from him, and some narrators have at times traced it back to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. It is a comprehensive statement encompassing the foundations of the servant’s knowledge and action: awareness and will.
The explanation is this: the servant possesses a faculty of awareness, sensation, and perception, and a faculty of will and movement. The first is the foundation of the second and entails it; the second entails the first and completes it. Through the first, he affirms what is true and rejects what is false; through the second, he loves what benefits and suits him, and hates what harms him and is incompatible with him.
Allah, glorified is He, created His servants with a natural disposition that includes recognizing and affirming the truth, recognizing and rejecting falsehood, recognizing and loving what is beneficial and congenial, and recognizing and hating what is harmful and incompatible. All this belongs to their natural disposition. Whatever is true and existent, the natural disposition affirms. Whatever is true and beneficial, it recognizes, loves, and finds reassurance in. This is what is right. Whatever is false and nonexistent, the natural disposition rejects as false, hates, and repudiates.
Allah Most High says:
“He enjoins upon them what is right and forbids them what is wrong.”
The human being is as the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, described him when he said:
“The most truthful names are Hārith [one who works] and Hammām [one who continually intends].”
Thus, he is always intending and acting, but he acts only in the hope of gaining benefit or averting harm. Yet this hope may rest on a false belief, either concerning the intended object itself—in which case it is neither beneficial nor harmful—or concerning the means, which do not lead to it. This is ignorance.
He may know that something harms him and still do it, and know that something benefits him yet leave it undone, because that knowledge is opposed by his inward pursuit of another pleasure or his desire to avert another pain. He acts ignorantly and unjustly in giving one precedence over the other.
For this reason, Abū al-‘Āliyah said:
“I asked the Companions of Muhammad