they cannot bear. It also rules out any defect in His acts and His law, affirming their perfect wisdom and soundness, in refutation of those who deny this. And the fact that every living creature is within His grasp and under His power, with Him holding its forelock, entails that nothing done by any of His creatures can occur within His dominion apart from His will and power.

Anyone whose forelock is in Allah’s hand and who is within His grasp cannot move unless He causes him to move, act unless He enables him, or will except by His will, exalted be He. This is the most forceful refutation of those among the Qadariyyah who deny this.

Neither group has done justice to the verse’s meaning or given it its due weight.

He, glorified be He, is on a straight path in His giving and withholding, His guiding and leading astray, His bringing benefit and harm, His granting well-being and afflicting with trials, His enriching and impoverishing, His honouring and humbling, His bestowing blessings and exacting retribution, His rewarding and punishing, His giving life and causing death, His commanding and forbidding, His making lawful and unlawful—in everything He creates and everything He commands. Such knowledge of Allah belongs only to the prophets and their heirs.