He had decreed his death at this time, and it would also be possible that He had decreed that he live until another time. To assert either possibility with certainty under a supposition that will never be realized is ignorance.

This is like someone asking: “Had this person not eaten the provision decreed for him, would he have died or been provided with something else?” Or someone asking: “Had this man not made this woman pregnant, would she have remained barren, or would another man have made her pregnant? Had this land not been cultivated, would someone else have cultivated it, or would it have remained wasteland where nothing was grown? As for this person who learned the Quran from this teacher, had the teacher not taught him, would he have learned from someone else, or would he never have learned the Quran at all?” There are many such examples.