The Nature Of Time And Qadr

Bismillahi rahmani raheem, assalamu alaikum.

I received a question by someone who thought I do not believe in predestination because of a comment they interpreted according to their nafs. In Islam if a person is not directly teaching that predestination does not exist you have no right to accuse Him of it, such things are subject to shariah law regarding public defamation and character assassination, even if you are just asking a question. A person may not intend wrong, but things like manslaughter exist because people don’t intend to kill as well and one comment among countless books and articles I have written hardly warrants a question of character, so it was obvious they were grasping at straws.

The Nature Of Time And Qadr

Allah is not bound by this universe, He has no direction, up, down, east, west, north, south, and He is not bound by time or the passing of time, there is no forward or backwards no future or past.

So then you may ask how do we know Him, how does He exist.

The first thing you have to understand is that Allah sees everything happening now in the universe all at the same time, all of it.

The next thing you have to understand is that He sees everything happening through all of time, all at the same time.

This may make you ask are we all living at the same point in time, the answer is no Allah created time to make this separation between events and His knowledge of them, we are not speaking hypothetically but what the universe can and can’t do, this is not philosophy but physics, science and the laws that run the universe.

This will lead you to then conclude we are all just playing out what Allah knows, and if Allah knows it all then what is the point of life, why did He create it why not just create the people of Hell in hell and the people of Jannah in Jannah…The answer is simple that would be Zulm (oppression) so Allah created the universe in a way to avoid this very thing.

Imam Ibn Arabi (ra) explained Allah created everything to give each thing in the universe independence from His knowledge of it so it can choose its own fate, rather so it has a chance to change its fate.

Regarding this the prophet (saws) said “nothing changes predestination like dua”, it will race ahead of it and beat it.

This tells us Allah placed in His creation for man, Angel, Jinn and everything else the ability to make something new of our fate.

You don’t need to understand how, just that it exists, this is not magic but science about the nature of the universe, time, space, how Allah exists (etc), which most of you can’t understand because you do not have the intellect for it, it is enough the prophet (saws) said it exists.

If I was to explain it and the scholars know the answer of how, I would start by telling you the universe is a bubble of time and you are playing out your life in it, anyone outside the universe can see inside it just like you would look at a globe of the earth. Next you need to understand time only exists inside the universe because it created it, so everything outside the universe is timeless (at one point in time).

No doubt you would say, because you think you are smart, my clock is ticking and that means time is passing for everyone and everything inside and outside the universe. Your clock only counts numbers and it can only do so as long as time exists and in a place that time exists.

We are talking about the time that the universe measures, and inside the universe time can flow faster or slower in places (science has proved this with experiments), time on earth is not the same as on the sun or in a black hole, all because time is something created and tied to the fabric of the universe, the stuff it is made of and makes everything work and not the ticking of your clock which has deluded your understanding of nature.

If the stuff that makes everything work bends or stretches then time will move in the same way it bends and stretches (Albert Einstein).

Allah created the universe to give us freedom and the ability to change fate, He knows all the answers, that has not changed and many things are predestined, but He has created order in the universe, some things (or issues) are more exalted than others and Allah has said they (the larger issues in life) can be changed by us, like if you are going to hell or heaven in the end.

The laws that run this universe, physics, chemistry, biology etc, the prophet (saws) intimated they account for exactly 50% of what is predetermined by Allah, this is the fate the pen wrote until the end of time.

The other 50% of life is determined by freewill and our choices, what YOU MUST UNDERSTAND is that Allah’s knowledge is not predestination, you are confused about what the term is referring to, Predestination is what is written down literally in the universe, either by the Angels, in a book of Allah or somewhere else holy (INSIDE the universe), because these places then ensure they come about in the universe, that is their role and purpose (for the sake of understanding we can say Allah’s knowledge of the future exists outside the universe and is not affecting it).

Allah’s knowledge of things is above predestination, He has separated it from influencing the universe, overriding our freewill, this is the part you will find hard to understand how it exists because you need to understand the nature behind what Allah created at a scientific level, not the level of a casual conversation.

If I say I know for certain this dog is going to run at some point in the future, I am not the one who made Him run or made Him choose to run, my knowledge of the dog is separate from the dogs choices and ability to run, Allah made that distinction between knowledge and actual created things. Predestination, Allah tied it to created things and what makes them work, it is subject to the laws of the universe and how dua can override it.

Yes that level of finite differentiation exists with Allah, and we can go further explaining…you just don’t understand why or how it is significant and that is the crux of the matter.

Shaykh Rami Al Rifai.