the Countenance of Allah Most High alone, love for Him and turning to Him, compassion for creation and kindness towards them, courage—which is strength and ability—and patience, which comes down to strength, restraint and self-control, among other things. All these are qualities, virtues and deeds through which the servant is set right and perfected. A thing can be sound and complete only through qualities actually present in it. Yet it may need the absence of whatever conflicts with them, so its need for that absence is incidental. Thus, what is commanded is foundational, while what is forbidden is secondary and subsidiary.

The fourteenth point:

People agree that what a command seeks is the existence of what is commanded, even if this entails the absence of its opposite. Jurists say, “Commanding something is forbidding its opposite,” but this is disputed.

The precise position is that its opposite is forbidden by implication; the one issuing the command may or may not intend this. As for what a prohibition seeks, one view is that it is simply the absence of what is forbidden.

Another view holds that this is not so, because absence is neither within one’s power nor an intended object. Rather, what is sought is to do the opposite of what is forbidden, namely to abstain, and this is something that actually exists.

The precise position is that the one issuing a prohibition may intend the mere absence of what is forbidden, or may intend doing its opposite. That absence is a specific, qualified absence that can be