But the former say: Doing good to others is intrinsically good, even if the benefactor gains nothing from it.

The latter say: Whatever is good when done by us is good when done by Him, and whatever is reprehensible when done by us is reprehensible when done by Him. The latter, along with the vast majority of people, deny this. The former say: When He commands something, He has willed it of us. Good and evil are understood only in terms of what benefits or harms—as when one of us commands someone else to do something: he must necessarily want him to do it and help him do so. He has endowed the disbelievers with the utmost capacity and is no longer able to make them believe voluntarily. Their disbelief, wickedness, and disobedience occur without His will or choice.

Others say: A command does not entail any will whatsoever. I have explained elsewhere the middle position between these two views. The same applies to His commanding: the former say that He commands only what serves His servants’ welfare, while the latter say that His commands are not contingent upon such welfare. There are several premises that clarify these difficulties.

One is that what is good when done by Him need not be good when done by us, and what is reprehensible when done by Him need not be reprehensible when done by us. For the Mu‘tazilah have likened Allah to His creation. In our case, an act is good because it brings benefit and reprehensible because it brings harm; it is also good because we have been commanded to do it and reprehensible because we have been forbidden to do it. Both considerations are categorically inapplicable to Allah Most High, even if