The Meccan Revelations

Manuscript volume 31 · Page 153

Konya manuscript

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English

The Limits of Rulings and Transgression)

God's limits are His rulings concerning the acts of those charged with duty. No limit is passed beyond except into another limit; one does not pass beyond it to anything other than a divine limit. The very passing beyond into it is transgression within it. One therefore judges affairs by a ruling other than God's ruling: this is inevitable. Consider how wondrous this is!

God's rulings, which are His limits, are obligation, prohibition, disapproval, recommendation, and permissibility. Anyone acting through movement or stillness must act within something obligatory, prohibited, recommended, disapproved, or permissible. There is no escape from this.

If his conduct concerning what he is obliged to do consists of omission, he has transgressed God's limits by omitting what he was obliged to do. If he omits it on the understanding that he is not obliged to do it, his transgression in this is a transgression of unbelief. He must judge it by something other than God's ruling, moving it into another of God's rulings, but one applying to a different entity. He has thus permitted omitting what God obliged him to do, and omitted what God prohibited him from omitting.

If he holds omission obligatory where the Revealed Law has declared performance obligatory, this is a grave and monstrous transgression, and following caprice that leads astray from God's path. Transgression through action and omission is disobedience; transgression through belief is unbelief. Whoever reverses God's rulings has disbelieved and lost.

(Intrinsic Limits and Reversing Realities)

There is another transgression of God's limits: reversing realities.

Manuscript imageManuscript volume 31 · Page 153

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Cairo source reference

Ibn al-Arabi, The Meccan Revelations — Manuscript volume 31 · Page 153 — https://www.futmak.com/english/konya/pages.php?id=9211&text=en