and Abū al-Hasan refrained from answering this question in al-Mūjaz. Abū al-Maʿālī initially preferred this position, but later retracted it and declared categorically that imposing obligations beyond one’s capacity is impossible. The first position is that of Ibn ʿAqīl, Abū al-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Rāzī, and others. This (second position) is the view of Abū Ishāq al-Isfarāyīnī, Abū Bakr Ibn Fūrak, Abū al-Qāsim al-Ashʿarī, and al-Ghazālī. Abū Ishāq al-Isfarāyīnī claimed that it was the view of his teacher, Abū al-Hasan, and of the people of truth. As for al-Qādī Abū Bakr, he affirmed its permissibility in some of his books, but most of his discussions distinguish between imposing an obligation on someone incapable of fulfilling it and imposing it on someone capable of refraining from it, as is the position of the majority.

There is also (a third position) on this question, mentioned by Abū Bakr ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz: it is permissible to impose an obligation to do anything possible, even if it is impossible in the ordinary course of things, such as walking on one’s face or a blind person adding dots to a written copy of the Quran, but not something impossible, such as combining two opposites.

The decisive clarification of “this question” is that the dispute concerns two fundamental issues. The first concerns the obligations actually imposed, whose occurrence in the revealed Law Muslims unanimously acknowledge: requiring all of Allah’s servants to do what Allah and His Messenger have commanded them, namely, to believe in Him and fear Him. Is this, or any part of it, to be called imposing obligations beyond one’s capacity?

Those who maintain that capacity exists only together with the act say that the disobedient person has been charged with something beyond his capacity. They also say that everyone was charged with an obligation at a time when he lacked the capacity to fulfil it. Likewise, whoever claims that prior knowledge and the prior recording of something prevent