him to be content with, for not everything that occurs by His decree is something with which the servant may, or must, be content, such as sins and the various afflictions that befall Muslims.”

This same view was expressed by numerous other scholars before him, after him, and among his contemporaries, such as al-Qādī Abū Bakr, al-Qādī Abū Ya‘lā, and others like them. Some of the Qadariyyah had argued against them that contentment with Allah’s decree is commanded: if sins occurred by Allah’s decree, we would therefore be commanded to be content with them, yet being content with what Allah has forbidden is impermissible. Ahl al-Sunnah offered three answers to this argument.

The first, which is the answer given by these scholars and the vast majority of the leading scholars, is that this generalization is unsound. We are not commanded to be content with everything Allah has decreed and ordained, nor does any command to that effect occur in the Quran or Sunnah. Rather, we must be content with whatever we have been commanded to be content with, such as obedience to Allah and His Messenger. This is what Abū al-Qāsim mentioned.

The second answer was their statement: “We are content with the decree, which is