Many of those who turn to Allah and tread the spiritual path perceive, in the course of their journey, His lordship and His perfect, all-encompassing sustaining power over every created thing, both entities and attributes. All these things subsist through Allah’s words by which creation is brought into being—the words in which the Prophet—may Allah Most High bless him and grant him peace—used to seek refuge, saying:

“I seek refuge in Allah’s perfect words, beyond which neither the righteous nor the wicked can pass, from the evil of what He has created, brought forth, and fashioned; from the evil of what descends from heaven and what ascends into it; from the evil of what He has brought forth in the earth and what emerges from it; from the evil of the trials of night and day; and from the evil of every night visitor except one who comes with good, O Most Merciful.”

Through this recognition of Allah’s oneness in lordship, such a person becomes wholly absorbed and loses awareness of what he is also commanded and required to do: affirming Allah’s exclusive right to worship, which He, the True One, loves and is pleased with. This means worshipping Him alone, without any partner; obeying Him and His Messenger; enjoining what He has commanded and forbidding what He has prohibited; and loving and hating for His sake. Whoever turns away from this affirmation and embraces only the former resembles the polytheistic Qadariyyah, who said:

“If Allah had willed, neither we nor our fathers would have associated partners with Him.”

Whoever embraces the latter without the former belongs to the Magian Qadariyyah, who claim that Allah did not create His servants’ actions and did not will everything that comes into being. This is what the Mu'tazilah and the Rāfidah maintain, and it also occurs in (the discourse of many speculative theologians and jurists. The former position has been adopted by antinomian groups who have cast off the commands and prohibitions. They invoke it only when it suits their desires; otherwise, it cannot be consistently maintained. It is widespread among devotional practitioners