Machine summary:
FREE-WILL AND FATALISM IN ISLAM1 UROPEAN commentators on Muslim theology are generally of the opinion that Islam is a strictly fatalistic religion for the Qur'an, according to them, preaches absolute predestination of man's actions and volitions by the arbitrary Will of God. Thus they say : (1) "The Qur'an, generally speaking, teaches a rather crass deterrmn.
in Islam, there is no such thing as fatalism '5 and · that man is free and responsible for his actions and volitions, Man is not compelled by God to will or to do a certain thing; man enjoys freedom and is determined by himself alone.
This actual free-will of man, however, is only relative and not absolute and it has been confounded with the Western doctrine of freedom as self• determination.
Even the rationalists of Islam failed to recognise this vital connection between man and God, and along with their Western followers they subscribed to the doctrine of freedom as self-determination without trying to understand the nature of the real self that determines freedom.
Thus, free-will and fatalism on the one hand and human responsibility and Divine justice on the other, are aptly reconciled by the Islamic interpretation of freedom as self-deter• mination.
142 Thus,· the Western critics have not at all been justified in stigmatising that the God of Islam as an unjust despot when He demands responsibility from man for all his actions and volitions which are determined by his knowledge and freedom.