When what issues from him occurs, it occurs only through God’s knowledge of it. He knows only what the known was upon. His saying is therefore true: ‘He does not approve unbelief for His servants’ [al-Zumar 39:7]. Approval is will, so there is no contradiction between command and will. The contradiction lies between command and what is given by knowledge following the known. He is ‘the Doer of what He wills’ [Hud 11:107], and wills only what knowledge is upon.
(The Form of the Command and the Locus)
We have of the divine command only the command’s formulation, which is among the created things in the utterance of the caller to God Most High. It is willed, known, and present within the mouth of the caller to God. Pay attention and take heed, ‘and say: My Lord, increase me in knowledge’ [Ta Ha 20:114]. Whoever increases in knowledge increases in judgment.
Consider what you are commanded or forbidden, insofar as you are a locus for the existence of the very thing you are commanded or forbidden, insofar as you are a locus for the existence of the very thing you are commanded[41]. For the possessor of this consideration, the command’s object is therefore preparing his locus through waiting.
(Refusal, Reception, and Vigilance)
When the divine command that brings engendering without intermediary comes, he first examines its effect within his heart. If he finds refusal engendered within his heart, he knows he has been forsaken and that his being forsaken comes from himself, because this is his form within the presence of his entity’s fixity, which gave God knowledge of him.
If he finds otherwise, namely reception, it is likewise. He then considers the member to which that prescribed affair pertains and within which it is to be engendered: ear, eye, hand, foot, tongue,
Notes
[41]
The construction ‘insofar as you are a locus’ is repeated in the new edition as well. The expression’s order was therefore retained, and the repetition was not removed by conjecture. (New edition, volume 11, page 145.)
