Predestination and free will in Islamic thought: Jabrites and Qadarites

¶ … Predestination and Free Will as These Concepts Were Understood in Islam by the Jabrites and the Qadarites

An Insight into Prestination and Free Will in the Jabrites and Qadarites

One of the dilemmas that continues to hold resonance for religious thinkers is the question of fate vs. freedom. This question has had an intrinsic appeal throughout the ages. It is sometimes spawned out of the sense that there may be forces beyond human control -- whether benevolent or hostile -- which influence a person's capacity to choose and to act.

From a theological perspective, this dilemma raises important questions that have played out in Islamic debates over predestination and free will. Does the divine decree eliminate choice? Are humans masters of their own destiny who can change the future or just pawns that God moves around at will and whose destinies are already set in stone? Are humans ultimately responsible for their actions in spite of the fact that God has decreed them? How one answers these questions affects how one interprets situations and responds to events. A view one way or the other can affect whether a person despairs or hopes in a context of suffering.

Two early Muslim movements, the Jabrites and the Qadarites, attempted to state clear positions on this complex subject. At the heart of the controversy between these movements was whether or not God gives humans real agency to effect the outcome of their lives. The Jabrites affirmed a strong version of determinism that denied freedom and attributed all human action to God. By contrast, the Qadarites suggested that humans have free will and create actions. Both camps tended toward an extreme position and quoted sacred text for the basis of their views. Further, both views provided an important model and legacy for subsequent discussion.

It is worth analyzing briefly some of the evidence and arguments put forth for the respective positions. In particular, some benefit may accrue by looking at the resulting view of ethics implied in the two positions and how these may have influenced later Islamic mystical attempts to deal with the problem of suffering.

The main contention of this essay is that the dilemma of predestination vs. free will was inadequately solved by the Jabrites and the Qadarites. Both groups failed to provide a coherent and comprehensive perspective in which the notion of human responsibility was aligned with what was believed to be the character and power of God. Neither used an adequate concept of time to discern how the contradiction between fate and free will could be reconciled. Without discussing the Asharites who formed their own middle path in the debate, the argument will show that it was left to later mystics in the Sufi tradition to propose a more adequate solution using a nuanced concept of time related to the experience of suffering.

Predestination in the Jabrites

W. Montgomery Walt has drawn attention to the concept of an impersonal force, or Time (dahr), that existed in the beliefs of nomadic pre-Islamic Arabs.

This power was thought to control life's triumphs and failures, to determine whatever fortune befell one's life, and to fix the term and measure of each person's existence. It functioned perhaps as a coping device to calm the soul through shifting and uncertain circumstances.

Perhaps foreshadowed by such preconditions, the Jabrites adopted a strongly fatalistic attitude regarding what controls human life. Dalya Cohen-Mor states, "They took their name from jabr, which means necessity or compulsion, as they were convinced that human beings are inevitably compelled to act as they do, by force of God's eternal and immutable decree."

They based their view on Qur'anic texts related to God's decree rather than strictly on theories of Time. They could point to verses where it says, "It is God who makes you live, then makes you die" (45:24, 26; 57:22). The notion of Time is here changed into the concept of a personal God and is linked up with divine decree. Elsewhere the Qur'an states, "Nothing will befall us except what God has decreed for us" (9:51). Selecting proof-texts such as these for support, the Jabrites formulated the belief that all events, actions, and decisions that occur in the world are foreknown and foreordained by God, and therefore are never freely adopted.

At the root of this belief was the idea that God is the only true creator of action. He has created and caused all things. Thus, His all-encompassing will since the beginning of time has decreed what shall happen and is as binding as an unalterable law. Referring to Al-Shahrastani, Mahmoud writes, "Pure Jabrites attribute no action to human beings and no capability of action in the first place."

Any activity they pursue is simply the working out of God's act and will.

Humans in this perspective are not only ignorant of God's action, because they cannot know the future, but they are also deprived of any real power to decide or to act of their own accord. Whatever they do, God has made them do. A human cannot alter these decrees which have been written since before their birth. The most that a human can expect is to submit to this external and sovereign controlling force. The Jabrites seem not to have argued directly from a concept of time such as that espoused by Afroz Ali, who says that God created, exists outside of, and is not bound by time.

Possibly this view is implicit.

The Jabrites reinforced their fatalism by reference to the image of writing. Every person's death is set in stone as verse 3:145 implies: "Nor can a soul die except by God's permission, the term being fixed as by writing." A text on God's absolute knowledge ends with "there falls not a leaf but He knows it, nor a grain in the darkness of the earth, nor anything green nor dry but (it is all) in a clear book" (6:59). God's decrees are thus written down in an eternal book. As a result, they are immutable and cannot be compromised.

The Jabrites further emphasized divine sovereignty using a common refrain in the Qur'an that indicates that God guides or refuses to guide by His own choice. "God leads astray those whom He pleases, and guides whom He pleases" (2:284, 6:125, 14:4, 16:93, 35:8, 39:23, 74:31). One can read this phrase as an indication of a lack of human freedom. Humans do not have the capacity to follow the guidance of God without God first granting that capacity. Divine decree alone is decisive for whether mercy or harm is enacted toward an individual. If God chooses not to open that door, it remains shut and the person has no hope of currying His favor by his or her own will. Thus, God in this view is in total control over whom He will or will not guide.

One might ask: has God predetermined the lot of those who end up in Hell and Paradise? The Jabrites affirmed this textually. God causes people to err (7:178) or keeps them on the wrong path (11:34). "He will admit to His mercy whom He will" (76:31). Whether one believes or not is predestined (10:99-100). Another common refrain is, "He forgives whom he pleases and chastises whom he pleases" (2:284, 5:18, 40). In the Jabrite position, therefore, God has predestined whether a person will enter the reward of Paradise or the punishment of Hell. This means that nothing they do can change the outcome of their eternal fate.

The Jabrites used tradition as well to endorse their fatalistic view. The Prophet describes life in terms that suggest that, even before breath is breathed into a human, all his or her actions are preordained, written down, and therefore unalterable. Even before spirit enters a body, an angel, according to this tradition, descends and inscribes the person's works, appointed time, and eternal fate.

This suggested to the Jabrites an absolute predestination of the person. One has no choice in when they will die, what they will do, how they will eat, or whether they'll go to paradise or fire.

The problem with this position is that it relieves the individual of the burden of choice. If God has preordained goodness, benefit, and Paradise from the beginning for someone, or alternately, evil, disadvantage, and Hell, nothing can change that. Repentance and attaining Paradise are matters that God controls, not the individual. It seems to contradict Mohammed's assertions about the possibility of human repentance and divine forgiveness. If there is only compulsion to act justly or unjustly, then how can God hold humans liable for their actions? Morally, this view falls down because it fails to recognize that a human's obligation stems not from the power to create actions, but from the freedom to choose which actions to create.

The position as a whole seems from an ethical angle to fail. It imposes an almost absolute limitation on a human's agency. Everything a person does has been known and plotted out. Therefore, they are compelled to choose what they do in order to instantiate God's foreordainment of history. It wouldn't seem to make sense, therefore, for the person to attempt to change their circumstances or to fight against fate. Affliction, tragedy and evil would be just what God wishes to throw at an individual, who could scarcely escape its occurrence. This seems to suggest a response of futility toward life in which all is merely endured and passes almost robotically. At the same time, one might interpret it as comforting, for it eliminates the human's striving and desire to achieve something before the eyes of God. Or if God allows good to enter a life, this good is not deserved or merited, but is purely random. God's character would appear fickle, if not even unjust, for subjecting people to a predestined fate they cannot hope to change. Perhaps the main problem with this view is that it gives rise to the idea that oppressive actions and conditions are God-created, and thus one's only option is to accept and endure them without any real hope.

Free Will in the Qadarites

The other movement in the early debate on predestination was the Qadarites. Those in this camp were dissatisfied on moral grounds with the Jabrites' position. What incensed them was the thought that denying free will implicated God in evil and impugned His righteous character. Speaking of the Qadarites, Mahmoud says, "At the heart of their philosopho-theological commitment to the notions of free will and human responsibility lay the notion of divine justice."

After all, how could a good, wise, and loving God predestine someone for evil and Hell? How could God initiate unjust action in the world? It didn't make sense to the Qadarites that God could be blamed for the injustice and suffering in the world. They found it intolerable to assess the presence of evil in the world as being a result of God's will. If people suffer, only humans could be blamed for that evil.

Nor did it make sense to them that God could assign someone to Hell who had no free choice. How could God will that humans act against his decrees and then discipline them for it? How could humans be held to account for unjust acts that they didn't willfully commit? It seemed more palatable to the Qadarites to believe that humans must be free and accountable for their actions because they have choice. Only free will creates the condition of accountability. Therefore, humans could be blamed for evil and God could be removed from seeming injustice. God's judgment had to be based on whether humans have chosen wickedness or goodness.

The Qadarites used Qur'anic verses that indicate the possibility of free will to combat the Jabrite position. They stressed texts that emphasize a person's choice to accept or reject God's word (18:29). Another text seemed clearly to state that belief is a human choice and a free possibility: "Then whosoever will, let him believe, and whosoever will, let him disbelieve" (18:29). They pointed to other verses that gave humans the capacity to rebel against their original choice and turn aside to disbelief after once having believed (e.g., 3.86). One text goes so far as to say, "Whatever good happens to you, it is from God; but whatever evil happens to you, it is from your own soul" (4:79). What sense would it make, they wondered, for God to ask an account on Judgment Day (16:39) of one's actions on earth if in fact humans had no option in the matter? In these texts, the Qadarites believed, the burden of responsibility is clearly placed on the individual who has free will to follow the righteous path of God or to renounce it.

With few exceptions, the Qadarites believed that it was impossible to say that God is the agent of human action. God helps humans to choose the right path. Summarizing Bishr b. al-Mu-tamir's view on omnipotence, Mahmoud writes:

He argued that God has infinite grace (lutf) that could, had He willed, turn all people into believers. God, however, is not obliged to grant humans this grace. Moreover, because God's goodness has no limit and as, at every given moment, there is always something better than what is good and more advantageous for humans, God is not obliged to do what is best for them. What God can do is to endow humans with the capability to make choices and to remove any impediments standing in their way by sending His prophets and revealing His messages.

The view here seems to be that God creates action but humans acquire (kasb) those actions of their own will. They are their own creators. Without wishing to negate divine decree, this camp asserted against the Jabrites that humans have the power of choice and are morally accountable.

The Qadarite position can be criticized for allowing too much freedom. How could God be omniscient if the choices humans make are not predestined, and therefore somehow already unalterably established in God's knowledge of the future? What does God's eternal decree mean if humans can alter its plot? This seems to move in a direction away from the Qur'anic evidence that suggests that God has known all things since the beginning. It places too much power in the hands of humans to control destiny and shape final events.

This debate was played out in the context of the repression rule of the Umayyad rulers who used the Jabrite denial of human freedom to gain warrant for their reign and to and commit crimes against their subjects. In this context, Hasan al-Basri wrote a document around 700 CE called Ris-la. In this epistle, he refutes the view that God is the only creator of man's actions and argues for human free will, which implies the possibility to challenge the ruling party.

Walt states that "the Ris-la makes it clear that he believed that human beings can choose freely between good and evil."

Walt presents a view of Hasan al-Basri's that gestures toward the notion that the Qur'an should be considered as a whole, not just proof-texted, and that, taken as a whole, the sacred text shows that "the determination of human activity by God follows on some act of human choice and is a recompense for it."

In other words, God determines what happens, but how a person responds to those events is not determined except by the person. This seems to be the beginning of the fusion of free will and predestination in early Islam.

As one of the first Islamic ascetics, Hasan provides a good transition to later mystics who were likewise challenged by the question of fate vs. freedom. His piety and poverty gave him time to reflect upon and to teach how to live by the precepts of the Qur'an. Apparently he lived in constant fear of facing God for his actions at the Day of Judgment, perpetually sad at his own failings and at the misery of the world he saw around him. He taught renunciation of the world and reliance upon the notion that, if one knew the Prophet's word, one would laugh less and weep more.

Its result in his life was constant pleading for divine assistance with hope, remaining abstinent, devoting himself to active holiness, and repudiating the world, which he thought was perishing and not worthy of care. This could be seen as a result of his advocacy for human choice, for the more freedom one possesses, the more anxiety one has at the chance of going astray. It is easy to see how such a view could sustain a sense of fear. One would perpetually be wondering whether or not they were acting in the will of God and worried about the consequences of their behavior. The freedom to act guarantees judgment in the end and one's eternal destiny hinges on how moral one has succeeded in acting and deciding. There is no sense in this view of eternal security. Hasan was never certain about where God's inscrutable decree was leading him. In his view, actions are motivated primarily by the desire to escape God's wrath through choosing what He deems and has decreed to be the right path, without ever knowing whether the prayers, fasts, vigils, and denials are doing the trick. This put limitations on his viewpoint and created the conditions out of which the mystics strove to produce a form of predestination that cohered more aptly with free will.

Determinism and Free Will in the Mystics

According to Schimmel, the entry point for understanding the Muslim mystic's comprehension of volition and predestination lies in the notion of covenant.

By this she means the promise of mutual love between human and God, which has the potential to take away the bite of determinism and eliminates the mystic's anxiety and fear about the divine judgment. The practices of the mystic are designed to bring the practitioner from an evil soul, distant from God, to a soul at peace with God. All the forms mysticism takes -- asceticism, discipline, love, meditation, ecstatic pleasure, and others -- have a bearing on the question of predestination and free will. for, just as with ethical responsibility, what good would it do to seek a higher communion with God if one is preordained to fail? The mystics struggled in the same vein as the Jabrites and Qadarites with respect to this question, but their focus was more toned toward the concept of suffering which they embedded in a concept of time.

"The goal of the mystic is to return to the experience of the 'Day of Alastu,' when only God existed, before He led future creatures out of the abyss of not-being and endowed them with life, love, and understanding so that they might face Him again at the end of time."

If so, how does one attain this goal without feeling the dread of ascetics like Hasan? Can a return back in time to primordial Paradise be accomplished while the ideas of one's eternal destiny and final judgment are still in mind? Schimmel argues that the mystics did not think this possible. They believed, in her view, that attainment of union with God, seeing the light of God and the beautific vision, is a matter of love and not fear. The mystic -- someone like R-bi ?a -- must forget about Hell or Paradise. The mystic must move beyond an asceticism like that of Hasan's, which aims only at achieving eternal reward. Through love rather than fear they must pass through the veil of the otherworld into joy. The ascetic way is purely negative and does not go far enough toward the all-embracing love that the mystic demands as the sole motive for their attainment of inner peace.