As for the early generations, the leading jurists, and the majority of Muslims, they affirm both creation and command: the creative, decretive will encompassing everything that occurs, and the prescriptive, legislative will encompassing everything Allah loves and approves for His servants. The latter comprises what the Messengers commanded: what benefits people, sets them right, and brings a praiseworthy, beneficial outcome in the Hereafter that wards off ruin. This prescriptive, legislative will relates to His divinity, which entails His lordship, just as the creative, decretive will relates to His lordship.

Thus, whoever considers only the latter, attending to the creative, universal, decretive will while disregarding the former, has a beginning but no culmination. He is therefore among those whose deeds bring the greatest loss. They attain some of their worldly aims by seeking Allah’s aid, since they recognize His lordship, but they have no share in the Hereafter, since they did not worship Allah with sincere devotion to Him alone. Various groups among the Sufis and speculative theologians have fallen into this.

Whoever considers the prescriptive, legislative reality while disregarding the other may attain a praiseworthy outcome and may observe the command. Yet he remains powerless and bereft of divine support, since he does not recognize Allah’s lordship and his own need of Him, so as to rely upon Him and acknowledge that he has no might or power except through Him.

Such a person may intend to worship Him without intending truly to seek His aid. This is the condition of the Qadariyyah among the Muʿtazilah and others like them, who maintain that Allah neither creates His servants’ actions nor wills the things that occur. Hence Abū Sulaymān al-Dārānī said:

“Only a Qadarī admires his own action, because he does not recognize that it is He who creates his action. As for the people of the Sunnah, who