by His legislative, religious will, even if He has not willed it of him by His universal, decretive will. To affirm without qualification that His commands entail His will is therefore mistaken, as is denying this without qualification. The correct approach is to distinguish between the two, as revelation does:

“Allah intends ease for you and does not intend hardship for you.”

“Allah wishes to lighten your burdens.”

“Allah does not intend to place you in difficulty.”

He also says:

“Whomever Allah wills to guide, He opens his breast to Islam; and whomever He wills to lead astray, He makes his breast tight and constricted.”

And He says:

“Those are the ones whose hearts Allah did not will to purify.”

And He says:

“Had Allah willed, they would not have fought one another, but Allah does what He wills.”

There are many similar passages.

The fifth premise:

His love and pleasure necessarily entail His religious will and religious command. Likewise, His hatred, anger, and displeasure necessarily entail the absence of His religious will. Love, pleasure, anger, and displeasure are therefore not merely will. This is the position of the majority of Ahl al-Sunnah.

Whoever holds that these things mean will—as do many of the Qadariyyah and many of those who affirm divine decree—is committed to one of two positions:

Either he holds that, since disbelief, wickedness, and sins are things Allah detests from the standpoint of religion, He also detests their coming into existence, and that they occur apart from His will and volition. This is the position of the Qadariyyah. Or he says that, since Allah wills and decrees them, He therefore loves them and is pleased with them, as one group among those who affirm divine decree maintains.

Both positions have their serious difficulties. Allah Most High loves the God-fearing and loves those who act justly; He is pleased with the believers, and He loves what He commands, whether as an obligation or as a recommendation. Yet this is not