Abū Lahab and the Knowledge of Allah

The difficulty, though, is that there are people like Abū Lahab, whom Allah (swt) condemns in the Qur'an. The Prophet (peace be upon him) was told about certain individuals that they would not believe. So where does free will go with that? Here, then, the concept of free will meets the different difficulties raised by some of the hadith that have been related, and these need to be reconciled.

One thing should be said at the outset: the divine decree, qadar, is one of those issues that the Prophet (peace be upon him) prohibited us from discussing in depth. He saw two groups in the masjid discussing it, and he said: don't, because you will come out either as Qadariyyah or as Jabariyyah, as fatalists or as libertarians. So it is not something that we have enough of a feed and programming to understand and comprehend. It is like trying to understand the essence of Allah. There are, though, many aspects that we can understand, which make something clearer for us, so that we can live our lives and have the correct belief. So what follows reconciles these to the best of ability, and the rest simply has to be left to Allah (swt), because we do not have that knowledge.

As for the point made just before this, about Abū Jahl and Abū Lahab, the ʿulamāʾ have said that it is not that Allah (swt) necessarily forced them to go wrong. They had freedom of will; they simply lacked Allah's guidance and tawfīq. They were straying, and Allah was able to say this in the Qur'an, and to inform the Prophet (peace be upon him) beforehand, even though these people had not yet died. Sūrat al-Lahab was revealed before Abū Lahab died. He could have turned around and declared himself a believer. It would have been a great paradox, because what the Qur'an is saying is that he is doomed and condemned, and he turns around and declares himself a believer: it becomes a great paradox. But obviously it never happened, because Allah's words are accurate.

How did Allah say these things, if He was not forcing them in a particular way? He had knowledge: the ʿilm of Allah, as described in an earlier chapter. The association of the ʿilm of Allah with all things known is from eternity, before He even created them. So, based on that knowledge, it was in the Qur'an, in His speech; it was revealed. So it was not that their free will was taken away from them, so that even had they tried their best, they could not have done it. They simply were not going to do it, according to Allah. This is one way that we can understand it.

Going back to this hadith: as explained above, there is enough space on the path to paradise, so nobody can say they are doomed until they actually come over. We are accountable.