This is a broad subject that we do not intend to examine exhaustively here. It rests on four principles:

First: Knowing the degrees of truth and falsehood, good deeds and bad deeds, and good and evil, so as to recognize the better of two good things and the worse of two evils.

Second: Knowing which of these things are obligatory and which are not, and which are recommended and which are not.

Third: Knowing the conditions governing obligation and recommendation in relation to ability and inability, and recognizing that obligation and recommendation may depend on whether knowledge and the ability to act are attainable.

Fourth: Knowing the different kinds of people being addressed, as well as the individuals themselves, so that each person is instructed to obey Allah and His Messenger in whatever way benefits him, or benefits him most, and is forbidden whatever he would benefit from being forbidden. He should not be instructed to do something good that can be dispensed with if it would lead him into something worse than the prohibited act.

The point established by this verse—that the religion of one who submits himself to Allah, does good, and follows the faith of Abraham is the best of religions—is agreed upon among Muslims and is necessarily known to be part of the religion of Islam;