judge Allah by analogy with His creatures’ standards of justice and injustice, and the doctrine of the Jabriyya, who hold that Allah’s acts(1) have no wisdom(2), do not declare Him above committing an injustice that He is capable of committing, and see no distinction, with respect to Him, between what is called justice and beneficence and what is called injustice.

The position of the latter was among the causes that lent force to the denunciations(3) of the Qadariyya, until they went to excess in the opposite direction. The best course lies in the middle, and Allah’s religion is a just mean between those who go to excess in it and those who fall short of it. The distinction is now clear between His punishing a person for disbelief and other sins and His punishing him for his color or height(4), just as the distinction between the two is evident when the one administering the punishment is a human being. Although his will and capacity for disbelief were created in him, he himself committed it by his own choice and capacity. Although all of that is likewise created(5), another person may punish him(6) for it, even though all of it is created.

As for his statement:

“And He did not create in him the capacity for faith,”

he stated this on the basis of the view held by those who affirm divine decree and maintain that capacity exists only together with the act. Thus, anyone(7) who does not perform an act is not capable of it but is(8) incapable of it. Such people may(9) hold that one is not charged—