Qadar (divine decree)

Al-Tahawi says: God created the creatures by His knowledge, decreed decrees for them, set their terms; nothing was hidden from Him before He created them; He commanded them obedience and forbade them disobedience ^{1 2}.

"Everything proceeds by His determination and will, and His will is done"; "the servants have no will except what He wills for them" ². He guides whom He wills and leads astray whom He wills — guidance "by favour", leading astray "by justice" — and all move within His will between His favour and His justice ². Then he says everything proceeds by His will, knowledge, judgement and decree; His will overcomes all wills and His judgement overcomes all devices ³.

God knew the number of those entering Paradise and the number entering the Fire in one count — "that number is neither increased nor decreased" — and likewise their deeds ⁴; "each is eased to what he was created for, and deeds are by their endings" ⁴. He believes in "the Tablet and the Pen and all that has been inscribed in it", and says if all creatures joined to annul what God wrote they could not ⁵.

He holds the root of the decree is "God's secret in His creation — no angel brought near nor prophet sent has perceived it"; delving into it is "the road to being forsaken and the stair to deprivation"; knowledge is two — a knowledge present among creatures and a knowledge absent — and faith stands only by accepting the present and abandoning the search for the absent ^{6 5}. For the servant's act see kasb and capacity.

Ibn Qudama says God is "the Doer of what He wills — nothing is except by His will, and nothing departs His will"; He "created the creatures and their deeds, decreed their provisions and terms, guides whom He wills by His mercy and leads astray whom He wills by His wisdom" ⁷. Then: "We do not make God's judgement and decree a plea for abandoning His commands and avoiding His prohibitions"; God commanded and forbade only the able, compelled no one to disobedience nor forced him to abandon obedience ⁸. He argues from a verse that "the servant has a deed and an acquisition, requited for its good with reward and its evil with punishment — occurring by God's decree and determination" ⁹.

Ibn Taymiyya says: "Belief in the decree is in two degrees, each containing two things" ¹⁰: the first, God's knowledge of what the creatures will do "by His eternal knowledge", then His writing the creatures' measures in the Preserved Tablet; the second, "God's operative will and encompassing power" — belief "that what God wills is, and what He does not will is not" and that there is no creator but Him ¹¹. Then: "The servants act in truth and God is the creator of their deeds"; "the servants have power over their deeds and have will, and God is their creator and the creator of their power and their will" ¹¹.

In "the account of the sum of the saying of the people of hadith and sunna" in Maqalat al-Islamiyyin, Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari presents what the people of hadith and sunna hold, ending: "And in all we have mentioned of their saying we speak, and to it we go" ¹². He relates there that they say: "There is no good or evil on earth except what God wills" ¹³; that they "affirmed there is no creator but God, that God creates the servants' evil deeds, that God creates the servants' deeds, and that the servants cannot create anything of them" ¹⁴. They say "good and evil are by God's judgement and decree", believing in His judgement and decree — its good and evil, sweet and bitter ¹⁴; that God "granted the believers success to His obedience and forsook the unbelievers" ¹⁴; and that whoever dies dies by his term — and likewise whoever is killed ¹⁵.

This entry presents the positions of the 'Aqida al-Tahawiyya, Ibn Qudama's Lum'at al-I'tiqad, Ibn Taymiyya's al-Wasitiyya, and what al-Ash'ari related in Maqalat al-Islamiyyin of the people of hadith and sunna and declared his own — each attributed to its book. The sayings of the Maturidis and the remaining Sunni and non-Sunni schools from their own books have not yet been added; the entry needs specialist review before promotion.