and harm are relative matters: what harms one person may benefit another. As the saying goes:

“One people’s misfortunes are another people’s gains.”

Since this was the reality of the position they believed in and perceived, they divided into two groups.

One group, consisting of adherents of speculative theology and rational opinion, acknowledged the distinction based on natural disposition. They said: “There is nothing beyond this distinction based on natural disposition; there is no distinction relating to Allah whereby He loves this and hates that.”

For some of them, the promise of reward and the threat of punishment lose their force, either because they subscribe to irjāʾ or because they suppose that these serve people’s worldly interests by establishing justice, as some philosophizers maintain. Such a person consequently recognizes no distinction between one deed and another except what he himself loves or hates. Whatever he loves becomes the good that ought to be done, and whatever he hates becomes the bad that ought to be avoided.

This is the condition of many adherents of speculative theology and rational opinion who follow the views of Jahm, al-Ash‘arī, and others like them concerning divine decree. You find that their love and hatred, loyalty and enmity ultimately rest on nothing but their own desires and wishes. This is the distinction based on natural disposition.

Those among them who believe in the promised reward may perform their obligations and avoid what is forbidden, but they do so for the natural pleasures in the Hereafter associated with these—eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse. These people deny love of Allah and the pleasure of looking upon Him. In their view, when it is said that