“When any one of them is given tidings of a female child, his face darkens and he chokes with suppressed grief. He hides himself from the people because of the bad news he has received: shall he keep her in humiliation, or bury her in the dust? How evil is the judgment they pass! For those who do not believe in the Hereafter is the basest similitude, whereas to Allah belongs the highest similitude; and He is the Mighty, the Wise.” (Qur’an 16:58-60)
He, exalted be He, also says:
“Have you considered al-Lāt and al-ʿUzzā, and Manāt, the third, the other? Are you to have the male and He the female? That, then, would be an inequitable division.” (Qur’an 53:19-22)
The same pattern of argument is employed in establishing His attributes, prophethood, and the Resurrection, as has been fully set out elsewhere.
As for the analogy whose individual instances are completely equivalent—such that the branch mirrors the original in every respect—it is impermissible to apply this to Allah, exalted is He, for nothing is comparable to Him. Should such an analogy be attempted, it yields only a universal notion shared between Him and others and therefore fails to point to what is unique to the Lord, unless it is joined to some additional knowledge. Indeed, the universal produced by that analogy becomes confined to His very Person, yet even then it does not provide definite identification; identification still requires further knowledge.
Fourth Aspect:
A complete apprehension of the middle term renders formal syllogistic reasoning unnecessary.
It may be said that analogy (qiyās) falls into three kinds: inclusion (tadākhul), concomitance (talāzum), and mutual exclusion (taʿānud), corresponding respectively to categorical propositions, connected conditionals, and disjunctive conditionals; from these one also recognises the mixed forms.
In analogy by inclusion there are three terms: the minor, the middle, and the major. Thus, when one states, “Every intoxicant is wine, and every wine is forbidden,” “intoxicant” is the minor term, “wine” the middle, and “forbidden” the major. The minor must be subsumed under the middle because it is more specific than—or at least co-extensive with—it; a thing is included under what is broader than it or under its equal, just as “human being” is included under “animal,” for “animal” is more general. Likewise, “human,” “rational,” and “laughing” are mutually concomitant, each encompassing the other.
The same principle of inclusion applies to legal rulings: if someone drinks wine, then drinks again, and then drinks yet again, a single ḥadd penalty suffices.