attribute by serving as an alternative cause for the ruling. They therefore raise this objection where there is only one cause, either because the evidence establishes this or because the person advancing the argument concedes it.

The aim here is to show that the disagreement over attributing a ruling to two causes concerns diversity and terminology, rather than a substantive contradiction. There is no disagreement that a ruling considered as a single genus or species may be attributed to two causes: some of its types or individual instances arise from one cause, and others from another. Examples include inheritance, which arises through kinship, marriage, or the bond of manumission; ownership, which arises through sale, gift, or inheritance; the lawfulness of taking life, which arises through apostasy, murder, or unlawful sexual intercourse; the things that invalidate ablution; the things that necessitate a full ritual bath; and other such matters.

Their disagreement concerns a particular, individual instance of a ruling. For example, if someone touches women, touches his penis, and urinates, can it be said that his ablution has been invalidated by several causes, so that a single ruling is attributed to two causes? Other examples include someone who commits murder, apostatizes, and engages in unlawful sexual intercourse, or a stepdaughter whom one is also forbidden to marry because of a milk relationship. Thus, the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) said concerning Durrah, the daughter of Umm Salamah, when Umm Habībah said to him, “We have been saying that you are going to marry Durrah, the daughter of Umm Salamah.”

He asked, “The daughter of Abū Salamah?”

She replied, “Yes.”

He said, “Even if she were not my stepdaughter under my care, she would not be lawful for me to marry, because she is the daughter of my brother through breastfeeding. Thuwaybah, the freedwoman of Abū Lahab, breastfed both me and Abū Salamah.”

And as Ahmad said