Categories of People with Respect to Faith in Divine Decree

Section

• Now that it has become clear that a human being must believe both in the divine decree and in the Sacred Law, know that, in this matter, people split into two divisions:

The first division: the people of guidance and success. They believe in Allah’s ordainment and decree in the four levels previously outlined, and they also believe in His legislation; they comply with His commands and prohibitions and believe in the recompense that follows from that. They do not use His decree as an excuse against His law, nor His law as an objection to His decree, nor do they consider any of this a contradiction from the Creator. These are the people of truth who have realised the station of “You alone we worship and You alone we ask for help” ⦗Al-Fatiha 5⦘, in accordance with His statement, “Unquestionably, to Him belongs the creation and the command” ⦗Al-Aʿraf 54⦘.

The second division: the people of misguidance and ruin, those who oppose the mainstream community. They comprise three sects: the Magian-like, the polytheist-like, and the satanic.

– The Magian-like are the Qadariyya, who affirm Allah’s law yet deny His decree. Their extremists rejected the universality of Allah’s knowledge, saying that Allah neither pre-ordained the deeds of His servants nor knew them before they occurred. Their more moderate members conceded that Allah knew the deeds beforehand, but denied that the deeds occur by Allah’s decree or that they are created by Him.