remains not the least doubt that the inclusion of faith in qadar among the fundamentals of faith, is an addition of about the end of the first century of Hijrah. There is no doubt that discussion about qadar arose later, and it was during these discussions that, through inadvertence or otherwise, some narrator put these words into the mouth of Abū Hurairah.
The same ḥadīth has again been narrated by Muslim through quite a different channel, with an introductory note from the last narrator, Yaḥyā ibn Ya‘mar, as follows: “the first man who held the view of qadar in Baṣra was Ma‘bad al-Juhānī, so I and Ḥumaid ibn ‘Abd al-Raḥmān went out on a pilgrimage, and we said that if we meet any Companion of the Holy Prophet, we will question him about what these persons say regarding qadar, and it was granted to us to meet ‘Abd Allāh ibn ‘Umar entering the mosque” (M. 1:1). The note then goes on to say that the narrator asked ‘Abd Allāh “about people who say there is no qadar22 and that the affair begins just now.” Then the same ḥadīth is related in different words, and the part of it under discussion runs thus: “That thou believe in Allāh and His angels and His Books and His messengers and the last day and that thou believe in the qadar, the good of it and the evil of it.” It will be noticed that the words “meeting with Him (liqāi-hī)” are omitted in this report, while to the belief in the qadar of Abū Hurairah’s report are added the words the good of it and the evil of it (khairi-hī wa sharri-hī). The introductory note is too clear. Discussions were being carried on relating to qadar, and a party had arisen which entirely denied it. ‘Abd Allāh ibn ‘Umar lived till the 73rd year of the Hijrah, and on being questioned about the matter, he is alleged not only to have upheld qadar but also to have related a ḥadīth which mentioned belief in it, as one of the fundamentals of Islām. Bukhārī has not accepted this ḥadīth, while Muslim, granting the correctness of Bukhārī’s ḥadīth which does not make any mention of qadar, has shown that Ibn ‘Umar’s report cannot be relied upon, and probably the anxiety to silence opponents had led to indiscretion on the part of some controversialist.
It is difficult to say what meaning faith in qadar carried. The words
22 These people are here spoken of as denying qadar, but the name given to them by later theologians is Qādarīya which would mean “upholders of qadar.” Hence it was the Mu‘tazila, who later on became the upholders of this theory, argued that the name Qādarīya could not be applied to them but to the upholders of the doctrine of qadar. The orthodox argument, on the other hand, was that the Mu‘tazila, or their predecessors, who questioned the qadar of God, set up a rival qadar of man, inasmuch as they believed that man was the creator of his own deeds. But perhaps the word qadar was used by these disputants in the sense of qudrat, i.e., power, and the two contending parties had gone to two extremes, those who upheld the absolute power of God, refusing that man had any free choice, and those who upheld the theory of the absolute power of man over his deeds. The truth lies midway between these two extreme views.