How is a person held accountable for actions of the heart over which he has no control, such as loving other than God as one loves God?

The actions of the heart (spiritual states) can usually only be acquired by bringing to mind the knowledge and understanding that necessitate them. This is the locus of obligation (takleef). The servant is obligated by the causes that necessitate these states, not by the states themselves, because they are beyond one's capacity. For example, fear arises from knowing the intensity of divine wrath, hope from knowing the vastness of divine mercy, and love from knowing divine beneficence, majesty, or beauty. This necessitates appropriate acts of obedience. The servant is blamed for engaging in the causes of loving other than Allah, similar to someone who deliberately engages in the causes of intoxication. Thus, the obligation of remorse, for example—which is an emotional reaction not within the servant's power—is an obligation related to its causes that bring it into existence. Al-Shatibi establishes the principle that what appears from the Lawgiver as an obligation beyond the servant's capacity is attributable to its antecedents, consequences, or surrounding circumstances. The apparent demand on a person falls into three categories: what is absolutely not within one's ability to acquire (rare), what is absolutely within one's ability to acquire (the majority of actions), and what might be ambiguous, such as love and hatred. These qualities necessarily enter a person, and the command relates to the acquisitive actions that follow them, or to what provokes them if it is within one's acquisition, not to the internal qualities themselves.