فَيُقَالُ لَهُ: فَإِنْ كَانَتِ الْعِلَّةُ فِي تَضْعِيفِكَ الْخَبَرَ وَتَرْكِكَ الِاحْتِجَاجَ بِهِ إِمْكَانَ الْإِرْسَالِ فِيهِ، لَزِمَكَ أَلَّا تُثْبِتَ إِسْنَادًا مُعَنْعَنًا حَتَّى تَرَى فِيهِ السَّمَاعَ مِنْ أَوَّلِهِ إِلَى آخِرِهِ.
Translation: Muslim replies: If the reason you weaken and reject the report is simply that an intermediary could be omitted, consistency would require refusing every muʿanʿan chain until hearing is made explicit throughout it.
Muslim’s reductio: a meeting established in another report does not logically eliminate an intermediary in this particular report. If every abstract possibility invalidates a report, the opponent’s one-meeting threshold cannot be sufficient. Muslim is **not** himself imposing universal explicit hearing in each report.
Nawawī’s response: he distinguishes a **strong probability of omission** from a merely conceivable possibility. Where no hearing between a pair has been established, he judges the risk materially greater; where credible meeting/hearing is demonstrated, the ordinary usage of a non-mudallis and inductive experience can make continuity more probable, without proving that this individual hadith cannot have an intermediary. This is Nawawī’s counterargument, not an unqualified statement of Muslim’s own rule.