Ghazzālī's account of forbidding wrong is marked at some points by a degree of enthusiasm. But as we saw, if we turn instead to his discussion of the advantages of the solitary life (ʿuzla), we encounter a quite different tone. One of its advantages, he tells us, is that the solitary is not exposed to situations in which he incurs the duty of forbidding wrong. This duty is an exigent and onerous one. You fall into sin if you ignore it and keep silent; but if you do not, you are likely to end up in the position of someone who tries to prop up a wall that is keeling over – when it falls on you, you wish you had left it alone.

Ghazzālī is not alone in pricking the bubble of enthusiasm. When the Companion ʿAbdallāh ibn Masʿūd (d. 652f.) is confronted with the view that one who does not command right and forbid wrong is damned (halaka), he replies that this is rather the fate of one who fails to approve of right and disapprove of wrong in his heart. A similar mood is encapsulated in a dialogue between the ascetic Bishr al-Ḥāfī and a certain Ṣāliḥ: