Mohebban Fatemeh

Everyone was excited to start the debate. This week we decided to talk about free will and predestination. A topic that most humans will question one day!!! Interestingly, most girls were not familiar with these terms. So we first explained what does free will and predestination means…

So we said that free will is when we have control over our lives and we make decisions of what we want to do and how we want our lives to be and Allah does not interfere with our decisions. And predestination means that Allah (SWT) is controlling our actions and deeds, and we do not have any control over our lives; because God has already determined what will happen to us. After we clarified the meaning of these terms, we divided ourselves into three groups. Those who believed that everything is predestined upon us, those who said that we have complete free will, and like always a middle group who believed that it’s a combination of both free will and predestination.

We said that most people start questioning their free will when they fail to achieve something…So to begin our discussion, one acted as a guest student who was not able to pass a class; despite all the hard studies and prayers she claimed she had done. Her claim was that “I studied, I prayed, if God wanted I would have passed. So Allah (S.W.T) chose for me to fail the class… it was predestined upon me to fail”.

Our “free will” believers responded to her“That YOU didn’t study hard “, the “predestined” believers said that “It was the wisdom ( hekmat) of Allah (S.W.T) for you not to pass” . So the reaction of our guest to this response was that “So the wisdom of Allah (S.W.T) was for to me to fail, how is that consistent with the mercy of Allah, when there is no benefit in failing a class?!”

Melika from our middle group came up with an amazing perspective about this. She reminded us of the “Virginia tech shooting” she said that maybe Allah wanted you to fail and not to go to another class next year, because then someone would have come in the class and shot you or something bad could have happened.” The point she was trying to make was that we never know what is behind the curtains. As Allah (S.W.T) says in the Quran that “I knows something that you do not know”, we can never figure out what will happen tomorrow. The story of Prophet Moses and Hazrate Khezr was wonderful way to elaborate on this topic. In this story whatever Hazrate Khezr did, was question by Prophet Moses, and by the end of the day, Prophet Moses realized that not everything is bad as it seems!!!

To further clarify our discussion, we used a scientific analogy to explain free will and predestination. Everything in the world has a system, and the system looks like a box. It provides an environment where molecules can move freely around in any direction they want; and every once in a while the molecules interact with each other and then they can change their directions. That system is like this world that has boundaries that was determined by Allah (S.W.T) , and we are like the molecules that are moving in any direction we want within this boundary. As molecules hit each other and change each other’s directions, we humans constantly encounter each other and we affect one another through our actions and deeds. We can either deviate someone from the right path or help someone to enter the right path. By the end of the day, it is the “ME” that determines his path and destiny.

Allah says in the Quran “There is no compulsion in religion. Certainly right has become clearly distinct from wrong, whoever rejects the devil and believes in Allah has firmly taken hold of a strong handle that never breaks….2:256) With this verse, Allah (S.W.T) is telling us that He has given us free will to make decisions for our lives. However, whichever path we choose, there will be some circumstances associated with that path. These circumstances are already determined by Allah(S.W.T) .

As If we have a pen in our hands, it’s our decision to either hold on to it or to drop it, that is our free will. However, if we decide to drop it, it will fall, because there is gravity that God has created and that is the “predestination” part of this world, the circumstance of dropping a pen is that the pen will fall. Same goes with everything else; if you study, you will succeed, if you don’t, you won’t. It’s your choice, your effort!!! Our lives are a combination of free will and predestination, so we have to try our best to make the most out of what Allah has given us.