This love and sense of perception that Allah has placed within souls is the fountainhead of every form of good and evil, every occasion for praise or blame. Were it not for the perceptive awareness that makes one love the beloved and hate the detested, no voluntary motion at all would occur—no living creature would move by choice. Without it there would be no command or prohibition, no reward or punishment; for reward consists of what souls love and enjoy, while punishment consists of what souls loathe and suffer from, and that can only come after perception. Thus perception, love, and aversion are the root of everything that concerns a living being in this world and the next, and through them command, prohibition, promise, and threat become fitting.

Those commands, prohibitions, promises, and threats perfect the innate disposition (fiṭrah), and each of the two—revelation and innate nature—supports the other. The divine law completes the natural fiṭrah, and the natural fiṭrah initiates and aids belief in the law and acting upon it. Fortunate, then, is the servant who embraces the religion that rectifies him and thereby becomes one of the people of righteous deeds in the Hereafter, while wretched is the one who neither follows the religion nor performs the deeds brought by the sharia. That is how the matter stands, and Allah knows best.