its limbs, remains whole. As the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“Every child is born upon the innate disposition. His parents then make him a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian, just as an animal gives birth to a young animal with all its limbs intact. Do you see any mutilation in it?”

An animal whose limbs were intact no longer remains intact after mutilation, but this does not entail the loss of its remaining parts.

As for the name no longer applying, they may be answered as follows:

First, this is a matter of terminology, if it is granted that faith has dimensions and branches, as the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said in the hadith reported by both al-Bukhārī and Muslim:

“Faith has seventy-odd branches. The highest is saying, ‘None has the right to be worshipped but Allah,’ and the lowest is removing something harmful from the road. Modesty is a branch of faith.”

Prayer and Hajj likewise have parts and branches. The loss of one branch of faith does not necessarily entail the loss of all its other parts and branches, just as the loss of some parts of Hajj or prayer does not necessarily entail the loss of all the others. Their claim that the loss of part of a composite entails the loss of the remainder is therefore incorrect. We concede that only part of it remains, not the whole, and that its combined configuration no longer remains as it was.

The remaining dispute is whether the name must cease to apply when some parts are lost. They may be answered as follows: composites fall into two categories in this respect. In some, the combination is a condition for applying the name; in others, it is not. The first includes the term “ten,” and likewise “oxymel”; others are those