The entire debate, then, concerned only the rational possibility of issuing such a command. Some scholars even went so far as to argue about what is intrinsically impossible—such as joining two mutually exclusive or contradictory states—wondering whether reason could allow God to command it, although no such command exists in the revealed Law. Others were even more extreme, claiming that this very category does in fact appear in the Sharia; for instance, one might allege that Abu Lahab was required to believe that he would never believe. The people of the Qiblah, across all schools, unanimously reject this contention. Rather, if we suppose that Abu Lahab was informed that he would be thrown into the Fire—which necessarily entails that he would die in unbelief—and that he actually heard this revelation, then at that moment the charge would be lifted from him, and faith would no longer benefit him, just as belief is useless to those who profess it only after the punishment has become manifest. Allah, Exalted is He, says: “Their faith was of no benefit to them once they saw Our might” (Q 40:85), and: “Now? When previously you disobeyed and were of the corrupters!” (Q 10:91).

The intention here is merely to point out that the disagreement over this foundational issue branches in two directions: at times it pertains to the act that is being commanded, and at other times to the permissibility of issuing the command itself. From this ambiguity certain theologians misled people, treating the two categories as one and asserting an unrestricted doctrine of charging human beings with what they cannot bear, on the grounds that some instances occur which the vast majority of Muslims would never classify as impossible. Yet the dispute over those instances is not about the sphere of command and prohibition at all; it belongs to the questions of divine decree and predestination.

Those same theologians then regarded the permissibility of the first category as entailing the permissibility of the second—one that all Muslims agree lies beyond human capacity—and they drew an analogy between the two. Such analogies are repudiated not only by Muslims, but by the adherents of every religion, indeed by all rational people, for whoever likens an able-bodied person who is commanded