(MI. p. 292). Evidently the words “sweet” and “bitter” (huluwei-hī wa murri-hī) and the words “profit” and “loss” are added to explain that by good and evil, khair and sharr, are meant good fortune and evil fortune, ease and hardship, not good and evil deeds done by man. This contentment under all conditions, is, as already shown, one of the great lessons of life taught to a Muslim, but it is neither a doctrine nor a principle of faith.
This much is certain that belief in qadar does not mean belief in predestination; for predestination, for which the Arabic word is jabr, has never been the belief of the Muslim community. The Jabariyah, or believers in predestination, have, on the other hand, been recognized as a heretical sect. A strict predestinarian, who believes that man has no control at all over his actions, would deny the very basic principle of religion, that is, the responsibility of man for his actions. The orthodox position has always been the middle one. Man has a free will, but that will is exercised under certain limitations. It is only the Divine will that can be called an absolutely free will, a will under no limitations; but everything created, and therefore everything human, is subject to qadar, to a Divine measure of things, to limitations imposed upon it by a Higher controlling Power. Man is the possessor neither of absolute knowledge, nor of absolute power, nor yet of absolute will. All these attributes belong properly to God. Human knowledge, human power and human will are all subject to limitations, and these limitations are placed upon man by the Divine measure which is called qadar. It is only in this sense that a Muslim can be said to have faith in qadar.