Thus, saying, “I have sold you this for a thousand,” carries the sense of promising the thousand upon receipt of the item sold, and of demanding the item sold upon payment of the thousand. Insisting on the threatened punishment has no stronger claim than insisting on any other rights owed to one in return. Exacting one’s rights from people involves some measure of pain and is therefore not entirely free of a punitive element, even if it is not called punishment. The point is simply to draw an analogy between the two regarding what is owed to the speaker and what he himself owes.

Although promises and threats contain an assertion, they also contain a demand. This places them on the same footing as a performative declaration which, though worded as an assertion about the past, brings something into effect in the present. Likewise, although promises and threats are worded as assertions about the future, they establish an intention and a demand. Where there is a promise, fulfilling it is obligatory, and breaking it is therefore called lying, as He said concerning those who declared:

“We will certainly go out with you, and will never obey anyone against you.”

“Allah bears witness that they are indeed liars.”

Where there is a threat, however, carrying it out is not obligatory, since it includes the meaning of declaring that the punishment is deserved.

Accordingly, a threat may be abrogated, as the early generations mentioned concerning His words:

“Whether you reveal what is within yourselves or conceal it, Allah will call you to account for it.”

A promise, however, may not be abrogated once entitlement has been established, because it is the consequence of the conditional undertaking. Before the action is performed, there is a case for permitting its abrogation, just as revocable, nonbinding conditional undertakings—such as offers of a reward for completing a task and similar arrangements—may be rescinded. If someone says, “Whoever returns my runaway slave will receive a dirham,” he may rescind this before the work is undertaken.

Rescission is analogous to abrogation. The former rescinds performative declarations, namely contracts entailing a commitment of will concerning what is due to oneself or owed by oneself; the latter likewise rescinds a demand. And just as rescission is understood as the removal of a ruling consisting of a demand or permission,