In response to those who attributed analogical reasoning to the Companions, "It is not valid for them to reason with their intellects in religious matters, given their inclination towards caution and verification."

And you find him, Al-Mahdi, refuting the opinion that it is beneficial: His building of analogy and his support for it, as stated in his saying: "There is no difference between rational and legal analogy, if the basis is the same. The intellect is equality, and the legal analogy is equality in obligation, permissibility, or prohibition."

And when we have clarified the differing views that Al-Mahdi presented on legal analogy and compared his various observations on it, it becomes clear to us that he rejects analogy as formulated by the jurists and considers it to be conjecture upon which legal rulings cannot be based. However, he affirms another method of deriving rulings, which he calls analogy, and he strives to explain its foundations and demonstrate its freedom from the defects of juristic analogy. Therefore, his discourse on this matter is divided into a destructive, critical part and a constructive part.

Regarding the critical part, his criticism of analogy was not directed at explaining the defects of analogy in itself and refuting it on that basis with rational arguments. Rather, he aimed to invalidate it by demonstrating the invalidity of some of the evidence used by its proponents and the invalidity of the rulings resulting from its use in several jurisprudential matters. For these people "compared contradictions, such as forbidden things, to permissible things, and tore the Sharia to shreds."

They stipulated conditions for analogy, saying that analogy is only valid with four conditions: the cause, the ruling, the original case, and the derived case. On this basis, they built analogy.

In invalidating the evidence for the validity of analogy, Al-Mahdi focused on refuting what was attributed to the Companions regarding their use of it in a group of jurisprudential matters. He preceded the discussion of specific matters attributed to them with a general principle, stating: "If someone says, 'We found the Companions using analogy in some matters,' then the answer is: their analogy is either based on a text or is from their own reasoning. If it is based on a text, then it is valid. If it is from their own reasoning, Ibn Tumart - Risalah on the fact that the Sharia does not grow from reason - (same source: 38, 39)."