Rule Eleven: Taking account of the meanings indicated by direct correspondence, inclusion, and necessary implication.

Just as the exegete of the Qur’an must attend to what the words signify plainly and to what they contain implicitly, he must also consider the corollary meanings they entail—those notions the wording itself does not spell out but nonetheless requires.

This rule stands among the loftiest and most beneficial principles of exegesis. It calls for intellectual vigor, deep reflection, and sincerity of purpose. The One who revealed the Qur’an as guidance and mercy is the All-Knowing; His knowledge encompasses what hearts conceal, all that the Qur’an conveys of meaning, what precedes those meanings, what follows them, and everything on which they depend.

For that reason the scholars have unanimously agreed that the necessary implications of Allah’s speech are valid grounds for evidence.

To put this fruitful principle into practice, first grasp fully the meanings indicated by the wording. Once you have done so, reflect on the matters upon which those meanings depend and without which they cannot stand, as well as the conditions they require. Then ponder what follows from them, what branches out of them, and what is built upon them. Persist in such reflection until it becomes a well-honed aptitude enabling you to dive into subtle meanings. The Qur’an is truth, and whatever necessarily stems from truth is truth; whatever depends upon truth is truth; whatever branches off from truth is likewise truth—inevitably so.

Whoever is granted success in this method, together with Allah’s enabling grace and light, will find that the Qur’an opens before him useful sciences, majestic forms of knowledge, lofty virtues, and exalted etiquette.

Let us illustrate this principle with a few examples:

One concerns Allah’s Most Beautiful Names, al-Rahman and al-Rahim. By their very wording they indicate that He is characterised by mercy and by its boundless expanse. When you realise that the mercy unmatched by any other is His permanent attribute, that He has extended it to every creature and that no one is ever deprived of it for even the blink of an eye, you will see that this attribute points to the perfection of His life, the perfection of His power, the all-embracing scope of His knowledge, the effective realisation of His will, and the perfection of His wisdom—for mercy depends on all of these.