Dear Hadi,
In Islam, can Allah decree a haram thing for a person in his destiny, i.e. make it obligatory? Or is this not possible, since Allah would never force a person to do a haram thing?
For example: There are many brothers who have done haram things and gone to prison only to get the knowledge of Islam and convert.
Another example: If a young Muslim man becomes addicted to drugs at 13 (as a child, so to speak), he tries not to take it all these years (because he knows it is haram), but can never stop himself, and always finds his way back to drugs. He spends years using drugs and committing sins. One day he is suddenly able to turn away from it and uses his years of knowledge that he has gained in this area to educate younger Muslims about drug use and to get them away from it or prevent them from getting into it. But in order for him to gain all this knowledge, he naturally had to go through this haram path and gain practical knowledge.
Is it possible that Allah deliberately and intentionally makes haram activities obligatory for some Muslims so that they can gain knowledge and practical experience and later use it for themselves or the good of the Ummah or for a higher goal? (If God has made it obligatory for him to manifest this haram thing in his destiny, what about its punishment, has this thing become halal for him because it serves a higher purpose?)
Or is it a logical fallacy to say that a God who forbids things can decree those things for you?
Thanks.
Dear Reader,
Thank you for your wonderful question. It is a very serious and complex philosophical question, so please forgive our lengthy answer.
You raise the age-old issue of predestination versus free will, which has been an area of active debate not only among Muslims, but among all religionists. For example, John Calvin and the Calvinists held that God predestined people to heaven or hell, and their deeds conformed with, and confirmed that predestination. Meanwhile, St. Augustine believed in free will, with God’s foreknowledge.
In Islam, the tension between the two notions – that everything is determined by God (including our actions, good and bad) versus that human beings have free will to act – is evident in the primary sources.
For example, the Quran in the first part of verse 29 of surat al-Kahf (Quran 18:29) states:
“And say: ‘The truth [has now come] from your Sustainer: let, then, him who wills, believe in it, and let him who wills, reject it.’”
This seems to be an unequivocal statement of free will, and conforms with our notion that we are created to be tested, and that the underpinning of that test is our free will to choose good or evil.
On the other hand, we have the strong hadith of the Prophet (pbuh) in the collections of both Bukhari and Muslim, which states: “The creation of each one of you is in his mother’s womb for forty days or nights, then as a clot for a similar period, then as a piece of flesh for a similar period, then the angel is sent to it to announce four decrees. He writes his provision, his life span, his deeds, and whether he is blessed or damned. Then, he breathes the soul into it. Verily, one of you acts with the deeds of the people of Paradise until he is not but an arm’s length away from it, yet the decree overtakes him, he acts with the deeds of the people of Hellfire and thus enters Hellfire. And one of you acts with the deeds of the people of Hellfire until he is not but an arm’s length away from it, yet the decree overtakes him, he acts with the deeds of the people of Paradise and thus enters it.”
This hadith says that our deeds are decreed, as well as our final destiny (blessed or damned), to the point that a person could be very close to heaven but his decree overtakes him and he starts acting with deeds of the people of hell, and ends up there.
The philosophical contradiction led to some very different viewpoints among early Muslims. Most Muslims try to reconcile the two notions of Divine decree and free will, but two diametrically opposite movements did spring up, each of which took an extreme side. The Qadarites posited that man is entirely free, and that God neither controls nor even knows his actions until they happen. The other group, known as the Jabarites, believed that God decreed all actions, including the good and evil among them because they both served His purpose.
The Jabarites, for example, would answer you in the affirmative, that God could will a person to sin, because that may serve some bigger purpose in general (e.g., to test other people), or for that person specifically, so that he may, for example, later repent and help others, as you illustrated in the example of drug use.
With that background, let us turn to your specific question. Our honest answer is that we do not know. We believe that this issue is within the realm of Divine knowledge, and that our minds are too limited to resolve the tension between the opposing points of view. We think that our limitations are built-in, rooted in our limited conception of time as a linear flow from past to present, and rooted in our binary understanding of things, e.g., either we have free will or we don’t.
Having said that, we will give you our honest opinion, underscoring again that we do not know, and that Allah SWT knows best. However, before we do that, we want to refer you to a wonderful article from the Yaqeen Institute which does a beautiful job grappling with this dilemma. We will use some of the material it presents, although our viewpoint differs a bit from that espoused in the article: Predestination vs. Free Will in Islam: Understanding Allah's Qadr
Certainly, as Muslims, we all believe in “qadar,” which is one of the articles of faith. This word literally means measure, or power, but can be figuratively translated in a variety of ways, such as fate, or destiny, or what has been pre-ordained by Divine decree. We see this notion clearly in the Quran (57:22):
“No calamity befalls on the earth or in yourselves, except (that is inscribed) in a book (of Decrees), before We bring it into existence. Surely, that is easy for Allah.”
The question becomes, does this predestination apply to our actions, or just to the events that occur in our lives?
It is difficult to pithily summarize the expansive article from the Yaqeen Institute we referenced above, but a partial summary of the viewpoint presented there is that everything is under God’s decree, including our actions, but that since God has power over all things, He can change that decree based upon choices which we make by our free will: “While all things have already been decreed from eternity, Allah has the power to change destiny based upon the choices we make.” This viewpoint takes a middle road between the extremes of the Qadarites and the Jabarites.
This view certainly has merit, and is supported by Prophetic hadiths which show that destiny, or qadar, can be changed. For example, it is reported in the hadith collection of Al-Tirmidhi that the Prophet (pbuh) said, “Nothing repels the Divine decree but supplication, and nothing increases life span but righteousness.”
Also, the Prophet, as a part of his supplications used to say, asking Allah SWT, “and save me from the evil of what You have decreed. Truly, You decree and none can decree against You.”
This shows that while destiny does exist by Divine decree, that decree is also open to change by the will of the One who decreed it in the first place.
While we agree with the above to a great extent, our point of view is a bit different. If we confine ourselves to the instinctive common-sense perspective of linearity of time and a binary approach to the issue of free will (either we have it or we don’t), we believe in qadar, but only as it retlates to events that occur in our lives, and not to our actions. To clarify, we believe that these events are pre-destined, things such as illness, catastrophe, etc., which we normally think of as “the tests” which face humans. We believe that these things are indeed open to change if God so wills, for example, as an answer to sincere prayers, but are, on the whole, destined. We believe that how we react to these tests is where free will comes in. Our reactions are not pre-destined or decreed, but are up to us, and it is on those that we are judged (and God knows best).
On that basis, we do not believe that God decrees or wills anyone to commit sins. Certainly, people may be put in different circumstances, such as having a parent who is a drug addict, making them more likely to use drugs themselves (with scientific studies estimating that the genetic contribution to substance abuse is in the range of 50-60%). In that case, they are more predisposed to substance abuse, but ultimately, the choice is theirs. This, in some sense, balances free will with pre-destination. But once again, to be very specific in answering your question, we do not believe that God wills anyone to sin. We base this not just on our general philosophical perception of the goodness of God, but also on hadiths of the Prophet (pbuh) such as: “I answer Your call with happiness, and goodness in its entirety belongs to You alone, and evil is not befitting of You.” In another saying, the Prophet said of God, “And evil is not attributable to You.”
Also, the Quran makes the same point in verses such as:
“Whatever good happens to thee is from God; and whatever evil befalls thee is from thyself.” (Quran 4:79)
“Verily, straight is my Sustainer's way” (11:56)
“Say, ‘Truly God commands not indecency. Do you say of God that which you know not?’” (7:28)
We said that the point of view we have expressed is the best we can do when we confine ourselves to the ordinary binary perspective, i.e., either we have free will or we don’t. That sort of thinking is so instinctive that it is almost impossible to see beyond it. However, in truth, we believe the situation is more nuanced, and that our actions, including our will and our intentions, are subordinate to God’s will. However, we do not understand the relationship, and believe that it is beyond human comprehension.
For example, in Surat Al-Ahqaf, part of verse 15 is a supplication where-in the human being calls on God, “My Lord inspire me to give thanks for Thy blessing with which Thou hast blessed me and hast blessed my parents, and that I may work righteousness such that it pleases Thee…” (Quran 46:15).
Here, the supplicant is praying for God to inspire him (or her) to be grateful and to be righteous. If they are praying for this, that means they already want it, and if our will, intent and actions are entirely free, there would be no need to pray for God to inspire us (or in other translations, grant us) these attitudes and actions. This prayer hints that the relationship is more subtle than a binary conception of free will would lead us to believe. Even more explicitly, we see the following verses:
“But you shall not will, unless God, the Lord of the worlds, wills.” (Quran 81:29).
“This is a reminder. Let whoever wills, take a path to his Lord. But you cannot will (to do so) unless Allah wills. Indeed, Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise.” (Quran 76:29-30).
In these verses, it becomes clear that our will is contingent upon God willing for us, or allowing us to will. Of course, our human capacity cannot grasp how this notion can be entirely true, and that yet we also have free will, as the Quran states elsewhere.
However, if modern science has taught us anything, it is that our instinctive, definite binary understanding of the world is actually false. There is no better example than quantum mechanics, which has now proven that things like electrons are not binary. In the famous “double-slit” experiment, we think that an electron (a material particle), when fired at a barrier that has two slits, has to go through one slit or the other. Also, electrons have a physical property known as spin, which can exist in only one of two states, so called “up” or “down.” Thus, an electron has to have one spin or the other. Quantum mechanics has shown that this view of the world, which is entirely common-sense and definite to us, is actually wrong. An electron does not go through one slit or the other – rather, it lives in a state that physicists call “superposition,” an amalgam of going through each of the slits. Similarly, an electron lives in a superposition of both up-spin and down-spin, until we measure the spin, then it takes a definite value. That is how the world really works, and our binary conception is just an illusion, but one we cannot shake. So much so that the physicist Richard Feynman said, “I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics.” He, by the way, won a Nobel Prize in physics for his work in quantum mechanics.
So, at the end of the day, we believe that our free will and God’s will regarding our free will exist in a superposition i.e. as human beings, we simultaneously have free will and we don't, since we can will only when God wills. Can we really understand what that means? No, not any more than we can understand how superposition in quantum mechanics works. What we do is use whatever measure of free will we have to ask God to will us to guidance, and we believe that the decisions He (SWT) makes regarding our will are not in the least bit arbitrary, for at the end of verse 76:30 above, after saying that our ability to will is contingent upon God’s will, the Quran states “Indeed, Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise.”
Regarding the person you discussed, we do not believe that God forced him to walk the path he did (and God knows best), but maybe God predisposed him to it, and then because of his repeated efforts to get off the path -- showing that he truly wanted something different -- God put a light for him at the end of that path that led him out.
That is our hope for all of us, isA.
In peace.