upon you, so that you may be grateful. (1)

He, exalted be He, also says:

“Allah intends to make things clear to you, to guide you to the ways of those who came before you, and to turn toward you in mercy—Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise. (26) And Allah wishes to turn toward you in mercy, whereas those who pursue their desires wish that you deviate utterly. (27) Allah intends to lighten your burden, for humankind was created weak.” (2)

The thirteenth argument:

When he was asked to differentiate between the very essence of ṭalab (command or request) and irādah (will), he offered two answers.

First: a speaker may say to another, “I want you to do such-and-such, even though I am not commanding you to do it.”

Second: granted that, in the observable realm, we may not clearly distinguish between requesting an act and willing it, we have nonetheless demonstrated that the word ifʿal (“Do!”) whenever it appears in the Book of Allah must necessarily denote a demand for the action. We have also shown that this demand can be neither the mere mental conception of the letters nor the will for the act itself, (3) so it must be something distinct from both. Not everything for which we find no counterpart in the sensible world must therefore be denied in the unseen; otherwise, establishing the existence of the Deity would become impossible. (4) Both of these replies, however, are weak.

As for the first, it may be said that it inevitably entails willing; or it may be said that it is a specific kind of will expressed from a position of authority. Thus, when someone says, “I want you to do this even though I am not commanding you to do so,” he means, “I am not asserting authority over you,” for the one who wills may be a humble petitioner—like a servant who wants something from his Lord.