In the Book of Reliance in the Iḥyāʾ (1) he writes:

“Everything that Allah has apportioned among His servants—of provision and lifespan, of faith and unbelief—is sheer justice; within the realm of possibility there is nothing at all finer or more complete than it. Had the Exalted One possessed the power to reserve it yet not bring it forth, that would have been miserliness and injustice.”

Abū Bakr ibn al-ʿArabi says in his Commentary on the Beautiful Names: “Our teacher Abū Ḥāmid uttered a momentous statement which the scholars criticised. He said:

‘Within Allah’s power there is nothing more wondrous than this world in its precision and wisdom. If there were within His power something more marvellous or more perfectly ordered than it, and He did not create it, that would amount to withholding generosity—and that is impossible.’

He then remarked: ‘The rejoinder is that he went too far in affirming the unrestricted scope of the Divine power and in denying any limit to the entities determined by it—but only with respect to the particulars of this created world, not to anything beyond it. This is a purely philosophical view by which the philosophers sought to invert realities, attributing perfection, for example, to life, and existence to hearing and sight, so that no path would remain in people’s hearts to what is correct. The ummah has unanimously rejected this doctrine and declared with one voice: the things subject to decree are without limit for every potential existence, not merely every actual existence, for the power is capable of all that.’

He added: ‘This is a misstep with no escape (2), a slippery place where no one can keep his footing. Though we are but a drop from his ocean, we refute him only with his own words.’”

I said: “So let any reply be made with courtesy and calm.”

Among the other points for which he was taken to task is his statement: “Predestination possesses a secret that we have been forbidden to reveal.” What secret, then, does predestination contain?