The question/claim: "If destiny (qadar) exists, there is no free will. If God knows everything eternally and 'misleads whom He wills' (14:4), a person hasn't truly chosen; so punishing them is both unjust and contradictory."
Context: there is no single "classical view"
This is one of Islam's oldest theological debates, and there is no single classical answer; the schools differ by name:
- Jabriyya (line of Jahm b. Safwān): the human act is metaphorical, like a tree swaying in the wind; the real agent is God alone. It absolutizes divine sovereignty (14:4, "God misleads whom He wills") but struggles to explain responsibility — and was rejected by Sunni orthodoxy too.
- Muʿtazila (e.g. Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār): to protect divine justice (ʿadl), it holds the human "produces" his own act (khalq/tawlīd); God does not create evil acts, else punishment would be injustice. It cites 6:149 and 91:8 for a real human power of choice.
- Ashʿarī (Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī): the doctrine of kasb/iktisāb — God creates the act (khalq), the servant "acquires" (kasb) it; responsibility hangs on this kasb. Thus both "all by His will" and the servant's accountability are held together (interpretation).
- Māturīdī (Abū Manṣūr al-Māturīdī): close to Ashʿarī's kasb, but grants more weight to the human's partial will (juzʾī) and choice; God creates all the possibilities, the servant freely chooses which one to actualize (interpretation).
On divine foreknowledge, the Sunni line reported by al-Qurṭubī is clear: God's knowing a thing by His eternal knowledge does not prevent it from happening by the servant's own choice — knowing is not compelling (interpretation).
Two readings: classical theology and a Qur'an-centred reading
The Qur'an-centred / academic reading (including Mehmet Okuyan's "Free Will and Destiny according to the Qur'an") grounds responsibility in several verse clusters:
- Dual capacity: "By the soul and the One who proportioned it, and inspired it with its fujūr (inclination to wrong) and its taqwā (God-consciousness)." (91:7-8) The human is given both directions at once; salvation is the act of "the one who purifies it" (91:9), loss the act of "the one who corrupts it" (91:10) — the subject is the human (interpretation). Classical exegesis likewise reads 91:8 as an innate capacity to distinguish good from evil (Diyanet, al-Shams 1-10 tafsir).
- The way was shown, the choice left to the human: "We showed him the way; he is either grateful or ungrateful." (76:3); "Let whoever wills believe, and whoever wills disbelieve." (18:29)
- The human as agent: "God does not change a people's condition until they change what is in themselves." (13:11) — the starting point of change is tied to the human's inner world and action (interpretation).
- The decisive proof is God's, but no compulsion: "Say: the decisive proof (ḥujja) is God's; had He willed, He would have guided you all." (6:149) This line reads it thus: because God did not will to force faith, responsibility is meaningful; coerced faith would abolish the test (interpretation).
This reading also holds the "misleading" verses together with the free-choice verses: the misleading of 14:4 covers, per 2:26, "only the transgressors (fāsiqīn)" (a consequence of choice), and God does not approve disbelief (39:7) — so the "unjust/contradictory" charge ceases to be compulsory (interpretation).
Honest limit
Let us grant the objection its due: the logical tension is real, and the debate is not "closed." If God creates every act (Ashʿarī khalq) and knows the act eternally, whether the concept of "kasb" can carry responsibility on its own is disputable; indeed the Muʿtazila and many modern critics faulted Ashʿarī kasb as a merely nominal solution (interpretation). The text is two-directional: it holds both strong free-choice verses (18:29; 76:3; 91:9-10; 13:11) and strong divine-sovereignty verses (14:4; 6:149; 76:30, "you cannot will unless God wills"). An honest reading admits that holding the two together is a theological choice / taʾwīl, and that the text does not impose one philosophical solution. The limit is this: neither the claim "if there is qadar there is definitely no free will" nor the claim "the problem is entirely solved" is a necessary consequence of the text.
Related articles
- "If God misleads whom He wills, can a person be blamed?"
- The problem of evil: why does a good God allow suffering?
- Does God forgive every sin?
- The Qur'an's emphasis on reason and reflection
Source: Qur'anic verses (M. Okuyan meal). Presented soberly and respectfully, with a text/interpretation distinction.