Section

As for practical rulings, beliefs, and pronouncements that determine the status of the matters judged, these include commands and prohibitions, declaring things good or bad, and believing them obligatory or forbidden. Many jurists and speculative theologians call these “religious rulings”; they are also called “subsidiary matters,” “jurisprudence,” and similar names.

These exist in all religious communities and faiths, as well as in worldly affairs such as governance, crafts, transactions, and so forth. These are what we intended to discuss under this principle when we said:

Beliefs may affect religious rulings. Here too, people occupy two extremes and a middle position.

The first extreme:

This is the position of the heretical libertines who disbelieve in revealed laws, warnings of punishment, and punishment in the Hereafter. They hold that these rulings depend entirely upon belief, and that belief is what determines them. Thus, a thing is obligatory only for someone who believes it to be forbidden (*).

They hold that the threatened punishment that befalls such people consists in their souls being tormented by their beliefs concerning commands and prohibitions, obligation and prohibition, and by their belief that, if they commit forbidden acts and neglect obligatory duties, they will be tormented and punished. Thus there remains within