at the Real's command, not through himself.
For this reason the servant may neither fix a penalty nor prescribe one. As for a threat, when it is not a prescribed penalty, you have a choice concerning it, and you know that leaving it is better with God than carrying it out, you may refrain from fulfilling it and be characterized by breaking it. Thus he said, ‘Whoever swears an oath and sees something better than it, let him expiate his oath and do what is better.’ He, exalted is He, said: ﴿Let not those of you possessed of favor and abundance swear not to give﴾ [al-Nūr 24:22]. The poet said:
When I threaten him or promise him / I break my threat and fulfill my promise.
(The Good of Pardon and Decorum in Responding to Injury)
He was punished with expiation only because he was commanded to possess noble character traits, whereas swearing an oath not to do good belongs to blameworthy character. He was therefore punished with expiation. Our view of this differs from that of jurists in general, for God has given us an eye through which we consider it.
It is this: the one who wrongs us, concerning whom God has given us the choice between repaying him according to his wrong and pardoning him, has, by wronging us, given us good of the Hereafter that we need. If God lifted the covering between us and the good we possess in the Hereafter through that injury, so that we saw it directly, we would say, ‘No one has treated us as well as this one of whom we said that he wronged us.’
His recompense from us would therefore not be
