Predestination Versus Accountability
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“We have certainly created for Hell many of the jinn and mankind” (Quran 7:179). “If We had willed, We could have given every soul its guidance, but the word from Me will come true: I will surely fill Hell with jinn and people all together” (32:13). Allah “leads astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills” (14:4; 16:93; 74:31), and “you do not will except that Allah wills” (81:29). The same book holds every soul responsible for its unbelief and punishes it eternally. The hadithhadithA report of Muhammad's words, actions, or tacit approvals. The hadith corpus is the second source of Islamic law after the Quran.Full glossary → sharpen it: the angel writes each fetus’s deeds and destiny in the womb (Sahih al-Bukhari 3208), and Muhammad said of children of polytheists, “Allah knows what they would have done” — while the classical Ash‘ari synthesis (kasb, “acquisition”) holds that Allah creates every human act, which the human merely acquires.
Common Muslim Responses
Islamic theology answers with kasb (al-Ash‘ari) or divine-knowledge compatibilism (the Maturidi line): Allah creates acts, humans earn them through intention; “leading astray” is judicial — Allah abandons those who first choose denial (cf. 2:26: “He misleads not except the defiantly disobedient”). The Mu‘tazila simply affirmed libertarian freedom. Mystery beyond this is adab before the divine decree.
Counter-Rebuttal
Critics observe that kasb was mocked within Islam itself as a verbal evasion (“more subtle than the kasb of al-Ash‘ari” became a proverb for incomprehensibility), that 7:179 and 32:13 state purpose (“created for Hell… I will surely fill Hell”), not mere foreknowledge, and that the existence of three irreconcilable classical schools (Jabriyya, Ash‘ariyya, Mu‘tazila/Qadariyya) on the most consequential question in the religion — with each side armed with proof texts — is itself the internal datum: the revelation underdetermines its own answer to whether the damned ever had a chance.