Are human actions free? Two Sunni positions

Look at the expectation: it asks you to understand the question before the answer. Write the question in your own sentence, then ask what you would have to know in order to answer it.

Read one sentence for the question it answers. In Lum'at al-I'tiqad, as the record of qadar reports, Ibn Qudama says: "We do not make God's judgement and decree a plea for abandoning His commands and avoiding His prohibitions" ². He adds that God commanded and forbade only the able, compelled no one to disobedience, and did not force anyone to abandon obedience ². The sentence is a refusal: it names a use of the decree that he rejects, and a condition, ability, on which command rests. The record does not say who made the plea he rejects. To reconstruct his argument, write the claim he refuses, the two reasons he gives against it, and what each reason assumes about the person addressed.

The record gives two Sunni formulations of the human share in an act, each attributed to its book. Ibn Qudama holds 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 ³. Ibn Taymiyya holds that the servants act in truth and God is the creator of their deeds, that they have power over their deeds and have will, and that God is the creator of their power and will ⁴. His reasons, in the record, are his two degrees: that what God wills is, and what He does not will is not, and that there is no creator but Him ⁴. The record names no critic who answers either, and gives no verdict.

Both formulations reach the museum as short quotations from creed texts, without the reasoning behind them. A third voice in the same record bears on how far the question can be pressed. Al-Tahawi holds that the root of the decree is "God's secret in His creation", that delving into it is "the road to being forsaken", and that knowledge is of two kinds, one present among creatures and one absent, so that faith stands by accepting the present and leaving the search for the absent ^5 6. The record says the entry needs specialist review before promotion.

Ibn Qudama speaks of a deed and an acquisition, Ibn Taymiyya of power and will that God creates. Which pair of words gives the clearer answer to the question of freedom, and what is the strongest objection that al-Tahawi's caution against delving into the decree would raise against answering at all?

• Qadar: the creed texts of al-Tahawi, Ibn Qudama and Ibn Taymiyya, and what al-Ash'ari relates of the people of hadith and sunna.
• Ilm al-kalam: Ahmad Amin's list of the causes of the new discipline, among them the questions of predestination and free will.