and does not come into legal effect. Likewise, whenever an impediment is present, the act is neither valid nor operative.

The conditions for acts of worship and for transactions encompass everything upon which their validity depends. Such conditions are identified through careful textual analysis and juristic induction. By relying on this inductive method, the jurists have catalogued the pillars, conditions, and obligatory elements of the various acts of worship, as well as the conditions governing transactions and the impediments that nullify them.

To “confine” (ḥaṣr) a ruling in this way is to affirm it for the items enumerated and to deny it for anything else. Hence, from the jurists’ enumeration of the conditions and particulars of any matter we learn that whatever falls outside their list is not subject to the stated ruling.

Among the maxims that derive from this is: al-ḥukm yadūr maʿa ʿillatihi thubūtan wa ʿadaman (a ruling revolves around its effective cause, being upheld when the cause exists and absent when it does not). Thus, whenever a complete and recognized cause—one that the Lawgiver has explicitly linked to a ruling—is present, the ruling itself is present; and whenever that cause is absent, the ruling is not established.

They further state: al-aṣl fī al-ʿibādāt al-ḥaẓr illā mā warada … (the default concerning devotional acts is prohibition, except for what has been textually sanctioned…).