Each of the prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, taught that what people chose to do with respect to belief in God and obedience to His will made a very great difference to the final outcome of their affairs.\u00a0 Humans have a tremendous ability to love and be kind, or to hate and be destructive.\u00a0 This means that although they may have all been born with souls of equal worth, they do not remain equal.\u00a0 Freewill is actually the most difficult of God\u2019s gifts to understand or appreciate.\u00a0 The point of freewill is to make sense of human morality – without it there is no such thing as good or evil conduct, for we should simply be automatons.<\/p>\n
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If we cannot make real free choices then judgment cannot apply to us – it would be totally against justice.\u00a0 Whenever people are not free to make choices, then they cannot be held responsible.\u00a0 Aishah recorded that the Prophet, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, made it clear that those whose freedom or intellect was limited – for example, those too young or too ignorant, or whose balance of mind was disturbed – could not be held morally responsible for their actions, either in a shari\u2019ah court of law, (or a UK court, for that matter), or in the judgment to come.<\/p>\n
So, what about the Muslim concept of al-Qadr<\/em>, the key doctrine of God\u2019s complete and final control over the fulfillment of events, or Destiny?\u00a0 How does one balance the idea of God knowing absolutely everything with the idea of freewill?\u00a0 If God knows in advance everything that will happen, then surely a person\u2019s life must be entirely predestined?\u00a0 Furthermore, if God does not intervene to stop particular things happening, then one can say that He alone is responsible for them.\u00a0 This is linked to the problem of evil.\u00a0 Who is responsible for evil, if God is ultimately responsible for everything?\u00a0 A thief might plead innocence, because he was surely predestined to steal, and therefore how can it be his fault?<\/p>\n Many people think that all Muslims are fatalists, who believe that since \u2018everything is written\u2019, and that God knows everything in advance – therefore it must all be predetermined.\u00a0 No human brain has actually been able to untangle this problem totally – certainly not mine – but the whole business of God sending Messengers with revelations surely indicates that humans are expected to listen, and then make choices, and then adjust their lives accordingly (Quran 6:91; 23:73).\u00a0 God in fact revealed:<\/p>\n \u201cTruly, God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.\u201d (Quran 13:11)<\/p>\n This certainly seems to indicate that humans have the power to change through their own freewill, and these decisions alter their fates.\u00a0 It must be true that God does know everything and every possibility, but humans do not.\u00a0 Therefore, if a human chooses a particular thing, there will be a particular outcome leading to a particular conclusion.\u00a0 If the human chooses a different course of action, then the outcome and conclusion will be different.\u00a0 If you choose to swallow a whole bottle of painkilling tablets, you will die this afternoon; but if you choose to swallow only two, it may cure your migraine and you may live to be a hundred.\u00a0 God, knows all the possible outcomes but He leaves the choice to you.\u00a0 We cant understand it, but God can – His \u2018intelligence\u2019 is millions of times greater and totally different from ours.<\/p>\n The real truth lies in the realm of al-Ghayb<\/em> [matters which lie beyond human perception].\u00a0 All that believers can do is to ask for guidance along our path of life.\u00a0 We may not be able to see the road way into the distance, but we can pray that God will show us the next step, one step at a time.\u00a0 If it were impossible for people to choose because their futures and destinies were already fixed, not only would God be unfair instead of just, but there would also seem to be very little point in us even trying to live good lives.\u00a0 Fatalism leads to despair and helplessness, defeatism, and hindering people from making any effort to improve either their own lot or the lot of those around them.<\/p>\n What does God want for us?\u00a0 He wants us to achieve happiness and success.\u00a0 He wants us to find true freedom.\u00a0 If true freedom brings happiness, then it seems things are not quite as many folks think.\u00a0 I might be very happy to be free to have a relationship with a different partner every week, or to stuff myself with tasty but unhealthy food, or to spend a fortune on clothing or jewelry or pop CDs, or to smoke, or stay out late worrying my parents, or avoid chores or homework, or have a laugh at my enemies, or earn lots of money perhaps dishonestly, or be famous and admired by lots of people.\u00a0 Surely these are the things that make people happy?<\/p>\n How simple it would be if that were so.\u00a0 It\u2019s so easy for Satan to fool people – the way that leads to destruction is so tempting and enjoyable.\u00a0 But stop and think.\u00a0 Many of the richest and most powerful people in the world are the loneliest.\u00a0 People who stuff themselves get all the problems and misery of being overweight.\u00a0 Those who are lazy and avoid learning and training in their youth wake up to the realities of failed lives later on.\u00a0 Smokers puffing away contentedly behind the bike-sheds will die young of cancer or heart failure – to the great grief of those who love them.\u00a0 People who are promiscuous usually end up with heartbreak for themselves and the children they later neglect, abandon (usually the young fathers) or kill in abortion (the young mothers).<\/p>\n True happiness is to look after that which God has loaned to us and entrusted to our safe-keeping for such a brief time – our bodies, our families, our talents, our sensitivity towards others.\u00a0 This means not being free to give in to our lusts and desires, the things we know very well will hurt us and others in due course.\u00a0 But here\u2019s the odd thing – the person who gives up that kind of selfish freedom and agrees to be God\u2019s servant will always be truly free.\u00a0 They will know that they have done their best; their consciences will be clear, their inner persons confident and full of hope, and they will never be slaves to their own selves, or to any other person or thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Each of the prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, taught that what people chose to do with respect to belief in God and obedience to His will made a very great difference to...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-topics","tag-worship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investigate-islam.com\/web\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}