A Realm Within a Realm

The question that now arises is that Allah says: wa-Allāhu khalaqakum wa mā taʿmalūn, Allah created you and everything that you do; and wa mā tashāʾūna illā an yashāʾa Allāh: you cannot will except what Allah wills. That throws a further puzzle into this whole discussion. How is that to be dealt with, if we have free will?

Again, this is one of those realms we cannot understand. One thing we know for sure: we feel that we have some free will. We are not forced to do everything in the way we do it. But looked at closely, it is Allah who gave us this free will. It is Allah who gives us the ability each time we want to lift a hand and drop it. Lift a hand and drop it five times over: each of those five times, Allah gave the ability; He is in control each of these times. Looked at from the perspective of Allah, we are majbūr: we are driven, we are controlled. Basically, we are free individuals, free-willing individuals, in the form of being forced under the power of Allah (swt). So it is like a realm within a realm, and that is as much as can be said. Allah knows best exactly what that relationship is; it is beyond us to understand. But the one thing is that we know we have free will, and we will be accountable for it.

Now, as for dealing with free will: it is not permissible for a person to go into sin by saying that Allah has decreed it for him. There is a hadith of the Prophet (peace be upon him) which says that Allah has written down for each person the portions of zinā they will commit, whether that means going all the way, full zinā, or the zinā of the eyes, or ears, or touch, or whatever. Allah has written that. That does not mean that if a person feels like committing zinā, he can tell himself that because Allah has written it, he is going to go and do it. In terms of the future, that cannot be done. It is ḥarām; it is wrong. It is relying on something which cannot be relied upon, because we have accountability in that regard. We can abstain.

However, once a person has made tawbah (say somebody did something wrong, and then made tawbah), then, retrospectively, they can rely on qadar, as Ādam (peace be upon him) did. Mūsā (peace be upon him) addressed Ādam (peace be upon him) and asked him why he had eaten from the fruit, from the shajarah, whatever it was. Ādam (peace be upon him) said: a-talūmunī… Blaming me and censuring me for something that Allah had written upon me?

This was after the fact, after everything had been resolved, done and dusted. It was something done out of the wisdom of Allah (swt); that discussion is not gone into here. The point is that Ādam used qadar, used destiny, afterwards. Once tawbah has been made for something, it is left to taqdīr. Then one does not say this, that and the other. The hadith says that if something goes wrong, you do not say law this, law that: if this, if that. Yes, a lesson is taken, and one thinks about it; but there is no crying over spilt milk, as they say: it is left to the taqdīr. That is the way to deal with qadar. So one should not be like the man who came to ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with him) and said that he drank because Allah had destined it for him. That, hopefully, clarifies a number of things.