someone who has not grasped the true nature of these two forms of reasoning.

It may be known from a revealed text that every intoxicant is forbidden, as established in the authentic hadith. In that case, universal syllogistic reasoning is not the only means of establishing the ruling; indeed, no form of inferential reasoning is required, since the ruling may be known without it. Thus, their claim that no propositional knowledge is possible except through logical syllogism is invalid, as explained earlier.

The purpose here is to show how little benefit it offers, if any. For if a proposition conveying a universal rule is known from the Messenger—namely, that every intoxicant is forbidden—then the desired conclusion has been established. Universal propositions received from the Messenger yield knowledge concerning divine matters.

As for what is derived from their sciences, its universal propositions are either refuted by counterexamples, equivalent to analogical reasoning, or incapable of yielding knowledge of particular existing things, yielding instead knowledge of mentally posited quantities, as in arithmetic and geometry. Although such knowledge applies to whatever exists with those quantities, whether a particular thing falls within its scope is known through sensory perception, not syllogistic reasoning. The syllogism therefore does not establish what is sought. Alternatively, these propositions concern matters in which they have no exclusive expertise, but which all other nations share without their logic ever crossing their minds. Moreover, analogical reasoning and universal syllogistic reasoning remain on an equal footing.

Establishing knowledge of the Creator and of prophethood does not depend on these forms of reasoning. Rather, such knowledge is attained through signs pointing to a particular entity, not something shared by several; it arises as immediate knowledge requiring no discursive reasoning. Whatever is attained concerning these matters through universal syllogistic reasoning is equivalent to what is attained through analogical reasoning: a universal notion that does not yield knowledge of what is unique to the Lord or what is unique to the Messenger unless supplemented by other knowledge.