A person finds within himself a clear distinction between negation and affirmation, belief and denial, love and hatred, incitement and restraint. Indeed, the difference between this category and the other is acknowledged by both laypeople and specialists alike, by every group that speaks about knowledge. The jurists refer to it in the Book of Oaths, and those who classify speech—scholars of dialectics, grammar, and rhetoric—mention the same principle. They state that speech falls into two types: informative (khabar) and performative (inshā’). Informative speech turns on negation and affirmation, whereas performative speech consists of a command, a prohibition, or a permission.

[The servant’s duty in affirming Allah’s oneness]

Given this, the servant must affirm for Allah every attribute of perfection that ought to be affirmed for Him, and deny of Him whatever ought to be denied, namely anything that contradicts that perfection. Likewise, with respect to His rulings, the servant must affirm both Allah’s act of creation and His command: he believes in His creation, which entails the perfection of His power and the universality of His will; he also affirms His command, which clarifies what He loves and approves of in word and deed. Thus he believes in Allah’s revealed Law and in His decree with a faith untainted by error.