Predestination in Islam


Qadar is the concept of divine destiny in Islam. It is one of Islam's six articles of faith, along with belief in the Oneness of Allah, the Revealed Books, the Prophets of Islam, the Day of Resurrection and Angels. This concept has also been mentioned in the Quran as the "Decree" of Allah.

Definition

In Islam, "predestination" is the usual English language rendering of a belief that Sunni Muslims call al-qaḍāʾ wa l-qadar. As per the Sunni understanding, the phrase means "the divine decree and the predestination"; al-qadr more closely means " power", deriving from the root , which denotes concepts related to measuring out, aiming, calculating, preparing, being able, and having power.

Concept

Qadar is one of the aspects of aqidah. Muslims believe that the divine destiny is when God wrote down in the Preserved Tablet all that has happened and will happen, which will come to pass as written. According to this belief, a person's action is not caused by what is written in the preserved tablet, but rather the action is written in the tablet because God already knows all occurrences without the restrictions of time. On the other hand, the causal relationships are also part of Qadar, since human acts affect what is stated in the Preserved Tablet. The phrase reflects a Muslim doctrine that Allah has measured out the span of every person's life, their lot of good or ill fortune, and the fruits of their efforts. Again Allah does not need to force anyone to do good or evil by interfering with his will, and nobody will bear witness that Allah did so. When referring to the future, Muslims frequently qualify any predictions of what will come to pass with the phrase Insha'Allah, Arabic for "if God willed ." The phrase recognizes that human knowledge of the future is limited, and that all that may or may not come to pass is under the control and knowledge of God.
However, people are not predestined by Allah to enter Hell. Rather, people will only bear their own sins that they themselves committed with free will and no one will be responsible for another person's deeds. The Quran holds that no man will be treated unjustly and everything will be judged by Allah. The Quran says this in the following verse:
A hadith reports that Muhammad said about Qadr:
However, it is made clear that no person has the power to benefit or harm himself or others, and that guidance is only given by Allah, no one else has the power to give guidance. The Quran says:

History

There are only two groups who represent the extremes regarding Qadar. Jabariyah are of the opinion that humans have no control over their actions and everything is dictated by God. The other group is Qadariyah and they are of the opinion of humans having complete control over their destiny, to the extent that God does not even know what humans will choose to do. The Sunni view is a synthesis of these two views, where they believe that God has knowledge of everything that will be, but that humans have freedom of choice.
Among the historical proponents of the Sunni view of the doctrine were:
Among those who criticized the Sunni view of the doctrine were:
Sunni enumerate Qadar as one aspect of their creed. They believe that the divine destiny is when God wrote down in the Preserved Tablet all that has happened and will happen, which will come to pass as written. However, this should not be considered within the limitations of time as human beings understand. In the Quran, God explicitly states that He will "write" the good for those who do righteous deeds.
According to this belief, a person's action is not caused by what is written in the Preserved Tablet but, rather, the action is written in the Preserved Tablet because God already knows all occurrences without the restrictions of time.
An individual has power to choose, but since God created time and space he knows what will happen. God is without any bond of time and space. Therefore, what will happen has meaning only to humans, who are limited in time and space. An analogy is someone who watches a movie for the second time, who knows what will happen next, while for the first time watcher the next move is unknown.
According to Maturidi belief, all active possibilities are created by God and humans act in accordance with their free intention to choose which action they follow. In this way, the intention precedes the created action and capacity by which actions are acquired.

Belief in al-Qadar is based on four things

  1. – Al-'Ilm – Knowledge: i.e., that Allah knows what had been, what will be, what has never been, and how it could be if it was. He also knows what his creation will do, by virtue of His eternal knowledge, including their choices that will take place.
  2. – Kitabat – Writing: i.e., that Allah has written every thing that exists including the destiny of all creatures in al-Lauh al-Mahfuz prior to creation.
  3. – Mashii'at – Will: i.e., that what Allah wills happens and what He does not will does not happen. There is no movement in the heavens or on earth but happens by His will. This does not mean that He forces things to happen the way they happen in the area of human beings' voluntary actions. It means that He knew what they will choose, wrote it and now lets it happen.
  4. – Al-Khalq – Creation and formation: i.e., that Allah is the Creator of all things, including the actions of His servants. They do their actions in a real sense, and Allah is the Creator of them and of their actions.

    Stages of ''Taqdeer'' (fate)

There are five stages where Qadar is determined and prescribed/sent to creation:
  1. The Decree of Allah that is written in Al-Lawh Al-Mahfuud before the creation of the universe. This destiny written in the preserved tablet is never changed and encompasses everything that will be.
  2. Allah made a divine decree after the creation of Adam. Allah took out all of the progeny of Adam, and asked them "Am I not your Lord?" and all of the humans responded "We testify that You are our Lord!" Then Allah decreed to them who shall go to paradise and who shall go to hell.
  3. The Life-time decree. This occurs when a person is in the womb of their mother, specifically 120 days after conception. Allah sends an angel to put a soul into the person, and the angel writes down the decree that Allah has made; their life-span, their actions, their sustenance and whether they will be a dweller of paradise or a dweller of hell.
  4. The yearly decree. This is during the Night of Qadr where Allah sends down his decrees from heaven to earth, in it he destines the actions of creation for the next year. The word Qadar should not be confused with Qadr; Qadar is destiny, Qadr is that which has been destined, i.e. decree, thus the translation – Night of Decree.
  5. The Daily Decree. Allah decrees the daily actions of his creation.
An example of how these categorizations help clear the idea of destiny is as follows: It is possible that Allah sends a daily/yearly decree dictating that a person will get a profit. However, due to that person's good deeds, Allah sends another decree increasing that person's profit. The reversal of the two decrees is all within Allah's knowledge and is recorded in the Preserved Tablet. The person himself knows nothing of his own destiny or of Allah's decrees, but what he does know is that if he performs certain good deeds, then He will increase his profit more than if he does not do that deed.
In the light of the above the following may be derived:
Twelvers, along with other Shia sects such as the Zaydis, reject predestination. This belief is further emphasized by the Shia concept of Bada', which states that God has not set a definite course for human history. Instead, God may alter the course of human history as he sees fit.
To show that there is no contradiction between being predestined, and free will, Shiites state that matters relating to human destiny are of two kinds: definite and indefinite. To explain the definitive one, Shiites argue that God has definite power over the whole of existence, however, so whenever He wills, He can replace a given destiny with another one; and that is what is called indefinite destiny. Some of these changes of destiny, thus, are brought about by man himself, who can through his free will, his decisions, and his way of life lay the groundwork for a change in his destiny as has been pointed out in the verse: Truly, God will not change the condition of a people as long as they do not change Their state themselves. Both types of destinies, however, are contained within God's foreknowledge, Shiites argue, so that there could be no sort of change concerning His knowledge. So the first type of destiny does not mean a limitation of God's power; since God, in contrast to the belief of Jews who said the hand of God is tied’ asserts: Nay, His hands are spread out wide.... So God has the power to change everything he wills and God's creativity is continuous. Accordingly, as Sobhani puts it, "all groups in Islam regard "bada" as a tenet of the faith, even if not all actually use the term."

Footnotes