the Sabian philosophers and those who followed their lead among the Qarmatians, the Bātiniyyah, the authors of Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Safā (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity), and others like them.

Abū ‘Abd Allāh al-Hārith ibn Asad al-Muhāsibī reported both positions from Ahl al-Sunnah concerning will, hearing, and sight in his book Fahm al-Qur’ān (Understanding the Quran). He discussed His words, “Until We know those who strive,” and similar passages, explaining that Allah’s knowledge is eternal and that only the thing known comes into being. He went on to say:

“This is found even in us, despite our ignorance and the fact that our knowledge comes into being. We may know that every human being will die; then, whenever someone dies, we say, ‘We now know that he has died,’ without having been ignorant before his death that he would die. Yet a visual perception and a stirring of the heart may newly arise in us when we look upon him dead, because he is dead. But no newly occurring events arise within Allah.”

He went on to say:

“The same applies to His words, ‘You will surely enter the Sacred Mosque, if Allah wills’; His words, ‘When We intend to destroy a town’; and His words, ‘His command, when He wills a thing, is only to say to it, “Be,” and it is.’

“This does not mean that, with the onset of events, a will comes into being in Him, or that He begins to exercise a will He did not previously possess. That is the conduct of someone ignorant of outcomes, who wills something without knowing its consequences. Rather, He has always willed what He knows will be; He has not acquired a will that did not previously exist. Acts of willing arise only in proportion to what the one who wills knows. As for the One who has always known what will and will not occur, whether good or evil, He has willed what He knew, in accordance with what He knew. Nothing newly becomes apparent to Him, since no new knowledge of it arises within Him.”