The Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) made this clear in a hadith recorded in the Sunan collections:

“Going between al-Safā and al-Marwah and stoning the pillars were instituted only to establish the remembrance of Allah.”

This was narrated by Abū Dāwūd, al-Tirmidhī, and others. The Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) thus explained that these acts have a wise purpose. How, then, can it be said that they have no wise purpose, but are merely acts of worship and a pure test? As for an act prescribed by Islamic law which believers perform, yet which contains no good, benefit, or wisdom beyond mere obedience, I know of no such act. Rather, commands of this kind were abrogated after the resolve to comply had been formed, just as the obligation of fifty prayers was reduced to five.

The “Muʿtazilah” deny the wisdom arising from the command itself. For this reason, they did not allow that a command could be abrogated before compliance became possible. A group of Ahmad’s followers and others, such as Abū al-Hasan al-Tamīmī, agreed with them on this. They based this on their principle that a command reveals the goodness already inherent in an act rather than conferring goodness upon it, and that only something good can be commanded.

They were mistaken in both premises. Even if a command reveals an act’s goodness, the act acquires through that command an additional goodness beyond its original goodness. Moreover, if the one issuing the command intends to test obedience, he may command something that is not intrinsically good and then revoke the command before compliance becomes possible, once its purpose has been achieved through the obedience, resolve, and submission of the person commanded. This occurs both in Allah’s commands and in the commands people issue to one another.

The Jahmiyyah deny that there is any wisdom whatsoever in an act, whether in the act itself or in the very