Prioritizing the Evidences

When the four primary proofs—the Quran, the Sunnah, consensus, and analogical reasoning—concur on a ruling, or when one of them stands alone without a counter-evidence, that ruling must be affirmed. If they appear to conflict and harmonization is possible, reconciliation is obligatory; if harmonization is impossible, abrogation is applied provided its conditions are satisfied. Should neither reconciliation nor abrogation be feasible, the jurist must weigh the evidences and give preference to the stronger one.

Preference within the Quran and the Sunnah is governed by the following order:
• An explicit text takes precedence over an apparent (non-explicit) wording.
• The apparent meaning outranks a meaning obtained through interpretation.
• A direct, spoken statement outweighs an inferred implication.
• Affirmative evidence is preferred to negative evidence.
• An evidence that departs from the default assumption overrides one that merely preserves it, because the former supplies additional knowledge.
• A general text that has remained unrestricted is preferred to one whose generality has been restricted.
• A report possessing more marks of authenticity supersedes one with fewer.
• A narration transmitted by someone directly involved in the incident takes precedence over a narration from someone who was not.

Within consensus, definitive (qatʿī) agreement is preferred to conjectural (ẓannī) agreement.

Within analogical reasoning, the manifest (jalī) analogy precedes the subtle (khafī) analogy.