You have a good deed credited with Us, and you will not be wronged today.’ He said: A card will then be brought out for him bearing the words, ‘I bear witness that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah.’ The card will be placed in one pan of the balance and the scrolls in the other. The scrolls will rise, outweighed by the card.”

The Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) thus stated that this man would not be wronged, but would instead be rewarded for the monotheism he had professed, as Allah Most High says:

“Whoever does an atom’s weight of good will see it,
and whoever does an atom’s weight of evil will see it.”

Yet most of those who call themselves “upholders of justice” say that whoever commits a single major sin thereby nullifies all his good deeds and will remain in the Fire of Hell forever. Thus, they attribute to Allah what Allah and His Messenger have called injustice, despite their claim to declare Him free of injustice. Meanwhile, they call it injustice when He singles out whomever He wills for His mercy and bounty, and when He creates what He creates for the consummate wisdom inherent in it.

These matters are discussed at length elsewhere. Here, however, we have drawn attention to the main principles underlying people’s positions on this subject.

These Mu‘tazilah, together with those among the Shia who agree with them, hold that Allah, glorified be He, is obliged to do what is best for every servant in matters of religion. They disagree over whether He is obliged to do what is best for him in worldly matters. Their position is that He cannot do anything for a creature’s religious welfare other than what He has already done, and that He cannot guide someone who is astray, nor lead someone rightly guided astray.

As for the other groups who affirm that His acts have purposes—among the jurists, scholars of hadith, Sufis, and theologians such as the Karrāmiyyah and others, as well as the philosophers—they do not agree with them on