then, that being the case, the person who is content yet neither asks Allah for Paradise nor seeks His protection from the Fire should be told:

Asking Allah for Paradise and seeking His protection from the Fire must be either obligatory, recommended, permissible, or disliked. No Muslim would say that it is forbidden or disliked. Nor is it merely permissible, with doing it and refraining from it being equally acceptable.

Even if it were said to be so, performing a permissible act of this kind does not contradict contentment. Contentment does not require a person to abstain from eating, drinking, dressing, or doing similar things. If doing these things does not contradict his contentment, would a permissible supplication or request contradict it? If such requests and supplications are obligatory or recommended, then it is well known that Allah is pleased with the performance of obligatory and recommended acts. How, then, could a contented person who is one of Allah’s friends fail to do what Allah loves and is pleased with, and instead do what angers Him and what He hates? This is the characteristic of Allah’s enemies, not His friends.

Al-Qushayrī mentioned this near the beginning of the “Chapter on Contentment,” saying:

“Know that the servant is obliged to be content with those decrees of Allah with which He has commanded contentment. For not everything that occurs by His decree is something with which the servant may, or must, be content, such as sins and the various ordeals suffered by Muslims.”

More than one scholar before him, after him, and in his own time said the same, including Qādī Abū Bakr, Qādī Abū Ya‘lā, and others like them. This was when the Qadariyyah argued against them that contentment with Allah’s decree is commanded, so if sins were