Q is for Qadr
Qadr is more of a concept in Islam than simply a word. It is the Islamic belief and acknowledgement that God has control over all things. Everything that happens, everything that lives, everything that was ever created, God controls it all and allows it to be.
At the same time, Muslims believe in the concept of free will. This is something that I have noticed many Muslims (and non-Muslims) have trouble wrapping their heads around. How can we have free will when God controls everything?
For some reason, I have never had a problem with this concept. Maybe it’s because I learned it at such a young age, when my mind was more moldable. A teacher of mine once said that when talking about Qadr, he finds that his younger students rarely have a problem with the concept. More often it is his adult and older students who have so many questions relating to Qadr and free will.
Part of how it makes sense in my head is due to one understanding about humans: we don’t know everything.
Often, when talking about God and the unseen, people come in to the discussion with the assumption that we as humans have gotten to the point where we know everything there is to know about the world.
That is simply not true. The fact that scientists are continuously discovering new things every day proves that there is so much out there that we don’t know and may never come to understand.
That is precisely why I have no problem with both Qadr and free will existing simultaneously. To my understanding, we humans have the ability to act out of our own free will. At the same time, the choices we make and the actions we do only come to be by the will of God. Both concepts exist in a way that is bigger than us, in a way that we don’t have the capability of understanding.
And that is fine with me. I’m just a human. How could I expect myself to understand the workings of the being who created the very concept of “concept” itself? It just doesn’t make sense to try to define something that exists beyond this world in worldly terms.
Just because something doesn’t makes sense in our finite minds doesn’t mean it can’t exist.
Islam On My Mind 
“Just because something doesn’t makes sense in our finite minds doesn’t mean it can’t exist.” That’s the argument Christians make for the Trinity. Are you saying that qadr doesn’t make sense or God doesn’t make sense or something else?
I’m saying that according to the way the world we live in works (as in Earth/dunya), one Earthly being cannot truly have free will if it is being controlled by another Earthly being. So, the fact that God is controlling us while we claim to be controlling ourselves doesn’t make sense. However my argument for why it can still exist is because the whole concept of free will and God’s control exists beyond what “works” in this world.
I have to ask. Why on this day, when ISIS has beheaded Christians, would you try to encourage people to understand Islam ?
We don’t understand how people can be so evil who claim to follow Islam in the most disciplined manner?
Whether or not ISIS exists doesn’t change my beliefs about Islam. People practiced Islam peacefully before ISIS, and they still practice it today. Just because there is a group of people out there committing mass murder in their crazed perception of a religion doesn’t mean we should stop practicing the religion altogether. In fact, it is people like ISIS misrepresenting Islam that makes it all the more important for the rest of us Muslims to help people understand what Islam really is, which is the total opposite of the atrocities they are doing.
And to be honest, I as a Muslim am at just as much of a loss as you for how people so evil can claim to follow the same faith as me. The way they are acting is NOT how I was taught Muslims are supposed to act.
I appreciate you asking this in a respectful manner and I hope I answered your question. The point of my blog is simply to share my own reflections as a practicing Muslims. Considering that the members of ISIS consist of .001-.002% of all Muslims worldwide, I didn’t think they had any relevance to this blog.
I believe in free will, and in everything having been predetermined. We’re free to choose what to do, even if it’s already written that this will happen. Humans are able to choose good just as much as we can choose evil, and it’s always good when we’re able to use free will to choose goodness and righteousness. It doesn’t make evil right, or explain why awful things have happened, but that’s also a part of humans having been given free will.
Well said. 🙂