The first category consists of those who deny that Allah’s acts have wise purposes or underlying reasons, reducing everything to sheer will and volition. In their view, worship is performed solely because it is commanded, not because it brings happiness in this life or the Hereafter, or leads to salvation. It is performed merely in obedience to the command and in accordance with sheer will. Similarly, they maintain regarding creation that He did not create what He created for a reason, an intended end, or any wisdom pertaining to Him through it. Created things contain no causes that produce their effects, nor any inherent powers or natures. Thus, fire does not cause burning, nor does water cause illness, cooling, or the growth of plants; nor does it possess any power or nature that brings these effects about. Burning and the quenching of thirst do not occur through fire and water, but through an established pattern of conjunction: one occurs in the presence of the other, not because of it or through any power inherent in it. They take precisely the same approach to His revealed commands. There is no intrinsic difference between what is commanded and what is forbidden. Rather, His will determined that He should command this and forbid that, without any quality inherent in what is commanded accounting for its goodness, or any quality inherent in what is forbidden accounting for its evil.

This principle has many unsound implications and ramifications. We have discussed them in our extensive work entitled The Key to the Abode of Happiness and the Goal of the People of Knowledge and Resolve, demonstrating the falsity of this principle in some sixty ways. It is a remarkable book on its subject. We have also discussed it in our work entitled The Journey of the Two Migrations and the Path to the Two Felicities.

These people do not taste the sweetness or pleasure of worship, nor do they find enjoyment in it. It is not their deepest delight, nor do the commands bring joy to their hearts or nourishment and life to their souls. For this reason, they call them burdensome obligations—that is, things they have been burdened with. Yet if someone claiming to love a king, or anyone else, called what that person commanded him to do a burden, saying, “I do it only with difficulty,” no one would regard him as loving that person. For this reason, these people—or many of them—deny that a servant loves his Lord. They say that he loves only His reward and the pleasures He creates for him to enjoy, not that he loves Allah Himself. Thus, they make His creation, rather than Him, the object of love. The essence of servitude is perfect love; they have therefore denied the very essence and heart of servitude. And the essence of divinity is that He is worshipped and loved with the utmost love, coupled