This, in fact, is the position of the Qadariyyah. Jahm himself, however, denied that the servant has power or any ability to act. Thus, if he says that an agent endowed with power and choice favors one of two alternatives within his power without a factor that favors it, his position would not be inconsistent on the basis of his own false premise.

As for al-Ashʿarī and others who say that the servant acquires his actions and possesses power, yet maintain that he is not truly an agent and that his power has no effect on what lies within its scope: if there is a substantive difference between their position and Jahm’s, they would need to distinguish between the Lord’s action and the servant’s action. Otherwise, their position would be the same as Jahm’s.

The majority of those who affirm divine decree, however, maintain that the servant possesses power and acts. This is the position of the early generations and the imams. They hold that the servant is an agent endowed with power and choice, but that he does not favor one of two alternatives within his power over the other without a factor that favors it. Al-Rāzī inclines toward their position, affirming that the servant possesses power and a motivating impulse, and that the two together necessarily entail the occurrence of the act.

These groups—the Kullābiyyah, Karrāmiyyah, and Ashʿariyyah, together with those scholars of hadith and jurisprudence and others who agree with them—although they differ from the Muʿtazilah to some extent, share with them the fundamental principle upon which the latter based their position on divine decree. They debate the philosophers who posit a cause that necessitates by its very essence, and the naturalists who maintain that the maker of the world is a complete, eternal cause that necessarily entails its effect.

This position is even more untenable. For what their position really amounts to is that the events arising in the world have no originator, just as the position of the Qadariyyah really amounts to saying that the actions of animate beings have no originator. Thus, what the Qadariyyah say about the actions of animate beings, these people say about all events arising in the world,