For keeping him in reserve entails intending to benefit from him, while generosity of spirit entails intending to protect oneself from the harm involved in reviling him. Yet the statement, “One does not ask ‘Why?’ about His acts,” does not negate the existence of a wise purpose that He actually intends, nor His willing and intending it—even though some among both those who deny that His acts have purposes and those who affirm this deny it.

Hence some scholars of the early generations said, “Allah has knowledge that He has taught His servants, and knowledge that He has not taught His servants. Divine decree belongs to the knowledge that He has not taught His servants.”

They also related, in the account of Moses, Jesus, and Ezra asking our Lord—Blessed and Exalted—about the secret of divine decree, that if He had willed to be obeyed, He would have been obeyed, although He has commanded