Free Will Vs. Predestination

Aightt..lets talk religion for a minute...this free will and predestination debate has confused me to no end, time and time again..but I think i've finally found a way to make sense of it and draw some sort of conclusion...Okay..In Islam the term predestination refers to God’s decision to create and to govern creation, and deals with the extent to which God's decisions determine ahead of time what the destiny of groups and individuals will be. For example, He has foreordained the span of every person's life, and their lot of good or bad fortune, who they will marry and so on. What I want to discuss is the extent to which salvation and damnation are decided by God before hand, and the extent to which these matters are decided by human beings themselves. Are people confined by God to particular roles/lives/a certain destiny or kismat or do they have free will to make their own destiny? Basically the question is when people say " It's not my fault..yeh tu meri kismat thee to hona he tha no matter what i did!" are they right!?!

Risaleh-i-Barkhavi says: “Not only can He (Allah) do anything, He actually is the only One Who does anything. When a man writes, it is Allah who has created in his mind the will to write. Allah at the same time gives the power to write, then brings about the motion of the hand and the pen and the appearance upon paper. All other things are passive, Allah alone is active.”

The Quran says, “If Allah had willed He would have made you one nation. But He leads astray whom He will and guides whom He will. But you shall certainly be called to account for all your actions.” (Sura 16: 93)

Hmmm…kinda confusing..pre-ordained sin ("he leads astray whom He will") yet man is held responsible?("But you shall certainly be called to account for all your actions.")What confuses me is that if God knows everything, He must know the future of every human being before his/her birth, and if He knows the future- he knows who will do what, how everyone will die and whether they will go to heaven or hell. How then can we be free? and then why the whole game with satan if He knows how its going to end?!!Since Allah has power over everything, He knows and decides everything in His universe and whatever happens in this world happens according to Allah's will (Be it poverty, war, rape, famine, murder, homosexuality and so on).Then why are we held responsible for our actions?! If we don’t have free will and God has decided our fate before our birth why are we judged according to our actions here on earth and punished or rewarded accordingly!?!

The other point of view is that although Allah has the knowledge and power over all things, He has also granted freedom to human beings. Allah's power and foreknowledge do not mean that human beings have no freedom, nor does human freedom negate Allah's power and foreknowledge. Human beings are free only as much as Allah has granted them the freedom. Thus Allah will judge us according to the freedom and responsibility that He gave us.

After some seriously severe confusion about this topic, my conclusion is that Allah knowing how a new born will lead his/her life does not interfere directly with that child’s free will; it does not affect the decisions that child will make during the course of his/her life. For example if you’ve watched Constatine, God and satan both influence human beings to do good and bad deeds respectively, but the final choice is up to us. Another example is that of a parent who knows his/her child will fail the exam because he/she is not studying, but that does not affect the child’s decision to study/not study/fail/pass. Therefore Allah's power and knowledge and human freedom may not be mutually exclusive. I believe we do have free will, albeit limited, because things like birth, death, whether we are born an empress/prince or a pauper, the religion we are born in to and so on (the larger framework) has been predetermined; but we do have free will in the smaller framework( how we choose to live our life).

Also this is how I have made sense of the concepts of predestination and free will: Both exist in varying degrees and I believe that God has said okay if this person chooses path A, xyz will happen and if he/she chooses path B, jkl will happen and so on. So we have the free will to choose option A, B or C but once we choose a certain path ( e.g marry ali instead of raza, study math instead of history etc) then the other obstacles/gifts on that path are predetermined. Moreover since there is no concept of time for Allah, our whole dilemma about Him knowing before our birth etc becomes totally irrelevant. So basically I think we have free will and so we are tested and judged based on what God has given each of us individually. This is just my interpretation and the conclusions I have come to..lemme know what you guys think.



heaven/hell