“vision,” in accordance with the principle concerning women that I mentioned earlier. Yet a cause may fail to produce its effect because of an impediment, without this undermining its causal force, as with the other hadiths promising reward. For when he said:

“Whoever performs the two prayers in the cool hours will enter Paradise,”

and, “Whoever does such-and-such will enter Paradise,” he indicated that the deed in question is a cause of entering Paradise, even if its consequence fails to follow because of unbelief or sinful disobedience. Whoever abandons the noon prayer, commits fornication, steals, or does something similar is sinfully disobedient; and a sinfully disobedient person is not entitled to the promise of entering Paradise, just as an unbeliever is not.

The same applies to hadiths of warning. When it is said, “Whoever does such-and-such will enter the Fire,” the stated consequence does not apply to someone who repents, someone who performs good deeds that erase bad deeds, and others. There may also be another cause of seeing Allah. Thus, its being a cause does not preclude its consequence from being prevented by an impediment, nor does it preclude another cause of seeing Allah from existing.

Furthermore, I say: whether performing the remaining obligatory duties is part of the cause or a condition for this cause makes little difference; the dispute is merely verbal. Our discussion concerns only someone who has fulfilled the remaining conditions of the promise and is free of its impediments.

Nor may it be said, “Being female is an impediment to receiving the promise, or being male is a condition.” If evidence from revelation indicated this, just as it indicates that performing the remaining obligatory duties is a condition, we would accept it. But mere possibility does not justify setting aside what the wording entails and requires. Rather, once the general scope of the wording and of the underlying rationale is established, their consequence must be applied unless evidence indicates otherwise. It has not been established that being male is a condition or that being female is an impediment, just as the wording does not indicate that being Arab or non-Arab, black or white, has any bearing on this.