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kashifzzub · 1 year ago

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Divine Decree & Free Will

The concept of Al-Qadr (Divine Decree) is well established in the Quran and Sunnah. It is one of the six pillars of Iman (belief), as established by the hadith of Jibreel (PBUH) in which the prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) is reported to have said

“That you affirm your faith in God, in His angels, in His Books, in His Apostles, in the Day of Judgment, and you affirm your faith in the Divine Decree about good and evil. ” (Sahih Muslim 8a)

The essentiality of belief in the Divine Decree is also well established in the Quran in the following verse

Indeed, all things We created with predestination [Quran 54:49]

Thus anyone who rejects belief in Al Qadr, altogether, is not considered a Muslim by unanimous consensus of scholars of Islam. However, groups within the Muslim ummah have differed over the understanding of Al Qadr. Let us first try to understand the concept of Devine Decree as established by the clear text of Quran and Sunnah and how because of a lack of understanding led certain groups to misinterpret the concept of Al Qadr.

The correct understanding of Al Qadr is also well established in the Quran and Sunnah. These can be categorized in four aspects

The Knowledge of God. This entails that God has knowledge of everything that has happened and that is going to happen. The evidence for this is found in the Quran

Do you not know that God knows what is in the heaven and earth? Indeed, that is in a Record. Indeed that, for God, is easy. [Quran 22:70]

The fact that God ordered everything to be written. This entails that all that is going to happen is pre-recorded in al-Lawh al-Mahfooz. This is also well established from the Quranic verse quoted above as well as the following hadith

Ubadah b. al Samit said to his son : Son! You will not get the taste of the reality of faith until you know that what has come to you could not miss you, and that what has missed you could not come to you. I heard the Messenger of God (ﷺ) say: The first thing God created was the pen. He said to it: Write. It asked: What should I write, my Lord? He said: Write what was decreed about everything till the Last Hour comes. Son! I heard the Messenger of God (ﷺ) say : He who dies on something other than this does not belong to me. (Sunan Abi Dawud 4700)

The Will of God. This entails that whatever happens, it happens by the Will of God. This is established by a number of verses of the Quran including 14:27, 3:6, 4:90 and 6:137.

The fact that God creates everything. This entails the belief that God creates everything that exists. This includes not only our own creation but also our actions. This is very clear from the following verse of the Quran

While God created you and that which you do? [Quran 37:96]

This however does not reject the fact that humans have been given free will, which is also well established by Quran and Sunnah. God says in the Quran

so he who wills may take to his Lord a [way of] return. [Quran 78:39]

God also informs us that we will be held accountable for our actions in many verses of the Quran including 7:42 and 67:8-10

The fact that a belief in both of these is a requirement beautifully presented in the words of the prophet (ﷺ) in the hadith of Sahih Muslim when he was asked

why should we perform good deeds, why not depend upon our destiny? Thereupon he (ﷺ) said. No, do perform good deeds, for everyone is facilitated in that for which he has been created (Sahih Muslim 2647c)

In this hadith, we note that the prophet (ﷺ) affirmed both the Qadr of God as well as the free will of humans. It should also be noted that although we have free will, it is subservient to God’s will as the following verse of the Quran mentions this fact

For whoever wills among you to take a right course. And you do not will except that God wills – Lord of the worlds.” [Quran 81:28-29]

Now, on the face of it, this may appear contradictory to some people. How can everything be divinely decreed and yet humans are held responsible for their actions?

So, let us use our rational faculties and try to understand how both, the fact that we have free will, and the fact that everything is Divinely Decreed, are possible together. But, before we do so, we must acknowledge the limitations of our rational faculties. While we may try to rationalize these two facts in order to have a better understanding of the subject matter, the conclusions that we may reach about the mechanism of how this works cannot be definitive as the actual mechanism is only known to God and has not been communicated to us.

With that disclaimer out of the way, now let us try to understand how these could possibly work together. The way this is possible is when the Divine Decree and our decisions are harmonized and synchronized together. Let me explain this with an example.

Imagine there are two trains. Both these trains are moving together on two different tracks at the exact same speed. They are perfectly synchronized in a way that they seemed to be connected, but they are not. Each one is acting independently, yet they are perfectly synchronized.

When I take a glass of water to drink, my decision to drink water is perfectly synchronized with my actions of moving my hand forward and picking up the glass of water, which have been Divinely Decreed to act at this moment in time.

This, of course, only happens, when our will is in agreement with the Will of God because as it has been previously mentioned, our will is subservient to God’s will. However, if our will is not in agreement to God’s will, then the action will not be performed. Let us understand this with an example. So imagine, if I wanted to kill someone, and I took out a gun and shot, but due to some technical defect, the gun does not fire. Here my will to kill someone was not in conformity with the Will of God, and so the Will of God superseded my will, and the action of killing was not performed.

Thus we see that we have been given an independent free will that works in subservient to God’s will and we would be held accountable for our decisions, even though the actions were Decreed and Created by God.

The Ahle Sunnah wal Jammah took the evidence from the Quran and Sunnah and affirmed faith in both, the above-described aspects of Al Qadr as well the free will of humans, and have left the actual exact mechanism of how this works as a matter of the unseen.

However certain deviant groups have deviated from the correct understanding of Al Qadr and have gone to two different extremes.

The pioneer among them was a group known as Al Qadariya. They were a ‘rationalist group’, who, based on their subjective reasoning, and the influence of foreign ideologies, felt that Al Qadr as described above contradicted the concept of free will. They also believed that ‘evil’ cannot come from God, and so it must have human origins. Therefore they believed that human actions are a result of their own volition. In this way, they rejected a major part of God’s Divine Decree.

The origin of the group is reported to be Maʿbad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUkaym alJuhanī, who is reportedly ‘the first to speak about qadar in Baṣra’ (Ibn Abī Ḥātim, Jarḥ, 8: 280). It is reported that he argued that Usman (RA) could not have been killed by God and that the one who killed Usman (RA) acted independently against God’s Will (al-Balādhurī, Ansāb, 2: 256). He was later tried and punished for his deviant beliefs by the Islamic government of the time.

One of his students, Ghaylān, took the cause further and propagated his beliefs. He is reported to have written a number of treatises and gained followers. He was also punished for his beliefs and a group of the Qadariyya were later exiled by the government of the time (al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 2: 1777).

The group was thoroughly refuted by the scholars of the sunnah based on the Quranic ayats and hadith presented above and slowly fizzled out.

There was another group that went to the other extreme. They were known as Al-Jabariyah. This group rejected human free will altogether and believed that even our decisions are a result of God’s Qadr, over which we have no control and therefore are not responsible for the way we act.

This group was from among the followers of Jahm ibn Safwan, who was influenced by Neoplotonic Greek philosophical ideas and had started denying the attributes of God. Being from among his followers, the Jabariyah gave precedence to philosophical thinking over explicit text from Quran and Hadith. This group was also refuted by the scholars of the sunnah.

Thus, we see that the groups who gave priority to philosophy, foreign ideologies, and their own subjected reasoning over the clear text of revelation, deviated from the correct understanding because of their own arrogance and failure to understand their own limitations. The people of the sunnah, on the other hand, stuck with the revelation of God and teachings of the prophet (ﷺ) and continued the balanced approach with regard to Qadr.

In conclusion, I would like to say that the correct belief in the Divine Decree gives us both patience, hope, and relief. We know that whatever challenges we face in our life have been Decreed by the One who Created us and knows us better than even we know ourselves. These challenges are a part of the tests of life that we are capable of handling and would only make us use the full potential that we have been created with. This has been described beautifully by the prophet (ﷺ) himself in the following hadith

“How wonderful the affair of the believer is! Indeed, all of his affairs are good for him. This is for no one but the believer. If something good happens to him, he is grateful to God, which is good for him. And if something bad happens to him, he has patience, which is good for him.” [Muslim]

#islam #predestination #divinedecree #al-qadr

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risalei-nur · 6 years ago

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TAFSIR: Risale-i Nur: The Words Collection:The Tenth Word.Part 21

Addendum

In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate.

So glorify God when you enter the evening and when you enter the morning—and (proclaim that) all praise and gratitude in the heavens and on the earth are for Him—and in the afternoon, and when you enter the noon time. He brings forth the living out of the dead, and brings the dead out of the living, and revives the earth after its death. It is in this way that you will be brought forth from the dead. And among His signs is that He created you from earth; then you have grown into a human population scattered widely. And among His signs is that He has created for you, from your selves, mates, that you may incline towards them and find rest in them, and He has engendered love and tenderness between you. Surely in this are signs for people who reflect. And among His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the diversity of your languages and colors. Surely in this are signs indeed for people who know. And among His signs is your sleeping at night and in the day, and your seeking (livelihoods) out of His bounty. Surely in this are signs for people who pay heed. And among His signs is His displaying before you the lightning, giving rise to both fear and hopeful expectation, and that He sends down water from the sky, and revives with it the earth after its death. Surely in this are signs for people who reason. And among His signs is that the heaven and the earth stand firm by His Command. In the end, when He calls you forth from the earth, then (at once) you will come forth. To Him belongs all that is in the heavens and on the earth. All are obedient to Him in humble service. He it is Who originates creation and then reproduces it, and will bring it back: and that is most easy for Him. Whatever attribute of sublimity there is in the heavens and the earth, it is His in the highest degree, and He is the All-Glorious and Mighty, the All-Wise. (30:17-27)

One most significant argument included in these sublime heavenly verses, which point to one pole of belief, in these exalted sacred proofs that establish the Resurrection’s reality, is here set forth. It is a subtle instance of Divinegrace that, at the end of Muhakemat (“The Reasonings”), which I wrote about 30 years ago to set down the principles of Qur’anic commentary, came the words: “A Second of Two Other General Proofs: This explains two of the proofs of the Resurrection, which the Qur’an indicates. In the Name of God, the AllMerciful, the All-Compassionate.” And there it stopped.

Praise and thanks as numerous as the proofs and indications of the Resurrection to my All-Compassionate Creator that 30 years later on, I have been enabled to resume that task. About 9 or 10 years ago, God granted me The Tenth and Twenty-ninth Words, two works containing numerous strong proofs and interpretations of the DivineDecree—Look upon the imprints of God’s Mercy, how He revives the soil after its death. Surely He willrevive the dead [in the same way], and He has full power over everything. The Tenth and Twenty-ninth Words silenced those who denied the Resurrection. Now, a decade or so later, He has granted to me the interpretation of the supreme verses quoted above, unassailable fortresses of beliefin the Resurrection. That interpretation consists of some parts.

Part One: Introduction

[This introduction consists of two points that briefly expound one of the many spiritualbenefits of beliefin the Resurrectionand one of its vital comprehensive results. They also show how that belief is essential for human life, particularly social life, and summarize one of its many comprehensive proofs. Also included is an explanation of how evident and indubitable a matter is belief in the Resurrection.]

FIRST POINT: We willrelate only four of the many arguments for belief in the Hereafter as the very basis and bedrock of human social and individual life, and the foundation of all happiness and achievement.

FIRST ARGUMENT: Children are one-third of humanity. They cannot endure death, which must seem to them an awful tragedy, except via the idea of Paradise, which spiritually strengthens their weak, fragile natures. It gives them the hope to live joyfully, despite the vulnerability of their nature, which can so readily burst into tears. Keeping Paradise in mind, they may say: “My little sister or friend has died and become a bird in Paradise. She is playing there and enjoying a better life.” If they could not do this, their awareness of the deaths of those around them would overwhelm them; crush their powers of resistance and inner strength; cause their eyes and all inner faculties, heart, mind, and spirit to weep; and destroy them or transform them into distraught and crazed animals.

SECOND ARGUMENT: The elderly make up another one-third of humanity. They can endure death only by believing in the afterlife, which consoles them somewhat for the imminent extinction of this life to which they are so attached, for their exclusion from their lovely world. Only the hope of eternal life allows them to counter the pain and despair which the anticipation of death and separation give rise to in their child-like, fragile temperament and spirit. Without such a hope, our venerable elders who are so worthy of compassion, our aged parents who need a serene and steady heart, would become so distraught in spiritand distressed at heartthat their worldwould seem to be a dark prison, their lives a heavy burden of torment.

THIRD ARGUMENT: Young peopleare the mainspring and foundation of social life. Only the thought of Hell enables them to control the stormy energy of feelings and passions, their tempestuous, evil-commanding souls, from destructiveness and oppression, and divert them into serving the collective interest. Without this fear, and drunk on the energy of youth, they would follow the principle of “mightmakes right” and give free rein to their passions. This would turn the world into a hell for the weak and powerless, and lower human life to the level of beasts.

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