is not subject to legal retaliation, blood money, or expiation—even though killing and fighting them remain forbidden.

The proviso we have mentioned regarding the incurring of the threatened punishment need not be stated in every discourse, for knowledge of it is firmly settled in people’s hearts. Likewise, every promise of reward for an action is conditioned on the deed’s being performed sincerely for Allah and on its not being voided by apostasy. Yet this condition is not repeated in every ḥadith that contains a promise. Moreover, even when the factor that warrants a threat is present, the ruling may still be withheld because of an impediment.

The impediments that prevent a threat from taking effect are many: repentance; seeking forgiveness; good deeds that erase bad ones; the trials and calamities of this world; the intercession of an accepted intercessor; and the mercy of the Most Merciful of those who show mercy. Only when all these causes are absent—and they will be absent only for someone who behaves with flagrant arrogance and rebellion, bolting from Allah like a runaway camel—only then does the threat actually befall him. For the very purpose of the threat is to declare that this act is a cause of that punishment, thereby teaching the prohibition and repugnance of the deed.

To claim, however, that every person in whom that cause is found must necessarily experience the resulting punishment is categorically false, for the occurrence of the result depends on the presence of the condition and the removal of all impediments.