with the utmost humility and submission, reverence and veneration. They thus deny that He is loved, which amounts to denying His divinity. Their leading teacher was al-Jaʿd ibn Dirham, whom Khālid ibn al-Qasrī slaughtered as a sacrifice on a Day of Sacrifice, saying, “He claimed that Allah did not actually speak to Moses and did not take Abraham as an intimate friend.” What he denied was that Allah Most High is loved and loves. He did not deny Abraham’s need of Him, which is what the Jahmiyyah understand by intimate friendship—a condition shared by all creatures. Thus, in their view, all creatures are Allah’s intimate friends.
We have demonstrated the falsity of this position and their denial of love for Allah through more than eighty arguments in our book entitled The Delight of Lovers’ Eyes and the Garden of the Hearts of Those Who Know Allah. In it, we established the necessity of directing love to the First Beloved through every kind of evidence: revelation, reason, inward experience, and innate disposition. We also explained that a human being cannot attain perfection without this, just as the body cannot attain its perfection without spirit and life, the eye without the light of sight, or the ear without hearing. Indeed, the matter is greater and more momentous still.
Section
The second category consists of the negationist Qadariyyah, who affirm a kind of wisdom and purpose that neither subsists in the Lord nor relates back to Him, but concerns only the welfare and benefit of created beings. In their view, acts of worship were prescribed as the price of the reward and bliss that servants receive; this is comparable to a hired worker receiving his wages. They say that this is why Allah Most High treats these acts as payment, as in His words:
7:43 “And they will be called, ‘This is Paradise, which you have been made to inherit for what you used to do.’”
And His words:
“Enter Paradise for what you used to do.”
And His words:
“Are you recompensed for anything other than what you used to do?”
And the Prophet’s words, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, relating from his Lord, Mighty and Majestic:
“O My servants, these are but your deeds, which I record for you; then I recompense you for them in full.”
And the words of Allah Most High:
39:10 “Those who are patient will indeed be given their reward without measure.”
They say: Allah, glorified is He, has called it recompense, wages, and reward (thawāb), because it returns to the doer from his deeds—that is, it comes back to him through them.
They say: Were it not connected to deeds, there would be no meaning in calling it recompense, wages, or reward.