to act—arguing, for example, that ability only accompanies the act itself, or that God’s prior knowledge that he will not act excuses him—to a helpless person who, even if he wished to act, would still be unable, has merged two matters whose difference is self-evident both to sound reason and to the religion. This point is one of the flash-points of contention between the Qadariyya and their brethren, the Jabriyya.

Once this is understood, it becomes clear that the blanket assertion that God charges His servants with what they cannot bear is a recently-invented innovation, just like the blanket claim that people are coerced in their actions. The early generations of the ummah and its leading imams unanimously rejected and censured anyone who utters such statements, even when the speaker’s aim is to refute the Qadariyya, who deny that God creates His servants’ deeds and that He wills whatever comes to pass. They said, “This is refuting one innovation with another, meeting corruption with corruption, and falsehood with falsehood.” Were this not the place for brevity, I would have cited their explicit texts demonstrating that refutation.

However, when the speaker makes his intent clear and articulates it in wording that leaves no room for confusing truth with falsehood—setting out what is right and distinguishing it from what is wrong—this constitutes a furqan (criterion). Such a clarifier is absolved of the blame that the imams leveled at those whom they described as differing about the Book of God, contradicting the Book of God, unanimously abandoning the Book of God, speaking in ambiguous terms, twisting words from their proper places, and deceiving the ignorant masses by casting doubts upon them.

For this reason, the proponents of compulsion (the Jabriyya) were sometimes subsumed under the condemned name “Qadariyya,” because they too delved into the subject of destiny in a false manner—precisely the comprehensive ground on which the original Qadariyya were reproached. Accordingly, Imām Abū Bakr al-Khallāl entitled a section in his Kitāb al-Sunnah with the words: