Jami addresses a classic problem of theodicy: if God answers the prayer of the oppressed, why do the prayers of so many oppressed people go unanswered? His resolution distinguishes the truly oppressed from those who merely wear the face of the victim.

• A genuinely oppressed person, one with no oppression in his own heart, has a prayer so pure that stone becomes wax from his breath; such a prayer is certainly accepted.
• But most who appear to suffer are themselves inclined to injustice. When the heart leans toward oppression, its prayer cannot ascend and falls back upon the one who utters it.
• The world is full of oppressors who wear the face of the oppressed, and wrongdoing circulates as retribution: the slave who unjustly beats a beast is himself struck in turn.

The unanswered prayer is therefore not evidence against divine justice but a sign that the supplicant's own disposition toward wrongdoing veils the prayer from being answered.