(qadar)” (15:21). “And We send down water from the cloud according to a measure (qadar)” (23:18; 43:11). “And Allāh measures (yuqaddiru from taqdīr) the night and the day” (73:20).

Though man is included in the creation, and his taqdīr is therefore the same as that of the whole creation, he is also separately spoken of as having a taqdīr similar to the law of growth and development in other things: “Of what thing did He create him? Of a small life-germ. He creates him, then proportions him2 (qaddara-hū)” (80:18, 19).

All these verses go to show that, as according to lexicologists, taqdīr, in the language of the Holy Qur’ān, is the universal law of God, operating as much in the case of man as in the rest of nature: a law extending to the sun, the moon, the stars, the earth and the heavens and all that exists in them. This universal law is fully explained in two short verses already quoted: “Who creates, then makes complete, and Who measures, then guides”. Four things are mentioned regarding every object of creation, including man: its creation (khalq), its completion (taswīya), its measure (taqdīr), and its guidance to its goal (ḥidāya). The law of life, as witnessed in nature, is exactly the law described here. Everything is created so as finally to attain to its completion, this completion being brought about according to a law or a measure within which everything works by Divine guidance. Thus the taqdīr of a thing is the law or the measure of its growth and development and the taqdīr of man is not different in nature from the taqdīr of other things.

Creation of good and evil

Taqdīr, meaning the absolute decree of good and evil by God, an idea with which the word is now indissolubly connected by the popular mind as well as by thinking writers, is neither known to the Holy Qur’ān,3 nor even to Arabic lexicology. The doctrine of predestination is of later growth, and seems to have been the result of the clash of Islām with Persian religious thought. The doctrine that there are two creators, a creator of good and a creator of evil, had become the central doctrine of the Magian religion, just as the Trinity had become that of the Christian faith. The religion of Islām taught the purest monotheism, and it was probably in controverting the dualistic doctrine of the