people being repelled and the like, and that Allah’s wisdom therefore requires Him to prevent the prophets from such conduct, they reply:

“This rests on the question of the rational determination of good and evil.”

They say:

“We maintain that nothing is incumbent upon Allah and that anything He might do is good. We deny things only on the basis of revealed reports, and likewise affirm as necessary whatever is to occur only on the basis of revealed reports. Thus, we hold that the obedient must be rewarded and the unbelievers punished because He has informed us that He will do so; and we deny that He will forgive a polytheist because He has informed us that He will not do so, and so forth (1).”

Many of the Qadarite Muʿtazilites, the Shia, and others who accept their foundational doctrine concerning justice and injustice—namely, that Allah does not favor one person over another except on account of his deeds—say:

“Prophethood or messengership is a reward for a deed performed beforehand. A prophet therefore performed righteous deeds by which he deserved to be rewarded by Allah with prophethood.”

These Qadarites stand on one side, while those determinist Jahmites stand on the other. As for the philosophers who affirm the eternity of the world and its proceeding from a necessitating cause—while denying that Allah the Exalted acts by His power and will and that He knows particulars—prophethood, in their view, is an emanation flowing upon a human being in accordance with his receptivity, and they regard it as something acquired. Whoever possessed an exceptional theoretical faculty (2), such that he had no need of instruction, and in whose soul there took shape speech that he heard as a sleeper hears, as well as a figure