firm conviction without necessity or inference is possible at all; and, if it is possible, whether it can be called knowledge.

Another issue is that the term “necessity” is ambiguous. It may refer to evident facts, shared by people generally, that a person cannot help knowing. It may refer to what arises in a person’s mind without his doing anything to acquire it. It may refer to what admits of no doubt. Or it may refer to what is inescapably present in a person’s mind.

Another issue is that knowledge may arise of necessity in the minds of many people, even though they imagine that they have not acquired it. Something similar occurs with purpose and intention. The Muslim community unanimously agrees that prayer and similar acts of worship are valid only with intention. Intention is a form of purpose and volition, and its seat is the heart, by their unanimous agreement. Thus, if someone says something different from what he intends in his heart, or vice versa, what counts is the intention in his heart.

Yet many people have become confused about intention, to the point that a person seeks to acquire it when he already has it, and doubts its presence within himself when it is already there. This is especially so if he believes that the intention must coincide with the prayer. Such a person may be seen suffering obsessive doubts about its presence that take him beyond the bounds of reason and religion. Hence it has been said:

“Obsessive doubts arise only from derangement of the intellect or ignorance of the religious law.”

At the root of this is their ignorance of the true nature of intention and how it arises, together with their departure from the sound natural disposition upon which Allah created His servants.

It is well known that anyone who knows