CHAPTER 7
TAQDĪR OR PREDESTINATION

A great deal of misunderstanding prevails about the doctrine of predestination and the absolute decree of good and evil by God. It is necessary first to understand the correct meaning of the Arabic words qadar and taqdīr — the ideas commonly associated with their meaning being unknown both to the Holy Qur’ān and to Arabic lexicology. Qadar and taqdīr, according to Rāghib, mean the making manifest of the measure (kamiyya) of a thing, or simply measure.1 In the words of the same authority, God’s taqdīr of things is in two ways, by granting qudra, i.e., power or by making them in a particular measure and in a particular manner, as wisdom requires. An example of this is given in the taqdīr of the date-stone, out of which it is the palm only that grows, not an apple or olive tree, or in the taqdīr of the sperm of man, out of which grows man only, not any other animal. Taqdīr is therefore the law or the ordinance or the measure which is working throughout the creation; and this is exactly the sense in which the word is used in the Holy Qur’ān. For example, it speaks of a taqdīr for each and everything that has been created: “Glorify the name of thy Lord, the Most High, Who creates, then makes complete, and Who measures (qaddara from taqdīr), then guides” (87:1-3). “Who created everything, then ordained for it a measure (taqdīr) (25:2). “Surely We have created everything according to a measure (qadar)” (54:49). “And the sun moves on to its destination. That is the ordinance (taqdīr) of the Mighty, the Knowing. And the moon, We have ordained (qaddarnā from taqdīr) for it stages” (36:38, 39).

The law according to which foods, provisions and other things are provided in the earth is also called a taqdīr of God, and so, also, the law according to which rain falls on the earth, and that according to which night and day follow each other: “And He made in it mountains above its surface, and He blessed therein and ordained (qaddara) therein its foods” (41:10). “And there is not a thing but with Us are the treasures of it, and We send it not down but in a known measure