As for the claim that “what a prohibition really seeks is the performance of the opposite act,” that is not the case. What is intended is the non-performance of the forbidden deed and, consequently, engagement in its contrary (1). For whatever is indispensable to the fulfillment of an obligation is not sought in the primary intention, even though the primary object is the commanded act itself, from which one is prohibited anything that prevents or weakens it. Thus the prohibited matter is required to be absent as a means and a safeguard, whereas the commanded matter is required to be brought into existence as an objective and an end.
Abū Hāshim’s statement that “a person who refrains from vile deeds is praiseworthy even if the thought of self-restraint never occurs to him” is correct only in one sense. If by “praiseworthy” he means that such a person is not blameworthy, that is true; but if he means that the person should be commended, lauded, and entitled to reward for it, that is not correct. People do not praise a eunuch for avoiding fornication, nor a mute for refraining from backbiting and insult; they praise the one who, while fully able and prompted to act, nevertheless holds back.
The Qāḍī’s statement that “maintaining the original state of non-existence is within one’s power” is sound if he means restraining and preventing oneself; but if he means sheer non-existence itself, then it is not so.
This becomes clear in the thirteenth approach: commanding an act entails forbidding its opposite by logical necessity, not by an independent, intention-based demand. The commander’s only aim is the performance of what is commanded; if abandoning the opposite is a necessary concomitant, that abandonment is intended only for the sake of something else. This is the correct view in the discussion of whether commanding something constitutes forbidding its contrary: it is a prohibition only by way of logical implication, not by explicit intent and request. Likewise, when something is forbidden, the forbidding party’s primary purpose is that the prohibited act cease, and its being—