The sixth source:

“Presumption of continuity”

This means retaining the original state where revelation is not known to have established or negated something. It is unanimously accepted as grounds for withholding belief. Whether it constitutes grounds for believing that something does not exist, however, is disputed.

A similar approach is to infer the absence of a religious ruling from the absence of scriptural evidence. For example, one might argue: If the sacrificial offering or the witr prayer were obligatory, revelation would have provided evidence of that obligation, since their obligatory status cannot be known without revelation. There is no such evidence; therefore, there is no obligation.

The first approach retains the absence of obligation and prohibition known through reason until something is established that changes it. The other infers the absence of a ruling from the absence of scriptural evidence establishing it, since the existence of such a ruling necessarily entails the existence of scriptural evidence for it.

Similarly, the absence of any transmitted report serves as evidence that something never occurred when people would have had every incentive and reason to transmit it, when the Sharia requires its transmission, or when the religious commitment and customary practice of its adherents indicate that they would transmit it. Such reasoning establishes the absence of any addition to the Quran or to the publicly known Sharia, and the absence of any explicit text appointing ‘Alī, al-‘Abbās, or anyone else to the imamate.

Specialists versed in the prophetic traditions, transmitted reports, and the life of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and his caliphs know that certain things of this kind did not occur, whereas others do not know this. This is because they know transmitted accounts that rule them out, and because they know that the necessary concomitants of their transmission are absent. For the existence of either of two opposites excludes the other, and the absence of a necessary consequence is evidence for the absence of that which entails it.

(The seventh source—

“Unrestricted considerations of benefit”

This is when a jurist exercising independent reasoning considers that this