without its keeping him occupied away from a prohibited act. Prohibiting an act amounts to commanding one of its alternatives. Thus, the permissible acts he performs are among the commanded alternatives to the prohibited act.

The answer is as follows:

Prohibiting an act does not amount to commanding any particular alternative, either intentionally or by logical necessity. Rather, the prohibition is directed expressly at the act intended to be avoided. This necessarily entails a command to fulfil what the alternatives have in common. It is therefore a command concerning an unrestricted, universal concept. A command concerning such a concept neither commands any particular instance specifically nor prohibits it. Yet the universal cannot be realized except through a particular instance, whichever instance that may be. Thus, the command concerns what the particular instances have in common. Whatever distinguishes one instance from another is left to the choice of the person commanded: he has neither been commanded to do it nor prohibited from doing it. What the instances share—their common element—is what the command-giver has commanded.

This resolves the difficulty concerning a person commanded to act but allowed a choice, and concerning a command to realize a universal essence: does it amount to commanding any of its particular instances or not? A person allowed a choice is someone commanded to perform one of several specified acts, as in the compensation required on account of an ailment and the expiation for an oath. Thus, Allah Most High says:

“Then a ransom of fasting, charity, or sacrifice.”
[Al-Baqarah: 196]

And He Most High says:

“Its expiation is to feed ten needy people from the average of what you feed your families, or to clothe them, or to free a slave.”
[Al-Mā’idah: 89]

Here, Muslims agree that performing any one of these discharges his obligation. They also agree that if he omits them all, he is not punished for omitting all three as he would be if he had been obliged to perform all three.