a messenger, as He says:

“Arise and warn.”

For this reason, He, glorified be He, mentioned in this surah both actual existence and existence in knowledge. This is a plain matter that a person grasps in his heart without needing to be told, for a thing does not exist before it comes into existence.

As for things being known to Allah before they come into existence, this is undoubtedly true. Likewise, they are recorded with Him or with His angels, as the Quran and Sunnah indicate and the transmitted reports attest.

This knowledge and recording constitute the divine decree denied by the extremists among the Qadariyya. They claim that Allah does not know His servants’ actions until those actions occur. They are disbelievers; the imams, including al-Shāfi‘ī, Ahmad, and others, declared them to be disbelievers.

The Quran and Sunnah have explained this divine decree, and the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, answered the question raised concerning it: whether one should abandon action on account of it. His answer is related in the two Sahīh collections, where ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib said:

“We were attending a funeral in Baqī‘ al-Gharqad when the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, came to us. He sat down, and we sat around him. He had a stick with him. He lowered his head and began tapping the ground with his stick. Then he said, ‘There is none among you—or he said, no soul born—whose place in Paradise or Hell Allah has not already recorded, and who has not already been recorded as wretched or blessed.’

“A man then said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, should we not rely on what has been recorded for us and abandon action? For whoever is among the blessed will come to perform the deeds of the blessed, and whoever is among the wretched will come to perform the deeds of the wretched.’

“He replied, ‘Act, for everyone will be enabled. As for the blessed