Because they followed this line of thought, a number of jurists slipped into error—among them Abū al-Maʿālī, his disciple Abū Ḥāmid, al-Rāfiʿī, and others. They advanced a view that contradicts all the earlier authorities of jurisprudence among the followers of the four Imams and beyond. Neither al-Shāfiʿī nor any of his foremost students, nor any other recognized jurist, ever held it. The claim is as follows: if a man says to his wife, “If you drink, or commit fornication, or do such-and-such, you are divorced,” intending thereby that the divorce should take effect when that condition is fulfilled; or says, “If you give me a thousand, you are divorced”; or says, “If I divorce you, you are divorced with another pronouncement”; or, “If my divorce takes effect upon you, then you are divorced”; or makes a similar statement regarding the manumission of a slave—they maintain that the ruling contingent on a condition (divorce or manumission) materializes together with the condition, on the premise that the condition is the cause of the ruling and that an effect is simultaneous with its cause in time.

This, however, is wrong in Sharīʿah, language, and reason alike. As for the Sharīʿah, every ruling suspended on a condition takes effect only after the condition has occurred; it does not take place concurrently with it. The detailed rulings transmitted from the Imams demonstrate this. Linguistically as well, the “recompense” (jawāb) in Arabic usage follows the conditional clause and comes after it; it is not contemporaneous with it. Hence the recompense may even be set for a later time, as in the Almighty’s words:

“Whoever does an atom’s weight of good shall see it, and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil shall see it.” (Q 99:7–8)

The same applies to vows: if someone says, “If Allah cures my sick relative, I must fast for a year,” the fast does not become obligatory until after the cure—neither at the moment of cure nor during it. Likewise when he says, “If Allah safeguards my absent property,” or declares, “Whoever returns my runaway slave,” or “Whoever builds this wall for me,” and similar formulations. Moreover, these statements are introduced by the particle faʾ, which denotes immediate succession and therefore requires the second event to follow the first, not coincide with it. From the standpoint of reason as well, the former here is like the agent