Likewise, “what blocks the path to knowledge” is relative: something may block Zayd’s path to knowledge without blocking ʿAmr’s. There is no fixed criterion for this.

Fifth: Those views are unsound. The view that major sins are those whose prohibition is agreed upon by all revealed laws, excluding matters on which they differ, implies that taking a single grain from an orphan’s property, or obtaining it through theft or breach of trust, telling a single lie, committing certain inconspicuous wrongs, and similar acts are major sins. It also implies that fleeing the battlefield is not a major sin, since jihad was not obligatory under every revealed law. Likewise, it implies that marrying women forbidden through milk kinship, marriage ties, or other grounds is not a major sin, because the revealed laws did not agree on this prohibition. The same applies to retaining one’s wife after divorcing her three times and having intercourse with her thereafter, while believing this to be forbidden.

Likewise, the view that major sins are those that block the path to knowledge or cause the loss of lives and property implies that even a little anger or breach of trust is a major sin, whereas mistreating one’s parents, severing kinship ties, drinking wine, eating carrion or pork, slandering chaste, unsuspecting believing women, and similar acts are not major sins.

As for those who say that sins are called major only in comparison with lesser sins, and that any act of disobedience to Allah