Now, we want to tell our dear reader that what we have said up to now in our introduction connects with the world of the unseen, which man has no choice in. We are moving now to the world of commandments “Do and don’t do”. We do or don’t do according to our choice, and upon which there is reward and punishment for our deeds, good or bad.
We will detail the matter in some points:
1) Almighty Allah says,
Say: ‘This is the truth from your Lord. Let whosoever will, believe, and whosoever will, disbelieve it. ‘ [Al Kahf 29]
He also says,
Yet you will not unless Allah wills; surely, Allah is the Knower, the Wise. [Al Insan 30]
Thus, it is clear from the Verses that the ability of choice in man exists by Allah’s Will. In other words, Allah wills that we have this ability of choice to do or not to do according to our will. So, we can choose to believe or disbelieve; to do good or to do evil.
2) Almighty Allah, with His Eternal Knowledge, has known before He created the slave what His slave would choose; either to be a believer or disbeliever, a sinner or a pious man. This, of course, would agree with what the slave would choose throughout his life.
As for those who were guided, He increases their guidance and gives them their protection. [Mohammad 17]
There is a sickness in their hearts which Allah has increased. [Al Baqara 10]
3) Allah’s Will comes after the slave’s will. If it comes before the slave’s will, then, why did Allah orders us to do and not to do? And why did He reward or punish us on Doomsday?
Allah does not change what is in a nation unless they change what is in themselves. [Al Ra’d 11]
Had it been Our will We would have raised with it, but he clung to this earthly life and succumbed to his fancies. [Al A’raf 176]
4) When Almighty Allah gives His slave the ordinances to do or not to do, first, the slave thinks in himself to do so and so. Then, Allah, Who knows what His slave thinks of, creates in him the ability to do that thing according to the slave’s choice.
Thus, man throughout his life lives between two facts, in which he must believe:
The first fact:
Many things occur inside us, in which we have no choice such as:
1) Man can do nothing with the genetic factors, with which he is born. Almighty Allah says,
We have created the human from a (sperm) drop, mixtures, testing him; We made him to hear and see. [Al Insan 2]
This Holy Verse indicates the inimitability of the Holy Quran. Not until the 17th century, scientists had invented the microscope, which enabled them to see how man is created. He is created from a mixture of a sperm with a mixture of an ovum, which is made into a third mixture, carrying the genes of the father and those of the mother. Then, we have three mixtures: the mixture of the father’s sperm with some characteristics, the mixture of the mother’s ovum with some other characteristics, and the new resulting mixture of the fertilized ovum. This is why the Holy Quran used the word, “Amshaj” (mixtures) in plural and it was so many years before scientists knew this fact.
Allah, glory be to Him, has created man in this way and made him able to hear and see and have all the other senses so as to test him. When scientists studied the chromosome, whose diameter is only about one fifth of a millimeter, they found it carry all the genetic characteristics of man such as hearing, seeing, tasting, the shape of his organs, and so on.
Who can say such a thing one thousand and a half years ago, before scientists could know it? It is only Allah Who has created all the worlds, can say this. This is also great evidence that the Holy Quran is revealed from Almighty Allah, Praise be to Him.
2) Until he is born, man has no choice:
He can not choose his parents, the time or the place of his birth. He can not choose his gender. He has no choice in his physical features; either he is tall or short, white or black, healthy or ill and so on. For this reason, Almighty Allah says,
It is He who shapes you in your mothers' wombs as He wills. [Al Imran 6]
Likewise, he can not choose when, where or how he dies. Sometimes, we find someone who insists to take a certain flight and exerts his effort to find a place on a certain plane, which will crash and all the passengers die.
To every nation a term; when their term comes they shall not delay it by a single hour, nor yet hasten it. [Al A’raf 34]
There is a third point in which man has no choice. It is sleeping. It is a miracle which puzzled all the world and it will ever be. As soon as you sleep, you move from a certain law to another law which is totally different. You see without opening your eyes; you go from place to place without leaving your bed; you can meet the people who have died and speak to them. In sleeping, there are no time limits. When you get up, you don’t know how much you have slept unless you look at your watch. When the People of the Cave got up after three hundred years and nine of sleep, they asked themselves: how much have we slept? Some of them said: we may have slept one day or part of a day.
As such We revived them so that they might question one another. ‘How long have you stayed here? ‘ asked one of them. ‘We have been here a day, or part of it, ‘ they replied. [Al Kahf 19]
When we get up of our sleep, we can relate accurately what we have seen. This means that there are some other means of seeing, hearing, and speaking without these we use when we are awake.
Thus, there are some things, existing in our world which we can’t perceive with our minds; so, as some scholars say, Allah gives us an idea about such things, as a kind of His Mercy to our mind, to help us understand and believe in the life of the tomb, which we can move into it at any moment. This is the meaning of the Hadeeth, in which the Messenger of Allah (Prayers and peace be upon him) says, “By Allah, you will, surely, die as you sleep; and you will, surely, be resurrected as you wake up.”
3) Man has no choice with his interior organs. He has no exact idea how the circulatory system works, or how the lung does its job, and so on. He is unable to give these organs orders to stop working or to begin working again. Of course, this is Mercy from Allah because, if, man has the ability to give orders and supervise the work of his inner organs, he will not have the time to earn his living or to carry out his ritual ordinances. He will not have the ability to sleep; otherwise, these organs will stop working. Or how can a little child give orders to his organs to work?
As for the exterior organs such as our eyes, legs, ears and tongues, Allah has made them submit to our orders to do or not to do; either to do good or evil because they will be witnesses for or against us on Doomsday.
On the Day when their tongues, hands and feet shall testify against them concerning what they were doing. [Annoor 24]
But at the same time, we find that man doesn’t have the absolute domination over these exterior organs. Almighty Allah may stop the work of some of these organs because it is He, Who has the complete domination over everything. He may compensate those people with some other talents. We find some people who are not able to hear, or speak, or see or walk; yet, despite this, they may be brilliant in a certain field of life. Beethoven, who was dumb, gave us the best music. Artist Frida Kahlo was considered one of Mexico's greatest artists who began painting mostly self-portraits after she was severely injured in a bus accident, in which she lost her legs and her hands. She used her mouth to hold the brush while painting.
In addition, man, in many times, may feel that there is a much greater power than his. For example, he may exert his efforts to ship his goods on one of the best ships but while on sea, a violent storm blows and the ship sinks. Sometimes, he does his best to meet a very important man in a very high rank to fulfill him a certain need but when he goes there, he finds that the man has died or is dismissed. Sometimes you do your best to reach a certain target in your life but you find that all the doors are closed; then, Allah sends you a happy outcome, which you have never thought of. Man, at this point can do nothing but to yield and submit to his Almighty Lord, Who has the greatest Dominion over all worlds.
Even the materialists and the atheists may also have this feeling of powerlessness and incapability; yet, they don’t attribute it to Allah but they say: conditions didn’t enable us, or, conditions wanted so and so, or, luck was against us.
The second fact:
Man, who claims that he is forced to commit sins, knows very well that he has the right of choice in many of the things he does. He arranges for a holiday abroad and says, “I have chosen one of the best countries to spend my holiday in and I am sure it was a very good choice of me.” Here, he doesn’t mention Al Qadaa’ and Al Qadar because he is proud of hitting the target he was looking for. But when he is arrested for a theft or charging a bribe, he tells you that it is Al Qadar that caused it and that Allah wanted it for him. It is exactly as Satan said, when he attributed his sin to Allah,
(Satan) said: 'My Lord, for Your perverting me, [Al Hijr 49]
In Surat Al An’am,
The idolaters will say: 'Had Allah willed, neither we nor our fathers would have associated (idols), nor would we have forbidden anything. [Al An’am 148]
Sheikh Jalal Addin Arroumy said, “Animals know well that you do your deeds with your own will; for example, when you throw a stone at a dog, does it attack the stone or attack you? It attacks you because it knows it is you that threw the stone willingly at it. Likewise, when you hit a camel with a stick, it gets agitated against you, not against the stick.”
The human freedom and the Divine Will:
Allah’s Will decreed it for us to be free in what we do according to our will. So, we can behave against Allah’s satisfaction, but not against His Will. If He wants it, He can compel us behave according to His satisfaction but He wants us to be free and choose, with our own will, what we do; either good or bad. If we do good, we will be rewarded and if we do evil, we will be punished. Here, Allah’s Will comes according to the slave’s will. He, who wants to do good, Allah will help him; and he, who wants to do evil, Allah will also help him. Almighty Allah says,
For him that gives and fears (Allah) And believes in the finest, We shall surely ease him to the Path of Easing; But for him that is a miser, and sufficed, And he belied the finest We shall surely ease for him the Path of Hardship (the Fire). [Allail 5:10]
Here, we have some points:
First, Allah has the ability to bind us by force to believe in His Books and do what He wants but He doesn’t want us to be coerced. He says,
If We will, We can send down on them a sign from heaven before which their necks will remain humbled. [Ash-sh’araa’ 4]
There is no compulsion in religion. Righteousness is now distinct from error. [Al Baqara 256]
Had your Lord willed, whosoever is in the earth, all would have believed. Would you then constrain people until they believe? [Younnus 99]
Second, Al Qadaa’ and Al Qadar in the field of choice is not a kind of coercion but it comes according to our will and our hearty intention; either good or evil.
He says,
Whoever hopes for the tillage of the Everlasting Life, We will increase his tillage; and whoever hopes for the tillage of this world, We give him some of it, but in the Everlasting Life he shall have no share. [Ash-shura 20]
He says to the captives of war,
O Prophet, say to those you have taken captive in your hand: 'If Allah finds goodness in your hearts, He will give you that which is better than what has been taken from you, and He will forgive you. Allah is Forgiving, the Most Merciful. ' [Al Anfal 70]
Third, Allah has created the heart to be the most important organ in what concerns man’s beliefs. It is because you can force someone to do anything but you can’t force him to love or hate anything. So, if you utter the word of disbelief under some conditions of threatening or torture, Allah won’t punish for it as long as your heart is filled with the right beliefs.
Whosoever disbelieves in Allah after believing except he who is forced while his heart remains in his belief [Annahl 106]
Allah has permitted evil to exist in our life for certain causes, but it doesn’t mean that He wants His slave to do it.
When they commit an indecency, they say: 'This is what we found our fathers practicing, and with it Allah has ordered us. ' Say: 'Allah does not order indecency. Would you tell of Allah what you do not know? Say: 'My Lord ordered justice. [Al A’raf 28, 29]
Yet He does not approve of disbelief to His worshipers, but if you believe He will approve it in you. [Azzumar 7]
Allah orders justice, and good deeds, and giving to one's kindred. He forbids indecency, dishonor and insolence. He admonishes you in order that you take heed. [Annahl 90]
Sometimes, we ask ourselves: why does evil exist in our life as long as Allah doesn’t allow it? But if we think carefully and look at the picture as a whole, we find that it has some benefits in our life. You can’t perceive the importance of health unless you become ill; we can’t see the significance of beauty until we see the ugly things, and so on. If you look at the matter more deeply, you will find that every evil thing has a good side inside it. For example, illness is a bad thing but it leaves behind some kind of protection and immunity in our bodies. During wars, the most important inventions have come up such as penicillin and jetliners.
In addition, it is known that suffering purifies our souls and gives us an idea about the essence of people. In trials we get to know other people and know ourselves. Sometimes, evil has some good sides, which we don’t know except later. For example, someone has had an accident, and while being examined in hospital, doctors find some cancer or an appendix which is about to kill him; and he is saved in the proper time.
SOURCES:
Al Qadaa’ And Al Qadar (Questions & Answers) By Counselor Dr. Mohammad Najm Addin Al Kordy, First Edition, 1440 a.h. / 2019 AD, Translation: Taha Ibrahim Badr