false, as when someone believes something to be a loaf of bread and eats it, only to discover that it is plaster or gypsum. Although his belief prompted him to eat it, it does not satisfy his hunger, because the belief was false. Likewise, when someone believes that something will benefit or harm him, that belief urges and motivates him to act or refrain from acting. If it corresponds to reality, the benefit is attained and the harm averted, provided that no impediments intervene. Otherwise, merely benefiting from an act or suffering harm through it does not necessitate the occurrence of benefit or harm. This is merely the claim of some ignorant disbelievers:

“If any of you thought well of a stone, it would benefit him.”

They thus make benefiting from something dependent upon believing that it is beneficial.

The polytheists believed that they benefited from the idols concerning which Allah said:

“He invokes one whose harm is closer than his benefit.”

Thus, when someone believes that an act is commanded as a recommendation, for which Allah grants the reward of a recommended act, or as an obligation, for neglecting which He punishes a person as a sinner—or believes that Allah has prohibited it in a corresponding manner—his belief concerns one of three things. It may concern solely an attribute of his Lord, namely commanding and prohibiting, which is an attribute involving a relation to the act, as maintained by a group of theologians and jurists, both among our companions and others. Or it may concern solely a quality of goodness or badness in the act itself, with the command and prohibition disclosing that quality, as maintained by another group of theologians and jurists, both among our companions and others. Or it may affirm both attributes together, pertaining respectively to the command and the act commanded, as maintained by the majority of jurists. He believes that this attribute—which is the legal ruling—exists only because he believes that it is established in