Freedom and Determinism

What is realization or discovery? It is the result of deep contemplation. When anyone ponders over nature and thinks about himself, he discovers that there is a great mind behind this creation. His study, his observation and contemplation, all lead him to believe that there is this great reality. After this realization, he feels that he has no option but to proclaim the existence of God. The next step is to aver there is no God but the one God.

This declaration inevitably follows surrender before God. One who makes such a declaration not only accepts the truth but he becomes a worshipper of God and a follower of God’s guidance. His thinking, his speech, his behaviour are all coloured in the dye of God. He adopts a God-oriented life. This faith, or iman, revolutionizes one’s thinking. It brings about a sea-change in one’s life.

Faith, or iman, is like a seed. A seed is a growing thing. It grows and grows till it becomes a big tree, with roots, trunk, branches, leaves, flowers and fruits. All these are potential parts of the seed. A tree is an actualization of a seed’s potential.

The same is true of faith, or iman. Faith is like a spiritual seed. When the seed is implanted in a personality, it starts growing. There is everything in this spiritual seed, but everything is the form of potential. When it finds its place in one’s mind, it starts growing and all those things that are part of the divine religion begin to unfold. This process continues till the individual becomes a divine person in the fullest sense of the word.

Faith, or iman, revolutionizes one’s thinking. It brings about a sea-change in one’s life.

Although faith, or iman, is full of potential, it does not grow automatically like the seed of a tree. It requires great endeavour and anyone who wants his personality to grow, must start an ideological struggle. Without this, no one can grow into a full-fledged tree of the divine religion.

An ideological struggle means contemplation, introspection, observation, and developing the ability to draw lessons from different kinds of experiences, accompanied, of course by a study of divine literature. All these processes are paths to spiritual development and when one follows this course he surely will reach his destination. The growth of a tree is controlled by the external laws of physics, but the growth of a divine personality is a self-controlled phenomenon.

These Quranic verses lay emphasis on the supremacy of God Almighty.

But this does not mean that in this world everything is pre-determined and man has no choice of his own.

Everyone enjoys freedom and everyone is living with his or her freedom. The way one feels about what one does, or chooses not to do, is in itself testimony to there being no compulsion; everyone does as he or she pleases. In the light of one’s own experience, one feels oneself to be a free person. Human beings do, in fact, enjoy complete freedom, but this freedom is a matter of their own sense of free-will. It is everyone’s own feeling or experience that he or she is not living under any compulsion or constraints.

Then what is the equation between man and God? In this world everything was created by God, and if man wants to do anything, he needs many or all of the components of the human life support system, such as sunlight, water, air, minerals, oxygen, etc. All these things are part of the earthly infrastructure and this infrastructure is under the total control of God. So, while freedom of choice is man’s privilege, the required infrastructure is provided by God.

So, it is a fifty-fifty situation. Man has every right to think or plan but, when he tries to execute his planning, he has no other option than to use the divine infrastructure. In terms of free-will, he enjoys complete freedom, but in terms of infrastructure, he is completely under God’s command.

There are three categories of Muslim scholars, each of whom thinks differently on this subject—Qadriya, Jabriya and Wasatiya. Wasatiya scholars believe in the above equation, that is, in terms of intention and planning, man is completely free, but in terms of implementation or actualization, man has no freedom. He is compelled to find support from God.

The above equation is a completely rational one. Man enjoys free-will in the complete sense of the word, but he has no power to create an infrastructure such as the life-support system or any of the other things needed for the execution of his plans. So, God Almighty has provided him with everything that is required in a good infrastructure. Man has total liberty to exercise his free-will in exploiting this infrastructure and, in doing so, experiences no restriction whatsoever.

Man’s every action is being recorded by the angels of God and according to this record, a person will be either rewarded or punished on the Day of Judgement. As regards man’s accountability, only one criterion will apply: whether man exercised his freedom in a proper manner or he misused his freedom.