Suppose a person owes a debt and owns different categories of assets that would otherwise be subject to zakat. To which category should the debt be attributed for legal assessment?
The chapter discusses assigning the debt to the assets more readily usable for satisfying it. That preference may change the remaining zakat assessment.
For instance, a person may own a qualifying amount of livestock and a qualifying amount of dirhams. Allocating the debt against one category rather than the other has different implications.
The example illustrates how an evidential selection can affect the application of financial rules, not merely the dictionary translation of a word.