Principle Nine: The Qur’an’s Manner of Commanding the Believers and Addressing Them with Legal Rulings

Allah, exalted be He, has commanded that people be invited to His path “in the most excellent way,” meaning by the nearest, most direct route to the goal and the surest means of attaining the intended benefit. Undoubtedly, the modes Allah Himself employs when addressing His believing servants with legal injunctions are the finest and the most direct.

More often than not, He calls them to what is good and forbids them from what is evil by invoking the very favor He has granted them—faith. Thus He says: yā ayyuhā alladhīna āmanū ("O you who believe"), do such-and-such and leave such-and-such. This form of address appeals to them from two angles:

1. It urges them to fulfill the necessities, conditions, and perfections of faith, as though saying, “O you who believe, live up to what your faith demands: comply with the commands, shun the prohibitions, adopt every noble trait, and avoid every base trait.” True faith requires nothing less. For this reason the earliest generations unanimously agreed that faith increases and decreases, and that every outward and inward practice prescribed by the religion belongs to faith and flows from it. Many proofs from the Quran and the Sunnah establish this principle, among them Allah’s opening His mandates to the believers with the words, “yā ayyuhā alladhīna āmanū,” or linking the required deed to faith itself, indicating that faith remains incomplete without the deed in question.

2. A second angle is that, by saying “yā ayyuhā alladhīna āmanū, do such-and-such or leave such-and-such,” or by tying the command to faith, He invites them while reminding them of the favor He has bestowed on them—a favor that is