a combination of what is commanded and what is prohibited, as when someone commits acts forbidden during ihrām while in that state, or speaks falsely and acts upon falsehood while fasting. Thus, there are three categories concerning prohibited acts, just as there are concerning commanded acts. When a commanded act is omitted, the omission is sometimes rectified by making good the deficiency and completing the act, sometimes by repeating it, and sometimes cannot be rectified at all.

Prohibited acts follow the same pattern: they may invalidate the commanded act, so that it must be repeated or cannot be made up; they may render it deficient while it still discharges the obligation, with the deficiency either remediable or not; or they may incur a sin that offsets its reward. The first is exemplified by invalidating Hajj; the second, by invalidating Friday prayer; the third, by performing Hajj while committing acts forbidden during it; the fourth, by prayer during which another worshipper passes in front of the person praying; and the fifth, by fasting while speaking falsely and acting upon falsehood.

These questions concerning a single act, a single agent, or one and the same entity resemble one another: can it be simultaneously praiseworthy and blameworthy, approved and disapproved, loved and hated, rewarded and punished, experiencing pleasure and suffering pain?

Such opposites can coexist in two different respects, but not in one and the same respect. Allah Most High has said:

“They ask you about wine and gambling. Say, ‘In them is great sin and benefits for people, but their sin is greater than their benefit.’”