like the movements of inanimate objects; they treat his voluntary and involuntary acts as being of the same kind, so much so that one of them says: “Everything Allah and His Messenger have commanded is something the servant has neither the power nor the capacity to do.” They thus strip him of capacity altogether, since they affirm for him only a single capacity concurrent with the act, and grant the sinner no capacity at all.

These and similar views are among “the doctrines of the determinist Qadariyyah,” whose position—like that of the first group—was rejected by the imams of guidance, such as Abd al-Rahmān ibn Amr al-Awzā‘ī, Sufyān ibn Sa‘īd al-Thawrī, Muhammad ibn al-Walīd al-Zubaydī, Abd al-Rahmān ibn Mahdī, Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal, and others.

If, in addition, they invoke divine decree to excuse sinners, claiming that they are thereby excused and deserve neither blame nor punishment, or regard their punishment as unjust, then they are disbelievers, just as anyone among the extreme Qadariyyah who denies Allah’s eternal knowledge is a disbeliever. If they hold that the reality of divine decree entails the abolition of commands and prohibitions, promises of reward and threats of punishment—as the antinomians do—then they are greater in disbelief than the Jews and Christians. They belong to the same category as the polytheists who said:

“‘Had Allah willed, neither we nor our forefathers would have associated partners with Him, nor would we have forbidden anything.’ Likewise, those before them denied the truth until they tasted Our punishment. Say, ‘Do you have any knowledge that you can produce for us? You follow nothing but conjecture, and you do nothing but guess.’”

“Say, ‘To Allah belongs the conclusive argument. Had He willed, He would have guided you all.’”

For this position entails doing away with every command and prohibition