Yet the majority of these scholars are inconsistent: in this discussion they insist that power exists only simultaneously with the act, while in jurisprudence and its legal theory they regard the sinner as capable of obeying—just as the pilgrimage is obligatory for everyone who is able, whether or not that person actually performs it. They may further claim that the dispute is merely verbal, arguing that prior good health and a sound constitution are not the form of ability that exists only with the act.

We say to them: The texts of the Qur’an and the Sunnah require that these very factors be counted as part of one’s capacity. If the disagreement is purely verbal, the terminology most deserving of deference is that used by the Lawgiver in the Book and the Sunnah.

In short, the doctrine of Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamā‘ah—who affirm divine decree and hold that God creates the deeds of His servants—is that the full complex of conditions that necessitates a servant’s act comes into existence only when the act itself comes into existence.

They do, however, differ over God’s own acts. The Kullābiyyah, along with those jurists among the followers of the four Imams who sided with them, maintain that God’s pre-eternal power and pre-eternal will are what bring every event into being at the moment it occurs, without any new positive entity arising. Hence they say that the complete cause precedes its effect, or else that the complete cause includes a contingent relation that coincides with the effect—yet for them this relation is merely privative, not real.

As for the Karrāmiyyah and those of similar persuasion, although they hold that when contingent events occur