First, Allah does not command any deed in which there is no benefit for His servant. This rests upon the position of the early generations:

“Allah neither creates nor commands anything except for a wise purpose, just as He neither creates nor commands anything except for a cause.”

Those who deny causes and wise purposes say, rather, that He commands things that bring His servants absolutely no benefit, even when they obey Him and carry out His commands. This has been discussed at length elsewhere. The point is that everything Allah commands, He commands for a wise purpose, and everything He forbids, He forbids for a wise purpose. This is the position of all the leading jurists, the early generations of this Ummah, its imams, and its people generally. Thus, purely devotional prescriptions, in the sense of prescriptions devoid of any wisdom, have never occurred.

Certainly, the wisdom may lie in the commanded act, in the command itself, or in both. Some commanded acts would benefit a servant even if he performed them without having been commanded to do so, such as justice, kindness to others, maintaining ties of kinship, and so forth. Once such an act is commanded, it embodies “two aspects of wisdom”: wisdom in the act itself and wisdom in the command. It is therefore good both in itself and by virtue of the Lawgiver’s command. This is true of most of the revealed Law. As for what the revealed Law prescribed after it had not previously been prescribed, its wise purpose applied when it was commanded. Likewise, when a prescription was abrogated, its wise purpose ceased to apply and came to reside in its replacement, as with the direction of prayer.

If it is supposed that an act contains no wisdom whatsoever, does the command itself give it a wise purpose—namely, obedience? This is possible according to those who affirm purely devotional prescriptions, even if they do not maintain