and His power over all things, His willing of everything that comes to pass, His knowledge of things before they exist, and His decreeing and recording them before they exist.
The extreme Qadariyyah deny His prior knowledge and His prior recording. They claim that He commands and forbids without knowing who will obey Him and who will disobey Him; rather, events arise afresh—that is, without prior decree. This view first arose within Islam after the era of the Rightly Guided Caliphs and after the rule of Mu‘āwiyah ibn Abī Sufyān, during the conflict between Ibn al-Zubayr and the Umayyads, towards the end of the lives of ‘Abd Allāh ibn ‘Umar, ‘Abd Allāh ibn ‘Abbās and other Companions. The first person known to have openly expressed it in Basra was Ma‘bad al-Juhanī.
When the Companions learned of these people’s views, they disavowed them and rejected their doctrine. Thus, when ‘Abd Allāh ibn ‘Umar was told about them, he said: “When you meet those people, tell them that I disavow them and they disavow me.” There are likewise many statements concerning them from Ibn ‘Abbās, Jābir ibn ‘Abd Allāh, Wāthilah ibn al-Asqa‘, other Companions, those who followed them in righteousness, and the other leading scholars of the Muslims. Indeed, leading scholars such as Mālik, al-Shāfi‘ī, Ahmad ibn Hanbal and others declared that those who deny Allah’s prior knowledge are disbelievers.
Discussion of divine decree then became widespread, and most of them came to acknowledge prior knowledge and prior recording, while denying the all-encompassing scope of Allah’s will, creation and power. They supposed that His will meant nothing other than His command: whatever He wills, He has commanded, and whatever He does not will, He has not commanded. This committed them to saying that He may will what does not happen, and that what He does not will may happen. They also denied