The Imamis argue regarding the invalidity of the doctrine of ‘awl by observing that it it is impossible for Allah, subhanahu, to divide an estate into shares to half and two-thirds, or shares of one eighth, one third and two-thirds, because, otherwise, ignorance and frivolity would be attributed to Him, while He is too exalted to desene such attributes. Hence, it has been narrated from ‘Ali (A) and his pupil ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Abbas that they ~aid: “He Who can count the number of sand grains (in the universe) surely knows that the number of shares do not exceed”
The Imāmīs always diminish the share of the daughters or sister, and the shares of the husband, the wife and the parents remain unaltered; because the daughters and the sisters have been assigned a single share and do not face a reduction from a higher to a lower share. They, therefore, inherit as sharers in the absence of a male heir and as residuaries in his presence, and at times they are entitled along with him to less than what they are entitled to when alone. However, the share of the husband is reduced from a half to one fourth, the wife’s from one fourth to one-eighth, the mother’s from one-third to one sixth, and in certain cases the father inherits one-sixth as a sharer; the share of none of them further diminishes from its determined minimum, and nothing is reduced from it. Hence, when the shares exceed the corpus, a start will be made from this minimum limit and the remainder will go to the daughters or sisters.
