The shaykh, imam and godly scholar, into whose heart divine light had been cast, who united in himself manifold virtues, the mufti of the Muslims, Taqī al-Dīn Ahmad ibn Abd al-Halīm ibn Abd al-Salām ibn Abī al-Qāsim ibn Muhammad ibn Taymiyyah—may Allah Most High have mercy on him—replied as follows. He said, may Allah be pleased with him:

The answer, in brief, is that acquisition is an act that brings its doer benefit or harm, as Allah Most High says:

“Each soul will have the good it has earned and will bear the evil it has earned.”

He, glorified is He, thus explains that a soul’s acquisition counts either in its favour or against it. People say, “So-and-so has gained wealth, praise or honour,” since he benefits from these things. Because servants attain perfection and become upright through their acts, having initially been created deficient, it is valid to affirm this causal relationship: their perfection and uprightness result from their acts.

As for Allah, glorified and exalted is He, His acting and making proceed from His perfection and majesty. His acts proceed from His names and attributes and are derived from them, as He, glorified and exalted is He, says:

“I am al-Rahmān (the Most Merciful). I created al-rahim (the bond of kinship) and derived its name from My name.”

The servant’s names and attributes, by contrast, result from his acts. He comes to be called knowledgeable or accomplished after knowledge or accomplishment has arisen within him.

This is where the Qadariyyah went astray: they likened His acts—glorified and exalted is He, far above what they say—to the acts of servants. Thus, it was they who likened Allah to His creation with regard to acts. They believed that whatever was good on their part was necessarily good on His part, and whatever was bad on their part was necessarily bad on His part, according to the measure of their knowledge and reason. Or did they not know that those acts were good on their part only because they lead to their well-being