and fasting and pilgrimage, yet does not perform them. By the consensus of the early generations of the Muslim community and its imams, such a person possesses the capacity to act. He deserves punishment for neglecting what he was commanded and was capable of doing but did not do—not for failing to do what was beyond his capacity.

They explicitly affirmed, as did Abū Hanīfah, Abū al-‘Abbās ibn Surayj, and others, that the capacity preceding an act enables either of two opposite courses of action, although, in their view, the servant also possesses capacity while acting. Thus, according to them, he possesses capacity both before and during the act. While acting, however, he cannot simultaneously perform the act and refrain from it. They therefore do not say that capacity exists only before the act, as the Mu‘tazilah say, or that it exists only alongside the act, as the proponents of compulsion say. Rather, the servant possesses capacity both before and during the act.

As for his statement:

“The scholars have explicitly stated that the servant performs them under compulsion.”

He is answered as follows:

None of the scholars of the early generations, the renowned imams of Islam, or the leading followers of the four imams explicitly stated this. Only some later scholars who followed the path of Jahm and those who agreed with him explicitly state it. This is not the position of the scholars of the Sunnah, nor even of their majority or their imams. Rather, the imams of the early generations count such people among the adherents of reprehensible innovations.