Knowra Predestination in Islam Predestination in Islam Predestination in Islam is the doctrine that God’s knowledge, will, and decree encompass all events. It is debated alongside questions of human choice, responsibility, and divine justice.
Qadar : The Islamic doctrine that God measures, wills, and decrees all things. Qadar names the doctrine of divine decree at the center of this debate.
Qur’an : The central Islamic scripture, regarded by Muslims as divine revelation to Muhammad. Its passages on decree, guidance, and human action anchor Islamic arguments about predestination.
Ashʿarism : A Sunni theological school founded by Abu al-Hasan al-Ashʿari, emphasizing divine omnipotence and acquired human acts. Its account of kasb preserves responsibility while assigning creation of acts to God.
Taklif : The Islamic concept of moral and religious obligation imposed on accountable persons. Obligation presupposes that people can be held answerable for their actions.
Divine foreknowledge : Knowledge of events before they occur, attributed in theology to God. The debate asks whether knowing an act beforehand determines the person who performs it.
Qadariyya : An early Islamic theological tendency emphasizing human agency and responsibility. Its proponents resisted accounts that seemed to make people compelled in their actions.
Maturidism : A Sunni theological school founded by Abu Mansur al-Maturidi, known for its use of reason and account of human choice. It grants human choice a different role from the Ashʿari account while affirming divine decree.
Islamic eschatology : Islamic teachings about death, resurrection, judgment, and the afterlife. Predestination is tied to how divine judgment and final reward or punishment are understood.
Human free will : The capacity of human beings to choose among actions without those choices being wholly determined. It captures the agency that predestination must reconcile with divine decree.
Jabriyya : A label for early Islamic positions that stressed human compulsion under divine power and decree. The position marks the pole against which advocates of human agency defined their views.
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