CHAPTER TWO: ISLAM

CHAPTER TWO: ISLAM

DIVINE AND CREATED POWER:

THE QUESTION OF QADAR

2.1 Qadarism

The word qadar first of all means God’s determination of all events, including what people choose to do. We would expect a Qadarite to be someone who maintains that God determines everything, but in fact the term historically came to mean the opposite, namely, one who asserts that qadar belongs to man, and man himself determines his own acts, and not his Creator. Qadar in this sense refers to man’s power freely to choose.

Later Sunnism considered Qadarism a heresy, but in Umayyad times the issue was not so clear, and the debate went on right within the general proto-Sunnite movement, although some moderate Khârijites also took part. The debate is similar to that within Christianity concerning free will and grace. Does man require God’s help to do or think anything good in his sight, or to do anything at all, even evil things? If so, how can man be responsible for what he does?

2.1.1    Pre-Islamic Arabian thought

The pre-Islamic background to the discussion of qadar is important. In a land where rainfall and weather are completely erratic and people sometimes have plenty and other times nothing at all, it is natural for them to have a fatalistic outlook. Pre-Islamic poetry made an impersonal force out of Time (dahr, zamân) or Days. This force determined everything, especially man’s ajal (term of life) and rizq (sustenance). On the other hand the Arabs honoured human achievement, especially victory in battle, and took it as a sign of inherited excellence enabling a man to do wonderful things.

2.1.2    The Qur’ân

The Qur’ân retains the notions of ajal and rizq, but teaches that these are determined by God, not an impersonal Time (cf. 45:23-25; 57:22); moreover God’s decrees are not simply inevitable results of his omnipotence but also the execution of his designs of love and mercy for mankind. In its teaching concerning judgement on the Last Day, the Qur’ân implies human responsibility. This teaching, however, must be reconciled with the teaching that God can forgive or punish sins as he wishes (cf. 2:284; 3:129; 4:43,116; 5:18,40) or forgive because of persons he has given permission to intercede.^[1] Moreover God is said to “guide” (ahdâ) people or “lead them astray”(adalla) just as he pleases (cf. 6:125; 16:93), and in the same way help them to succeed (nasara) or abandon them (khadala). Other passages make God’s guidance or leading astray dependent on people’s previous good or evil actions (e.g. 2:26; 3:86).

2.1.3    In the Umayyad period

In the Umayyad period the debate had political overtones. The Umayyad authorities favoured predestinarian views in order to support their claim to divinely given authority. Their argument, especially as put forth by the poets Jarîr and al-Farazdaq, was that the Umayyads inherited the caliphate from 'Uthmân as his blood-heirs. God decreed (qadâ) their authority and made them his representatives on earth. The Umayyads claimed to be the caliphs of God (khalîfat Allâh) and his shadow on earth, in this way changing the word caliph from meaning “successor” (of MuHammad) to mean “deputy” (of God)as Adam was God’s deputy in Qur’ân 2:30, and David in 38:26; the Qur’ân speaks of this generation as both God’s “deputy” on earth and “successor” of previous generations, 6:165; 7:79,73; 10:14,73, 35:39). Everything the Umayyads did was therefore decreed by God and should be accepted as such by their subjects. In this context Qadarites were considered opponents of the regime, although in assessing their number we should be aware that the Umayyads tended to brand any of their opponents as Qadarites, and later Sunnites tried to minimize the number of Umayyad opponents who subscribed to Qadarism.

The alleged founder of Qadarism is Ma'bad al-Juhanî, who took part in the rising of Ibn-al-Ash'ath in 701 and was executed around 704; about all we know about him is that he had the reputation of being the first to discuss the question of qadar. Another important man is Ghaylân ad-Dimashqî, who was a critic of the regimes of 'Umar ibn-'Abdal'azîz (717-20) and of Hishâm (724-3); he had to flee to Armenia, but was captured and executed. His followers, however, helped the reformist Yazîd III to occupy the throne for a few months in 744. Ghaylân is reported to have combatted the popular opinion that evildoing is by God’s determination (qadâ wa-l-qadar). There were many more proto-Sunnites of Qadarite sympathies, but later Sunnite reports give us few names and only describe certain tendencies.

One Qadarite tendency was to say that good actions are from God, but evil actions are from man. Al-Ash'arî tells a story making fun of a Qadarite named Maymûn:

Maymûn had some money owed to him by Shu'ayb and demanded its repayment. Shu'ayb said to him, “I shall give it to you if God wills.” Maymûn said, “God has willed that you should give it to me now.” Shu'ayb said, “If God had willed it, I could not have done otherwise than give it to you.” Maymûn said, “God has willed what he commanded; what he did not command he did not will, and what he did not will he did not command...” The dispute was then carried to Ibn-'Ajarrad, who was then in prison (from 723 to 738), and he said in support of Maymûn, “We do not fix evil upon God.”

Another tendency was to say that both good and evil actions are from man, yet through an ability (istatâ'a) or power (qudra) given to man by God.

Still another tendency which said that man is the originator of both his good and evil actions gave the explanation that God does not know beforehand what any man will do, because if he knew beforehand he would be responsible.

Al-Hasan al-Basrî, because of his standing, was claimed by both Mu'tazilites (who agreed with Qadarism) and Sunnites as their forefather. His political action lended support to Qadarism in that he criticized authorities, yet his repudiations of the uprisings of Ma'bath and Ibn-al-Ash'ath give the opposite impression. In his Risâla he explains that the circumstantial events of men’s lives designated by ajal and rizq are determined by God, yet god cannot be blamed for misfortunes, since they are for the punishment of evildoers or the testing of good people. Man, however is responsible for choosing good or evil, because God has given him the power (qudra) to choose. Al-Hasan explained that God’s determination (qadar is the same as his command (amr), and that he influences human choice only by commanding good or forbidding evil. Predestinarian Qur’ân verses such as 16:93, “God leads astray whom he wishes and guides whom he wishes”, al-Hasan explains in concordance with other Qur’ân verses to mean, “God sends astray the evildoers”; in other words, God’s action always follows man’s free choice of good or evil. Regarding Qur’ân 6:35, “Had God wished, he could have guided them”, al-Hasan admits that God could compel men to believe, but he does not in fact do so. Al-Hasan al-Basrî’s position is thus fundamentally a form of Qadarism.

The debate between the Qadarite identification of God’s will with his command and the Determinist identification of his will with what actually happens is based on an apparent conflict between God’s goodness and his power. If God causes evil to happen, then he is not good. If evil happens independently of God, then God is not all-powerful.

Predestinarian views became less identified with support for Umayyad rule as it became weaker; so that the traditional Arab predestinarian outlook was able to reassert itself and pious men could oppose Qadarism without appearing pro-Umayyad. The Hadîth movement in the early 8th century was strongly predestinarian. Determination of the circumstantial aspects of man’s life (ajal and rizq) is expressed, for example, by the Hadîth: “What reaches you could not possibly have missed you, and what misses you could not possibly have reached you.” Determination of human choice is expressed in the following Hadîth: “[The Prophet said:] By God, one of you will work the work of the people of the Fire until there is between him and it less than an arm’s length, and the book [of destiny] will overtake him and he will work the work of the people of the Garden and enter it; and another man will work the work of the people of the Garden until between him and it there is less than an arm’s length, and then the book will overtake him and he will work the work of the people of the Fire and enter it.” Still other Hadîths assert that if anyone dies without believing in God’s determination of all things he will go to Hell. On the other hand, a very few traditions condemn fatalistic inactivity and urge people to action.

Opposition to Qadarism also appeared, as later theologians relate, in the objection that it was Christian-inspired. The stories of christian influence on Ma'bath and others may be true, because Christianity does emphasize human responsibility (although the all-importance of grace is also affirmed), yet the debate about qadar took place in an Islamic setting because of questions raised by the Qur’ân itself, and the solutions proposed by all the parties had an Islamic form and used Qur’ânic concepts.

2.1.4    Mu'tazilite Qadarism

When the 'Abbâsids came to power in 750 Qadarism was transformed. It was no longer a symbol of political opposition, and was absorbed by the Mu'tazilite movement, which for a time was officially endorsed by the caliphs.

Mu'tazilite Qadarism was expressed in their teaching of justice ('adl), the second of their five principles, and “the promise and the threat”, their third principle. These principles assert man’s mastery over his own acts, on the basis that God would be unjust if he punished or rewarded people for doing things for which they were not responsible. The Mu'tazilites interpreted Qur’ânic phrases indicating God’s “leading astray” as his declaration that sinners are astray; his “guidance” means the sending of prophets with warnings and promises, and he gives “help” as a reward to those who are good or because he knows they will use it well. In every case predestination of human acts is avoided.

The Mu'tazilites tried to explain human freedom by positing a power (qudra, quwwa, or istatâ'a) to act. This is not merely simultaneous with the act, as the determinists said, but precedes the act. The Mu'tazilites did not define this power precisely; it simply stood for the internal decision which precedes an external act. They were concerned with affirming that man is master of his external acts, not with giving a psychological analysis of the freedom of the internal decision.

Besides defending human responsibility, the Mu'tazilites tried to combat popular belief in the determination of ajal and rizq. In the case of murder, they said that the victim’s ajal was the time God foreknew that someone would kill him; in other words, free human activity is involved. The Mu'tazilites were bolder in denying the determination of rizq; they asserted, contrary to an-Najjâr, that a man who eats stolen food is consuming another man’s rizq, and not his own, since God did not determine the stealing.

The Mu'tazilites’ critics confronted them with a series of problems. One of these concerned the consequences of an act, because of the problem of responsibility for chain effects which may go on even after the first agent is dead. If a man shoots an arrow at his enemy but dies before the arrow reaches, did a dead man kill a living man? Mu'ammar said that the consequences belong to whatever directly brings them about; thus the arrow killed the man. Bishr disagreed and introduced the concept of tawallud, or “generated effects”, which for him all belong to the first agent; he admitted that the dead man killed his living enemy. Abû-l-Hudhayl said the same, but added the principle that a man is responsible only for the foreseen consequences of his action. The preoccupation of all these thinkers was to explain responsibility only for the external act, since “the man’s intention (irâda) cannot be called killing until the arrow reaches the opponent and his spirit leaves him”.^[2]

Since the principle of justice implied that evil should not be fixed on God in any way, the Mu'tazilites tried to answer various other problems. One was that had God given some people extra favour (lutf), they would not have gone to Hell. Bishr ibn-al-Mu'tamir admitted that, since God is all powerful, he could always do something better than what he has done; he does no evil by not giving all the favour he could give. Abû-l-Hudhayl and an-Nazzâm disagreed, and said God must always do what is best or perfect (aslah), although there are various ways of perfection he could choose from; whatever God does has to be interpreted as a best or perfect thing.

Another problem was why does God let children and animals suffer, when they are not responsible. some explained that they suffer for the benefit of others, such as the warning of adults, and they will be compensated by being given entry into Paradise by a special act of God’s generosity. (tafaddul). This thought was developed by al-Jubbâ’î (d. 915), who maintained that God is bound to do what is best in matters of religion, since his command for men to believe in him would be meaningless if he did not provide the means to obey it. The means includes the sending of prophets to instruct and also the interior movement of a person’s will to obey. The latter gift is called a grace (lutf) and it makes obeying God easier, yet it does not compel the recalcitrant nor is it strictly necessary for those who are inclined to obey. In fact, the more grace God gives, the less the human input and the less the reward. It would be better to let a man struggle on his own and earn a great reward than to have the way made easy by grace and thereby make him deserve less reward.

Abû-Hâshim (d. 933), son and successor of al-Jubbâ’î, reverted from his father’s teaching about God’s free generosity and returned to the older Mu'tazilite teaching that man believes in God and obeys him by his own efforts only and God is obliged to treat him according to the norms of strict justice.

A final problem is the eternity of punishment in Hell; what good does it do? Al-Iskâfî said that sinners are punished to warn the sinners and unbelievers of this world.

The Mu'tazilites’ replies to all these questions, however, were not very satisfactory, and their opponents continued to multiply objections and put them in an embarrassing state of defense.

2.2 Ash'arite determinism

Dirâr ibn-'Amr (d.c. 800) was originally counted as a Mu'tazilite, but differed from them on the question of free will. He said that God determines man’s acts, but man “acquires” them, so that the same action can be attributed to both God and man. The concept of “acquisition” (kasb), which seems to have originated with Dirâr, became an important part of Ash'arite theology. Dirâr explained that man acquires his acts, and is therefore responsible for them, because they proceed from an ability (istatâ'a) which God creates in him enabling him to choose.

Husayn an-Najjâr, who lived in the time of al-Ma’mûn, was a vigorous anti-Mu'tazilite and developed many of the views of Dirâr. He is strongly deterministic whenever he speaks of goodness or evil in the world or in human choice. Thus he accepts the idea of acquisition (kasb), but says that the ability (istatâ'a) to act exists only at the time of the act, not before or after.

Ibn-Karrâm (d. 869) was a sûfî and a preacher with many followers. Known as Karrâmites, these were influential chiefly in Persia. They did not have a great impact on the mainstream of Islamic thought, yet they contributed to a Sunnî consensus on some points. One of these was their view on istatâ'a which was the same as that held by an-Najjâr, just mentioned.

The question of qadar is one of the focal points of al-Ash'arî’s opposition to Mu'tazilism. Al-Ash'arî repeats the idea developed by the above-mentioned anti-Mu'tazilite thinkers, that God determines man’s acts and gives him the power to act only at the time of acting. The power to act gives man the appearance of freedom, but fundamentally he is not free, because the power does not cause but only occasions the act. Yet al-Ash'arî says that this power is the basis of kasb and gives him a title to claim the act as his own.

2.2.1    Atomistic occasionalism

The Ash'arite school developed the idea of determinism, basing it on the cosmic principle of atomism. The idea goes back to pre-Socratic Greek philosophy and was developed by Democritus. It was introduced to the Muslim world by al-Kindî (c. 840) and taken up by Hishâm ibn-al-Hakam (d.c. 805) and Dirâr ibn-'Amr. Al-Bâqillânî (d. 1013) popularized atomistic occasionalism which means that all physical beings are simply gatherings or clouds of atoms with particular qualities, and that all of these last only an instant and must constantly be recreated by God. They therefore have no power to act on their own, but all apparent activity or causality that seems to be theirs is really God’s direct action, and they are only the occasion. For instance, the sun does not cause heat and light, but God does so directly when the sun happens to be shining.

The same idea was reiterated and systematized by al-Ghazâlî (d. 1111) and other Ash'arites. MuHammad as-Sanûsî (d. 1490) says in his al-'Aqîda al-wustâ:^[3]

For the same reason, you become aware of the impossibility of anything in the world producing any effect whatsoever, because that entails the removal of that effect from the power and will of our majestic and mighty Protector, and this necessitates the overcoming of something from eternity by something which came into being, which is impossible. Therefore a created power has no effect on motion or rest, obedience or disobedience, or on any effect universally, neither directly nor through induction. (n. 35)

For that matter, food has no effect on satiety, nor water on moistening the land, growing plants, or on cleaning, nor fire on burning, heating or cooking food, nor clothing or shelter on covering or repelling heat and cold, nor trees on shading, nor the sun and the rest of the heavenly bodies on illumination, nor a knife on cutting, nor cold water on diminishing the intensity of heat of other water, as neither has the latter in diminishing the intensity of cold in the former. Conclude by analogy from these examples that whenever God acts in his ordinary way he makes something exist on the occasion of another. but know that it is from God from the start, without the other accompanying things having any intermediacy or effect on it, neither by their nature, nor by a power or peculiarity placed in it by God, as many ignorant people think. More than one sound imâm has recalled that there is agreement that whoever holds that those things produce an effect by their nature is an unbeliever. (n. 39)

       The total lack of power in creatures applies also to human choice. The same as-Sanûsî maintains that man has a “power” to choose, but this power has no effect on his act whatsoever. It merely gives him a feeling of ease and freedom, whereas in reality he is forced (n. 37). God rewards obedience and punishes disobedience by his own free decision, not because of any obligation of justice (n. 38). As-Sanûsî’s position is in line with Ash'arite theological tradition, even though Qur’ânic texts can be cited in favour of both human freedom and divine determination.^[4]

2.2.2    The basis of Ash'arite thinking

We have seen how Ash'arite thought is wedded to atomistic occasionalism ,but that is not the real starting point of Ash'arism. The starting point is a particular understanding of the shahâda, the fundamental statement of Islamic belief. The shahâda begins: “Lâ ilâha illâ llâh”, “There is no divinity but Allâh”. This is an exclusive statement and is meant to exclude the theoretical existence of other divinities and the practical worship of such. The latter is the sin of shirk, associating other divinities with God. As the Ash'arites understand the shahâda, whatever pertains to God is exclusively his and cannot be shared with a creature. This applies particularly to the attribute of power. God alone is sovereign and powerful; there is no natural power in creation; otherwise creatures would be part of God, which is the meaning of pantheism.

Why do the Ash'arites say that nothing divine can be shared with creation? Briefly, it s because they think only in terms of Plato’s analogy of attribution. For Plato, only the ideal world is real; the sensible world is just a shadowy imitation, not really participating in the nature of the ideal world. If we are to be consistent, such thinking should conclude that only the ideal world (or god exists, and everything else is no-being, but neither Plato nor the Ash'arites theologians went that far.

Aristotle completely rejected Plato’s theory of an ideal world, but did accept the existence of God and of other spirits. Also, although eh did not carry his theological speculation very far, he laid the basis for understanding how divine qualities can be shared with creatures. This is in his discussion of analogy in Book 5 of his Metaphysics. There he says that “things are one analogically which have the same relations as something else to another object”. In his commentary on this passage, Thomas Aquinas says that analogy can be taken in two ways: 1) Two things can have the same relationship to a third thing, such as “healthy urine” which is a sign of health, and “healthy medicine” which is a cause of health; both are related to the health of an animal. 2) Two things can have the same relationship to different things, such as calmness of the sea and stillness of the air; in this case we have four terms.^[5] In this passage Thomas set the distinction between analogy of “proportion” or “attribution” and analogy of “proportionality”.

Applying this concept to God, Thomas maintained in his Disputed questions on Truth^[6] and his Disputed questions on power^[7] that the analogy characterizing the relationship between God and creatures cannot be one of attribution, because we do not say God is being and goodness because he is the cause of being and goodness in creatures, since this would imply that real goodness and being is principally in creatures and God must be defined in relationship to them. Rather it is the other way around. So Thomas opts for analogy of proportionality: As God has being, goodness etc. in an infinite way, so creatures have these in a finite way. Any positive attribute observed in creation may be applied to God in a “superexcellent way”, provided it does not imply a defect or limitation, such as materiality. Names such as “the Sun of justice” are not proper analogical expressions, but simply metaphors, and are sometimes categorized as “analogies of improper proportionality”.

In the Summa theologiae^[8] and in the Summa contra gentiles^[9] Thomas passes over the analogy of proportionality which involves four terms, and returns to a revised version of the two term analogy of attribution. Using the same illustration of “health”, this time medicine is not defined as “healthy” merely because it cause health in an animal, but because it has a power to heal which is prior in nature to the health that is in the animal. So, although our knowledge of God’s goodness stems from our knowledge of created goodness, his own goodness does not consist merely in causing goodness outside himself, but in possessing goodness essentially and in a more eminent way. For Thomas, then, both proportionality and attribution are two valid forms of analogy in language about God.

To look at the relationship of creatures to God exclusively in terms of analogy of attribution logically leaves no being or reality to creation. To see creatures as sharing in divine qualities in any way (See Wisdom 13:1-6; Romans 1:19-20, 2 Peter 1:4), we must make use of the analogy of proportionality. That is what the Ash'arites failed to do.

^[2]Al-Khayyât, Kitâb al-intisar, chapter 49.

^[3]The following citations are from my Muslim theology as presented by M. b. Yûsuf as-Sanûsî, especially in his al-`Aqîda al-wustâ, Ph.D. thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1970.

^[4]Cf. J. Jomier, "La tout-puissance de Dieu et les créatures dans le Coran", Mélanges de l’Institut Dominicain d’Etudes Orientales, 16 (1983), pp. 31-55.

^[5]In Metaphysicorum libros commentarium, liber 5, lectio 8.