one person is initially commanded to do what another is not.

Thus, just as some people are commanded to pay zakat while others are not, although all are commanded to pray, they differ as to which requirements of prayer they are initially commanded to fulfil. Someone who knows how to perform ablution, recite al-Fātihah, and fulfil the other such requirements is commanded to perform them; someone who does not is first commanded to learn them. The first matter relating to prayer that one person is commanded to undertake is therefore not necessarily the first that another is commanded to undertake.

The same applies to obligations established by reason: if one holds that reason establishes obligations, their sequence varies from person to person.

One person is commanded to repay his debts; another, to return what has been entrusted to him for safekeeping; another, to judge justly and testify truthfully; and so forth.

Just as people differ in the sequence in which obligations become binding upon them, they also differ in the sequence in which they acquire knowledge and act upon it.

[Abū al-Husayn al-Basrī’s Discussion of Knowledge]

A group of speculative theologians—the Mu‘tazilah and those who agreed with them—followed a particular sequence for the knowledge obligatory upon every morally accountable person. They claimed that no one could attain knowledge except through that specific sequence, as we have already related from the statements of Abū al-Husayn al-Basrī and others like him. They said:

“No one can be confident of the truth of what the messengers brought until he knows that they are truthful. Knowledge of their truthfulness can be attained only through the miracles that distinguish them from others. Miracles indicate their truthfulness only if they come from One who does not do evil, so that there is no fear of His attesting to the truth of liars. Nor can it be known that He does not do evil until it is known that He knows it to be evil,