or has it none? (1) The views fall into three positions.

The leading jurists hold that the imperative does have a wording which, by its very form, signifies that it is a command (2) whenever it is devoid (3) of any contextual indicator. An example is a person’s statement, “Do such-and-such” (4). Whenever such wording is found free of indicators, it counts as a command and needs no further sign to establish its imperative force. This is the position of Mālik, (5) al-Shāfiʿī, Abū Ḥanīfa, al-Awzāʿī, the majority of scholars, and—among the Muʿtazila—al-Balkhī (6).

The entire Muʿtazila, apart from al-Balkhī, maintain that the command has no fixed wording; the expression alone does not indicate that it is an imperative. Rather, it becomes an imperative only through an accompanying sign, namely the intent (irāda).

He then says (7):

Al-Ashʿarī and those who follow him hold that the command is a meaning subsisting in the very person who issues it; it never parts from or separates the essence. The same, in his view, applies to all other categories of speech—prohibition, declarative statement, interrogation, and so forth: all of them are meanings (8) inherent in the essence, never leaving it (9), just like power, knowledge, and the rest. This is equally true (10) of Allah’s command and the command of human beings, except that Allah’s command is distinguished by being eternal, whereas the human command