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10. Taqdīr or ‘Predestination’ Predestination (taqdīr or qadar) is not among articles of faith The Holy Quran speaks of qadar or taqdīr but these words by no means carry the significance of predestination or of a decree of good and evil for man, as popularly supposed. Moreover, there is no mention at all, in the Quran or in the most reliable Hadith collection of Bukhari, of faith (īmān) in qadar or taqdīr as being one of the fundamentals of religion like faith in God and His angels and His books and His messengers and a life after death. Significance of qadar and taqdīr Qadar and taqdīr mean ‘the making manifest of the measure of a thing’, or simply ‘measure’. God’s taqdīr of things is in two ways, by granting qudra, i.e., power, or by making them in a particular measure and in a particular manner, as wisdom requires.1 An example of this is given in the taqdīr of the date-stone, out of which it is the palm only that grows, not an apple or olive tree. Taqdīr is therefore the law or the ordinance or the measure which is working throughout the creation; and this is exactly the sense in which the word is used in the Holy Quran. For example, it speaks of a taqdīr for each and everything that has been created: “Blessed is He … Who created everything, then ordained for it a measure (taqdīr).” — 22 “Surely We have created everything according to a measure (qadar).” — 549 The law according to which foods, provisions and other things are provided in the earth is also called a taqdīr of God, and so also the law according to which rain falls on the earth, and that according to which night and day follow each other.2 Though man is included in the creation, and his taqdīr is therefore the same as that of the whole creation, he is also separately spoken of as having a taqdīr similar to the law of growth and development in other things: “Of what thing did He create him? Of a small life-germ. He creates him, then proportions him (qaddara-hū)”. — 8119 All these verses go to show that, as according to lexicologists, taqdīr in the language of the Holy Quran is the universal law of God, operating as much in the case of man as in the rest of nature — a law extending to everything in the universe. The taqdīr of a thing is the law or the measure of its growth and development, and the taqdīr of man is not different in nature from the taqdīr of other things. Taqdīr as meaning the absolute decree of good and evil for man by God, or the doctrine of man’s predestination, is an idea unsupported by the Holy Quran, and is of later growth. It probably arose due to a misunderstanding of the nature of good and evil, in discussions as to whether or not God was the creator of evil. God created man with certain powers which he could exercise under certain limitations, and it is the exercise of these powers in one way or another that produces good or evil. The same act may be a virtue on one occasion and evil on another. The Quran, therefore, has not dealt with the question of the creation of good and evil at all. It speaks of the creation of heavens and earth and all that is in them; it speaks of the creation of man; it speaks of endowing him with certain faculties and granting him certain powers; it tells us that he can use these powers and faculties within certain limitations, just as all other created things are placed within certain limitations — and the limitations of each kind are its taqdīr. But in the Quran there is no mention of a taqdīr to mean either the creation of good and evil deeds of man by God, or an absolute decree of good and evil by God. It may, however, be added that God is recognized by the Quran as the first and ultimate cause of all things; but this does not mean that He is the Creator of the deeds of man. He has, of course, created man; He has also created the circumstances under which he lives and acts; but still He has endowed man with a discretion to choose how to act, which he can exercise under certain limitations, just as all his other powers and faculties are exercised under limitations and only in accordance with certain laws. Thus it is said in the Quran: “The truth is from your Lord; so whoever wishes, let him believe, and whoever wishes, let him disbelieve.” – 129 And as he can exercise his discretion or his will in doing a thing or not doing it, he is responsible for his own deeds and is made to suffer the consequences. The will of God and the will of man Man’s will stands in the same relation to the Divine will as his other attributes to the attributes of the Divine Being. He can exercise it under limitations and laws, and there is a very large variety of circumstances which may determine his choice in each case. Yet it is not true that the choice to exercise it has been taken away from him; and the fact is that, despite all the limitations, he is free to exercise his will. Of course he is not responsible to the same extent for everything and in all cases, because a variety of circumstances must determine the extent of his responsibility, which may be very small, almost negligible, in some cases, and very great in others. Nonetheless, he is a free agent and responsible for what he does. We now look at the Quranic verses bearing on this subject. The argument that man does an evil deed because God wills it so, is put into the mouth of the opponents of the Holy Prophet on several occasions. For instance: “Those who set up partners [with Allah] say: If Allah had pleased, we would not have set up partners [with Him], nor our fathers, nor would we have made anything unlawful. Thus did those before them reject [the truth] until they tasted Our punishment. Say: Have you any knowledge so you would bring it forth to us? You only follow a conjecture and you only tell lies. Say: Then Allah’s is the conclusive argument; so if He had pleased, He would have guided you all.” — 14149 The contention of the polytheists here is that what they do, i.e., worship others besides God as His partners, is in accordance with the will of God. This is condemned as a mere conjecture and a lie, and against it, two arguments are adduced. The first is that previous people were punished when they persisted in their evil courses; if what they did was because God had so willed it, He would not have punished them for it. The second is that God had never said so through any of His prophets: “Have you any knowledge so you would bring it forth to us?” And in the verse that follows, the argument is carried further by saying: “If He had pleased, He would have guided you all”. The conclusion is clear. If it were the Divine will that people should be compelled to one course, that would have been the course of guidance. But human beings are not compelled to accept even the right way; much less could they be compelled to follow the wrong course. This is clearly laid down: “We have truly shown him the way; he may be thankful or unthankful.” — 73 “Clear proofs have indeed come to you from your Lord: so whoever sees, it is for his own good; and whoever is blind, it is to his own harm.” — 104 “The truth is from your Lord; so whoever wishes, let him believe, and whoever wishes, let him disbelieve.” – 129 The Divine will is therefore exercised in the raising up of prophets, and in the pointing out of the courses of good and evil, and human will is exercised in the choice of one course or the other. It is this very law that is expressed at the end of chapter 76: “Surely this is a Reminder; so whoever wishes, let him take a way to his Lord. And you do not wish, unless Allah please.” — 7230 And again to the same effect: “It is nothing but a Reminder for the nations, for whomever among you who wishes to go straight. And you do not wish, unless Allah please, the Lord of the worlds.” — 8229 In both these places, the Quran is spoken of as having been revealed for the upliftment of man, yet, it is added, only he will derive benefit from it who chooses to go straight or takes a way to his Lord, that is, exercises his will in the right direction. Thus man is left to make his choice after God has sent down a revelation, and the will of man to make a choice is thus exercised only after the will of God has been exercised in the sending down of a revelation. If God had not pleased to reveal the reminder, man would have had no choice. Thus the words “you do not wish, unless Allah please” mean only this, that if God had not pleased to send a revelation, man would not have been able to make his choice of good or evil. A great misconception regarding the teachings of the Holy Quran is that it ascribes to God the attribute of leading astray. Nothing could be further from the truth. While al-Hādī, or the One Who guides, is one of the names of Allah, as accepted by all Muslims, al-Muḍill, or the One Who leads astray, has never been recognized as such. The sinners’ own confession, as repeatedly mentioned in the Quran, is that their great leaders misled them, or that the Devil misled them. Not once do they put forward the excuse that it was God Himself Who misled them: “And none but the guilty led us astray.” — 299 “And they say: Our Lord, surely we only obeyed our leaders and our great men, so they led us astray from the path. Our Lord! Give them a double punishment and curse them with a great curse.” — 3668 If God had really led people astray, their best excuse on the Day of Judgment would have been that they did not deserve to be punished because it was God Himself Who led them astray. But not once is that excuse advanced, and it is always the guilty leaders who are denounced by the followers as having misled them. Again, the Quran is full of statements to the effect that God sends His prophets and grants revelation for the guidance of the people. The general rule laid down with regard to Divine dealing with humanity is thus made clear in the very beginning: “Surely a guidance from Me will come to you, then whoever follows My guidance, no fear shall come upon them, nor shall they grieve.” — 38 Guiding and leading astray are two contradictions which could not be gathered together in one being. The Quran itself draws attention to this point: “And it is not attributable to Allah that He should lead a people astray after He has guided them, so far so that He makes clear to them what they should guard against.” — 115 The mistaken idea that God leads people astray arises out of a misconception of the meaning of the word iḍlāl when it is ascribed to God. This word carries a variety of meanings besides leading someone astray. It should be noted that wherever this act is attributed to God, it is only in connection with the transgressors, the unjust, and the extravagant,3 not people generally. The word iḍlāl, as used in the Holy Quran with reference to God, means judging or finding someone to be in error. This was a recognized use of the word among the Arabs. In fact, this sense of the word is recognized by all lexicologists.4 Another misconception is that it is thought that God has created some people with their hearts sealed and closed, while others have been created with free and open hearts. No trace of any such distinction is met with anywhere either in the Holy Quran or in Hadith. All are created sinless, all are created pure, that is the express teaching of Islam. The Quran says: “So set yourself for religion, being upright, the nature (fiṭrah) made by Allah in which He has created mankind. There is no altering Allah’s creation. That is the right religion.” — 330 According to this verse all humans have been created in pure nature, and a hadith of the Holy Prophet, which is really an explanation of this verse, says: “Every child that is born conforms to fiṭrah (human nature), and it is his parents who make him a Jew or a Christian or a Magian.” 5 The Quran does speak of God setting seals on some hearts, but it says expressly that seals are set on the hearts of the reprobate, the hardened sinners who pay no heed to the call of the Prophet. In the very beginning of the Quran, it is stated: “Those who disbelieve — to whom it is the same whether you warn them or do not warn them — they will not believe. Allah has sealed their hearts and their hearing; and there is a covering on their eyes.” — 7 The sealing spoken of here is in connection with those who have so hardened their hearts that they do not pay any heed to the Prophet’s warning. They refuse to open their hearts to receive the truth, and do not lend their ears to listen to it, nor use their eyes to discern the truth from falsehood. As is elsewhere stated: “They have hearts with which they do not understand, and they have eyes with which they do not see, and they have ears with which they do not hear. They are as cattle…” — 179 It is always the reprobate whose heart is said to be sealed: “Thus does Allah seal every heart, of a proud, insolent one.” — 435 The fact that the cause of the seal is the sinner’s own act of not heeding the warning, is made clear on another occasion also, where it is stated in the Quran: “And some of them seek to listen to you, till, when they go forth from you, they say to those who have been given knowledge: What was it that he said just now? These are they whose hearts Allah has sealed and they follow their low desires.” — 416 All these verses show that God sets a seal upon the hearts of certain people as a result of their own actions. Those who themselves close the doors of their hearts are visited with the natural consequence of this, the setting of a seal. The seal, therefore, being the consequence of a man’s own deeds, has nothing to do with the doctrine of predestination. As regards Hadith reports from which predestination is concluded, it has to be borne in mind clearly that Hadith must be read subject to the broad principles established in the Holy Quran, and must be so interpreted as not to clash with the Book of God, and that in case of a clash it is the Hadith report that must be rejected; for its words are often the words of narrators, and in such metaphysical subjects there has been a good deal of mixing up of the ideas of the narrators through a long chain of transmitters. Taking Bukhari, the most reliable collection of Hadith, in the first place it does not relate a single report speaking of faith in qadar, and thus the question that such a faith is one of the fundamentals of Islam is disposed of, for faith in qadar is unknown both to the Quran and to the most reliable collection of Hadith. Coming to the actual reports which Bukhari has related in his Collection in the book entitled Qadar, one finds that not a single report in it lends any support to the theory that a good or an evil course has been chalked out beforehand and is forced upon man. The reports related here, as well as in other collections, generally speak either of the Divine knowledge of things or of the Divine command prevailing over all. The most well-known report from which predestination is concluded is that speaking of an angel being in charge of the embryo — “an angel is sent to the embryo, and he is commanded with four things: his sustenance and his term of life and whether he is unhappy or happy”.6 These words can be interpreted in consonance with the teachings of the Quran to mean that the Divine knowledge of things is all-comprehensive, so much so that God knows all about a person even in the embryonic state. As the properties of the seed are all in the seed, so even the embryo shows what the man will develop into. No human eye can see these hidden potentialities; but nothing is hidden from God. We cannot go into details of the rest of the reports of Bukhari. Many of them are wrongly interpreted. For example, in one hadith the Holy Prophet is reported to have remarked in a certain company that there was not a man but his place in fire or in Paradise was written down. Thereupon a man said: “Shall we not rely then [i.e., rely on what is written, and give up the doing of deeds], O Messenger of Allah?” The Holy Prophet said: “No. Do work, for to everyone it is made easy.” 7 Then the Holy Prophet recited the following verses: “Then as for him who gives [charitably] and keeps his duty and accepts what is good — We facilitate for him [the way to] ease. And as for him who is miserly and considers himself self-sufficient and rejects what is good — We facilitate for him [the way to] distress.” — 910. If any conclusion of predestination could be drawn from the words of this report, the verses quoted by the Holy Prophet, in support of what he said, negative such a conclusion, for they speak of two different ends for two different kinds of workers. The words of the Holy Prophet himself lead to the same conclusion, for he laid stress on works. Nor do his concluding words — “to everyone it is made easy” — lead to any other conclusion, for the meaning is that to the worker of good, the good end, and to the worker of evil, the evil end, is made easy, as stated in the Quranic verses quoted in support of his assertion. Faith in qadar finds no place in the Quran and Bukhari It must be clearly understood that the fundamentals of religion are all fully explained in the Quran itself; and a thing cannot be accepted as a fundamental of Islam of which there is no mention in the Holy Book. Hadith is only a secondary source of the religion of Islam and, as a matter of fact, it deals only with secondary matters of religion or its details. The great principles, the basic doctrines, must all be sought from the Quran, which neither mentions qadar among the fundamentals of Islam, nor even speaks of a faith in it. It is only in Hadith that we find mention of qadar, and even here the most reliable of all collections, the Bukhari, does not contain any report mentioning qadar as an article of faith. Faith in qadar is a doctrine of later growth There is indeed one hadith which shows that faith in qadar is of later growth. In his second book, the book of Faith, Bukhari relates the following report from Abu Hurairah: “The Holy Prophet was one day sitting outside among a number of people when there came to him a man and said: What is faith? He replied: Faith is this that you believe in Allah and His angels and the meeting with Him, and His messengers, and that you believe in life after death.” 8 The report is a lengthy one and only the first portion relating to the subject of discussion has been quoted here. This same report is also related in Sahih Muslim through three different channels. In the first channel, the four narrators are the same as in Bukhari, and the words reported from the Holy Prophet as to what is faith are also almost the same: “That you believe in Allah and His angels and His Book and the meeting with Him, and His messengers, and that you believe in the life after death.” 9 In his second channel, the first three narrators are again the same as in Bukhari and the report is narrated as above.10 In his third channel, only the first two narrators are the same, the rest being different, and a change is introduced into the words, the portion relating to the Holy Prophet’s reply now having added to it the words: “and that you believe in qadar, in the whole of it.” 11 This shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that the words referring to faith in qadar were added by the third narrator, and that the inclusion of faith in qadar among the fundamentals of faith, is an addition of about the end of the first century of Hijrah. There is no doubt that discussions about qadar arose later, and it was during these discussions that, through inadvertence or otherwise, some narrator put these words into the mouth of Abu Hurairah. Significance of faith in qadar It is difficult to say what meaning faith in qadar carried. This much is certain that belief in qadar does not mean belief in predestination. A strict predestinarian, who believes that man has no control at all over his actions, would deny the very basic principle of religion, that is, the responsibility of man for his actions. The orthodox position has always been the middle one. Man has a free will, but that will is exercised under certain limitations. It is only the Divine will that can be called an absolutely free will, a will under no limitations; but everything created, and therefore everything human, is subject to qadar, to a Divine measure of things, to limitations imposed upon it by a Higher controlling Power. Human knowledge, human power and human will are all subject to limitations, and these limitations are placed upon man by the Divine measure which is called qadar. It is only in this sense that a Muslim can be said to have faith in qadar. Go to: List of Contents • Previous / Next (11. Prayer)
Notes to Chapter 10
1. Raghib’s Mufradāt. 2. See the Quran, 410, 121, 218, 411, and 720. 3. The Quran, 26, 127 and 434. 4. According to the dictionary Lisān al-‘Arab, the words aḍallanī ṣadīqī mean ‘my friend judged me to be in error’, not ‘my friend led me astray’. Lane in his Lexicon says that aḍalla-hū means ‘he found him to be erring, straying’, quoting this from Tāj al-‘Arūs. 5. Bukhari, book 23: ‘Funerals’, ch. 79, h. 1358, h. 1359. 6. Bukhari, book 82: ‘Qadar’, ch. 1, h. 6594. 7. Ibid., ch. 4, h. 6605. See also Bukhari, book 23: ‘Funerals’, ch. 82, h. 1362. 8. Bukhari, book 2: ‘Faith’, ch. 37, h. 50. 9. Muslim, book 1: ‘Faith’, ch. ‘What is Īmān (Faith)?’, h. 8e (DS: h. 97). 10. Ibid., h. 9 (DS: h. 98). 11. Ibid.,ch. ‘What is Islam?’, h. 10 (DS: h. 99). |