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370chapter sixI do not the least injustice to My servants”’ (Q§f 50:29). His wordsare irrevocable as they represent objective reality which everyonecan touch and hear: (‘It is He who created the heavens and the earthin true (proportions): the day He says, “Be,” behold! it is. His wordis the truth’, Al-An#§m 6:73). God’s irrevocable, compulsory wordsturn into objective reality, that is, the truth, in which there is noroom for choice between obedience and disobedience. God’s wordscannot be disobeyed. In contrast to His words (qaul), God’s prescriptions(amr) can be disobeyed. This is why all verses of messengerhoodwere issued in the form of prescription or proscription, not as God’swords. Verses that contain God’s prescriptions to pray or fast neverstart with ‘God said:’ (q§la All§h) because this would mean that prayerand fasting are parts of objective reality and that people are compelledto pray or fast whether they wanted to or not.As for the third question, angels are indeed unlike jinns. Whereasangels are creatures that obey their Lord by nature and would notknow how to revolt against His prescriptions (‘… over which are(appointed) angels stern (and) severe, who flinch not (from executing)the commands they receive from God, but do (precisely) what theyare commanded’, Al-TaÈrÊm 66:6), jinns, by contrast, possess intellectand—just like humans—free will, which allows them to express theirwillingness to either accept or refuse God’s prescriptions, so that‘amongst us [ jinns] are some that submit their wills (to God), andsome that swerve from justice. Now those who submit their wills—they have sought out (the path) of right conduct’ ( Al-Jinn 72:14).IblÊs, one of the jinns, chose to disobey God’s order and refused tobow down in front of Adam. The phrase ‘he was one of the Jinns’,was added to explain the fact that ‘he broke the command of hisLord (amr in rabihi)…’ ( Al-Kahf 18:50). This is why when IblÊs was toldto bow down in front of Adam he did not receive God’s order asHis word (qaul) but as His prescription (amr), which left him with thechoice to either follow or disobey it.As we said earlier, nahy (proscription) has often been mixed upwith Èar§m (absolute taboo). A few explanations are now necessaryto clarify our position on this matter:First, conflation of the two terms must be avoided because thesemantic (and legal!) differences are simply too important to ignore.It is evident that every Èaram rule contains a proscription (‘do not doit!’) but not every nahy rule expresses an absolute taboo (and is thereforedifferent from a Èar§m rule). Second, unlike proscriptions, the