“Had We willed, We would have given every soul its guidance.”

“Had Allah willed, those who came after them would not have fought one another.”

“Had your Lord willed, they would not have done so.”

The fact that something must occur because it has already been decreed that it will inevitably come to be does not preclude its occurring by His will, power, and volition—even if His volition is inseparable from His essence, like His life and knowledge. For “His willing of future things” is preceded by “His willing of what is past”:

“His command, when He wills something, is only to say to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.”

He only willed “this second thing” after first willing that which entails His willing it. Thus, the later act of willing came about through the earlier act of willing.

People have differed greatly over “the question of Allah’s will, glorified and exalted is He,” adopting numerous positions. Some have denied it, and al-Rāzī favoured this view in his al-Matālib al-Āliya (The Lofty Pursuits). Yet, praise be to Allah, we have established it and exposed the falsity of the specious arguments against it. We have shown that what the Quran and Sunnah teach is the unalloyed truth, attested by clear rational arguments, and that “clear reason accords with authentic transmitted evidence.”

We had “first” explained that conclusive proofs cannot conflict: two conclusive proofs cannot contradict one another, whether both are rational, both are drawn from revelation, or one is rational and the other drawn from revelation. We then explained that they agree with, support, and reinforce one another. Reason establishes the soundness of revelation, and revelation makes clear the soundness of reason; whoever follows either is led to the other.