The answer is that this objection applies only to one who maintains that a human being has no power over his voluntary acts. Yet this is not the position of any well-known imam or any recognized school among the schools of Ahl al-Sunnah (1), nor even of the schools that affirm divine predestination. The only exception is what is reported (2) of Jahm ibn Safwān and the extremists among the affirmers: that they denied human beings any power of their own and said, “Their movement is like that of trees moved by the wind”—if the reports concerning them are sound (3).

The closest of all the schools to this position is that of al-Asharī and the jurists who agreed with him from among (4) the followers of Mālik, al-Shāfiī, Ahmad, and others. Nevertheless, al-Asharī affirms that a human being possesses a created capacity and a choice, and he says that the act is the human being’s acquisition. He maintains, however, that human capacity has no effect in bringing the act within its power into existence.

For this reason, some have said, “This acquisition affirmed by al-Asharī is unintelligible.” The majority of those who affirm divine predestination hold that a human being truly performs his own act (5), possesses both capacity and choice, and that his capacity has an effect upon what lies within its scope, just as forces, natural properties (6), and other conditions and causes have effects.