Furthermore, “this specious argument” is the very argument advanced by those who denied that obedience and disobedience could coexist in one person: obedience is part of faith, and disobedience is part of disbelief, so faith and disbelief cannot coexist in him. They said that a person can only be wholly a believer or wholly a disbeliever. They then extended their judgment concerning a single individual to a single deed, saying: “A single deed cannot be loved in one respect and disliked in another.” Abū Hāshim took this to an extreme, extending it to things united by kind. He said: “Within the general category of prostration, bowing, or any other action, some forms cannot constitute obedience while others constitute disobedience, because a single essence cannot be characterized by two different attributes. Rather, obedience and disobedience pertain to the actions of the heart—that is, the intention of the person prostrating—not to his outward action.” People strongly condemned this view of his, explaining how it contradicted consensus and denied self-evident truths established by revelation and reason, thereby demonstrating its invalidity.

The thinking of these people goes no further than contemplating an absolute, abstract essence conceived in their minds. Thus they say: “Faith considered in itself, and prostration considered in itself, cannot admit of degrees or differences,” and other such statements. Had they been rightly guided, they would have known that things existing outside the mind are distinguished by their particular characteristics, and that an absolute, abstract essence exists only in the mind. They would also have known that when people speak of differences and degrees, they are speaking of differences and degrees among existing things, not of degrees within something absolute and abstract in the mind that has no external existence. It is well known that blackness varies, some of it being more intense than others; the same applies to whiteness and the other colours. But if we posit blackness in its absolute, abstract form