The Goodness of Commanded Acts: Intrinsic and Instrumental

1. A command and the goodness of its object

الأمر بالشيء يدل على حسن المأمور به إذا كان الآمر حكيما
A command to do something indicates the goodness of the commanded act when the one issuing the command is wise.

An amr is a demand for action; the maʾmūr bihi is the act demanded. When a wise authority commands, the command signifies not merely a request but that the requested act has a relevant form of goodness or propriety.

Here goodness (ḥusn) is not simply aesthetic beauty. An act may be good in itself or because it leads to something else that is good. The difference has legal consequences.

2. Why wisdom matters in a command

Wisdom rules out a purposeless demand. In the context of divine law, a prescribed act has a legally appropriate good connected to it, even where human reason does not grasp every detail of that good.

This is not a claim that every human command must be beneficial: an ignorant or unjust person can command wrongly. The discussion concerns the Wise Lawgiver and the significance of His prescriptions.

Prayer is commanded as worship. Yet its intrinsic merit does not allow reason alone to determine its number of cycles, appointed hours, or particular conditions; these require revelation.

3. Three senses of good and bad

Goodness and badness can be considered in three distinct senses.

1. Perfection and deficiency: knowledge is a perfection; ignorance is a deficiency.
2. Suitability and aversion: something may fit or conflict with a person's aim or disposition.
3. Praise, reward, blame and punishment: an act may bear consequences specified by religious law.

The first two senses can be understood in terms of reason, experience and human purposes. The third concerns obligation and divine reward or punishment. A worldly benefit, by itself, cannot establish a religious obligation.

4. Goodness as perfection

In the sense of perfection, goodness indicates a desirable excellence; badness indicates a deficiency.

Knowledge — an excellence because it brings understanding.
Ignorance — a deficiency because knowledge is absent.
Justice — respecting rights and proper balance.
Injustice — failing to give rights their due.

Recognizing these qualities does not itself determine all associated legal rules. Appreciating justice is one matter; specifying evidentiary standards, adjudication and detailed rights in a dispute is another.

5. Goodness as suitability to an aim

A second sense concerns fitness for a purpose or conflict with a purpose. Something useful to one person in particular circumstances may be unhelpful to another.

One traveler may seek shade, while another may need sunlight for a task. They evaluate the same conditions against different aims.

This kind of utility is distinct from religious reward and punishment. Not every useful measure becomes an act of worship; likewise, personal dislike does not make an otherwise lawful or obligatory act morally bad.

6. Goodness in relation to moral and legal consequences

The third sense concerns whether an act deserves praise or reward, or whether its opposite is connected with blame or punishment under religious law. Duties, sins, obedience and disobedience belong especially to this discussion.

Fasting in Ramadan is not established as worship simply because hunger may have a benefit. Its prescription, timing and conditions are known through legal evidence. Conversely, an act's unpleasantness does not, by itself, make it sinful.

Legal consequence: the Lawgiver's prescription determines a religious duty, its limits, and its relation to reward or penalty.

7. Rational and legal goodness: the theological distinction

Classical theologians disagreed about the place of reason and revelation in judgments of goodness and badness. The discussion includes Sunni approaches and Muʿtazilī approaches.

Rational goodness refers to the mind's ability to recognize features such as excellence and defect. Legal goodness addresses obligations, prohibitions, reward and punishment established by the Lawgiver.

Some Muʿtazilī formulations give reason a more independent role in establishing duty and desert before revealed commands. The Hanafi treatment here distinguishes recognizing an act's merit from assigning a specific religious obligation by revelation. Reason alone does not settle every duty.

8. The two kinds of commanded goodness

ثم المأمور به في حق الحسن نوعان
In respect of goodness, commanded acts are divided into two classes: good in themselves and good for the sake of something else.

Ḥasan bi-nafsihi denotes an act possessing the relevant goodness in itself rather than only as a means to another objective.

Ḥasan li-ghayrihi denotes an act whose required character is related to another required objective or consequence.

This is a functional legal distinction. For the first class, the obligation concerns the act itself; for the second, one asks whether the connected objective or underlying reason still remains.

9. Examples of intrinsic goodness

فالحسن بنفسه: مثل الإيمان بالله تعالى، وشكر المنعم، والصدق، والعدل، والصلاة، ونحوها من العبادات الخالصة
Examples of intrinsic goodness include faith in God, gratitude to a benefactor, truthfulness, justice and prayer.

Faith is good in relation to the belief itself.
Gratitude acknowledges a benefit received.
Truth and justice concern correspondence with truth and respect for rights.
Prayer is an act of worship directed toward God.

These are not properly described as good solely because they prepare for some further worldly task. Reducing prayer to discipline or truthfulness to commercial gain obscures their intrinsic moral or devotional character.

10. Prayer as worship good in itself

Prayer is classed as intrinsically good because it is directed to worship: magnifying God, expressing servitude, remembering Him and submitting in humility. Its value is not merely a preparation for another religious action.

Nevertheless, the prescribed form of prayer—cycles, times, essential acts and conditions—is established through revelation. Reason may understand the goodness of worship, but it does not independently fix four cycles for the noon prayer.

Calling prayer intrinsically good therefore does not mean that its detailed form is left to personal choice. Intrinsic merit and prescribed performance must remain distinct.

11. Two possible treatments of intrinsic duties

Even within intrinsically good duties, the way an obligation ends is not identical in every case. Some requirements are classified as not admitting lapse, while others may end through performance or a legally recognized removal of the obligation.

Does not admit lapse: the underlying duty of faith is the stated illustration.
Admits lapse: a prescribed worship duty may be discharged by performing it or removed in a circumstance the law recognizes.

This is a distinction about the discharge or lapse of duty, not a denial that both acts have intrinsic goodness.

12. Faith as the non-lapsing example

لا يحتمل السقوط مثل الإيمان بالله تعالى
The duty that does not admit lapse is illustrated by faith in God.

Faith is not an action one performs during a designated period and then permanently completes in the way one completes a particular prayer. The underlying requirement therefore is not treated as the discharge of one timed prayer.

This is a legal-theoretical classification about the continuing character of the duty. It does not by itself settle the detailed capacity and responsibility of every individual. Its purpose is to distinguish the example from duties discharged by particular performances.

13. Prayer: discharge through performance

وما يحتمل السقوط فهو يسقط بالأداء أو بإسقاط الآمر
A duty that can lapse is discharged by performance or by the Lawgiver's removal of the duty.

A particular prayer obligation ends when the prayer is performed validly; this is discharge by performance. Simply omitting prayer is not performance, nor does inconvenience alone establish discharge.

Alternatively, the law may remove the duty under a qualifying circumstance. This is legal removal of the obligation. Both can bring that particular duty to an end, but they do so for different reasons.

14. Legally recognized impediments affecting prayer

Insanity, menstruation and postnatal bleeding are discussed as legally significant impediments in relation to prayer. The ruling depends on the relevant part of the prayer period and on the specified legal conditions.

These examples show that, in recognized cases, the Lawgiver may remove a particular duty even though the person did not perform it. Removal is not the same as performance.

The discussion cannot be generalized into a claim that any difficulty or interruption during a prayer period automatically cancels the duty. Named legal impediments must be distinguished from ordinary hardship.

15. A short time window does not itself cancel obligation

ولا يسقط بضيق الوقت وعدم الماء واللباس ونحوه
The duty does not simply disappear because time is short or water or clothing is lacking.

A narrow time window is a limitation on available time, not automatically a removal of legal responsibility. How one is to act under actual constraints is determined by the relevant rules of performance and capacity.

Three issues must be kept separate: whether the obligation exists, the person's capacity, and the legally valid mode of performance. Difficulty in one does not automatically settle the others.

16. Missing prerequisites and the continued duty

Lack of water for ablution or suitable clothing for prayer raises questions about the way a duty may be fulfilled, not necessarily whether the prayer duty still exists.

Under the appropriate legal conditions, tayammum can replace washing when water is unavailable. Clothing-related incapacity is likewise considered under rules of ability and covering.

The distinction: some recognized conditions remove a particular duty, while others change how it must be performed. These consequences must not be merged into a single rule about hardship.

17. Instrumental goodness

النوع الثاني: ما يكون حسنا بواسطة الغير
The second kind is good because of something else, through an intermediary relationship.

This is called ḥasan li-ghayrihi. The act is legally relevant as a means or prerequisite to another legally intended result. Traveling to the Friday congregational prayer is an illustration because it enables attendance at that prayer.

One must identify the underlying required act, explain how the means serves it, and then determine what happens to the means if the underlying need or required objective is no longer present.

18. Going to Friday prayer as a means

فإن السعي حسن بواسطة كونه مفضيا إلى أداء الجمعة
Going to Friday prayer is good insofar as it leads to the performance of the Friday prayer.

Someone who is not legally required to attend Friday prayer does not, merely through that duty, become obliged to undertake the journey. For a person required to attend and not already at the place of worship, getting there may be a necessary means.

Going to the mosque is thus considered as an instrument of the Friday obligation, not as an independently identical duty in every circumstance.

19. Interrupted travel and renewed effort

Suppose a person required to attend Friday prayer begins traveling to the mosque but is forcibly carried elsewhere before the congregation takes place. The initial journey has not secured the required attendance.

If attendance remains required and possible, a renewed effort to reach the prayer is needed. This is not because each movement in the first journey was an independent obligation; the means failed to achieve its purpose.

Principle: performing a means once does not invariably complete the related duty. One must ask whether the intended objective has been reached or still requires action.

20. Already at the mosque: no extra journey

A person may already be inside the congregational mosque when Friday prayer becomes due—for example, while observing iʿtikāf. No further journey is required merely to reach the same destination.

The travel requirement falls away because the need that made travel instrumental is absent. This does not mean that the person's underlying obligation to perform Friday prayer has been removed.

The absence of a need for the means is not the same as the absence of the obligation to perform the objective.

21. Ablution as a prerequisite to prayer

والوضوء حسن بواسطة كونه مفتاحا للصلاة
Ablution is good in this respect because it is a means to the ritual purity required for prayer.

When a prayer requires purity for its valid performance, ablution may serve as the necessary preliminary act. The particular obligation to obtain ablution is linked to the required prayer and its condition of purity.

Where the relevant prayer duty is absent, one cannot infer this specific obligatory ablution from that prayer alone. Voluntary ablution and its other legitimate uses are separate issues. One must distinguish the instrumental requirement from the underlying act of worship.

22. Why nullified ablution must be repeated

A person performs ablution before prayer but then enters a state of ritual impurity before praying. Because the original purity has ended, the condition necessary for valid prayer must be restored.

Renewing ablution is required because purity has been lost while the prayer still calls for it—not simply because time has passed since the earlier ablution.

Conversely, someone already in a valid state of purity when the prayer becomes due need not perform a new ablution merely because a new prayer time has arrived. The intended condition is already present.

23. Instrumental goodness in penal and public-law examples

Other examples of instrumental goodness include ḥudūd, qiṣāṣ and jihād. Unlike preparations for ritual worship, these belong to discussions of penal and public-law purposes.

Penal sanctions are connected in the argument to deterrence, justice and protection of rights; the discussion of armed conflict connects its legal purpose with protection against aggression and defense of the right. The intended good is not the infliction of pain or warfare for its own sake.

These legal-theoretical examples do not authorize private punishment or independent resort to force. Jurisdiction, lawful authority and detailed conditions belong to their own substantive legal chapters.

24. What follows when the underlying cause is absent?

ولو فرضنا عدم الواسطة لا يبقى ذلك مأمورا به
If the intermediary basis for an act's goodness is absent, the command does not remain applicable on that basis.

If no qualifying offense has occurred, the corresponding penalty does not arise. Likewise, a legal reason for armed conflict cannot be replaced with a free-standing desire for warfare.

The same logical form appears in non-penal examples: someone already at the mosque needs no new journey; someone already ritually pure needs no new ablution solely to recreate an existing condition.

The decisive question: does the required objective or legally relevant ground still exist?

25. The decisive comparison before the next chapter

Intrinsic goodness belongs to acts such as faith, truthfulness, justice and prayer. Whether a particular obligation is fulfilled, remains, or is legally removed is then examined according to the rules governing that duty.

Instrumental goodness belongs to means related to another objective, such as reaching Friday prayer and obtaining purity for prayer. Repeating a means is not independently necessary when its objective is already secured or the relevant need has ceased.

Comparison: prayer is worship in itself, while ablution secures a condition for its validity. Ablution alone does not fulfill the prayer obligation, yet already valid purity does not need to be recreated merely because prayer time begins.

The classification clarifies whether the duty itself needs performance, the law has removed it, or only the need for a particular means has ended.