it does not contradict that proposition. Nor may we disregard what either of the two pieces of evidence entails.

Or you may say: Mentioning these two occasions amounts only to not informing us of any others. Not informing us of a particular reward—whether gazing upon Him or something else—does not establish that it does not exist. How could it, when this reward is among the things Allah has kept hidden? Since the absence of a report does not establish the absence of that reward, and the generality of both the wording and the meaning either conclusively includes women or apparently does so, an absence of evidence cannot restrict the scope of existing evidence, whether apparent or conclusive. All this is not only known by self-evident reason but also agreed upon by the Muslim community, as established among scholars in both legal theory and substantive rulings.

The error arises when someone hears what the hadiths say about the vision in general, unqualified terms, then encounters other hadiths reporting a particular, qualified vision. He imagines that the general, unqualified vision occurs only in this qualified form, or, because of this possibility, denies that those general reports convey a general meaning.

This is like a man saying, “I used to welcome my companions into my house and honour them.” Then, on another occasion, he says, “On such-and-such a day, I welcomed so-and-so and so-and-so among my companions into my house.” Anyone who assumes that he did not welcome his other companions—because he did not mention them on this occasion—has erred. He would be asked, “How do you know that he did not welcome them at another time?”

If he says, “He may have welcomed them, or he may not have, so I suspend judgment,” he would be told, “But he said, ‘I used to welcome my companions into my house,’ and this encompasses all his companions.”