Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Free Will Explained
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Now first and foremost, you know what free will is free will is the
ability in us to do what we want when we want to a certain degree,
for example, everybody that's sitting here today, you came here
by your own will, you want, literally dragged into here with
while you're protesting unless your friends did drag you in here
or unless your father did drag you in here, right? But still you had
the ability to resist. You came in here with a will. They may have
been encouragement, but you came here with your free will. Now we
understand free will free will is established through two different
ways. Number one, it's established by our experience. We feel
freewill, none of us feels forced food is sitting there, we don't
feel forced to eat it. We can't help our hands getting down there
and you know, taking the food and we make that choice to do it.
Right. So we feel that we experience it, you when you shake
your hands voluntarily, a normal person gets his hand and shakes it
voluntarily. That is freewill. You also have people in this world who
are who have Parkinson's disease, for example, they can't help
shaking their hands, even if they want to stop they can't their hand
shakes involuntarily. So there's a clear difference between an
involuntary shaking of the hand and a voluntary shaking of the
hand. Another thing is that when you're walking on level ground,
you are just walking. You can to a certain degree control your pace,
try walk walking down an incline or a hill. And suddenly you have
less control over your pace. Yes, you can stop but if you're
walking, you are still being helped because of gravity as we
call it. So clearly, we understand that that is where you have
freewill. But you see that there's some other influence there as
well. Right? However, freewill is established. And it's only because
the human has free will. That there is Jonathan jahannam. If
there was no freewill, there'd be no point of Jonathan jahannam. The
grand scheme of things the way they are, is because it's an part
of that is that Allah gave us free will to make our decision because
Allah says Rama who Avila Milla lobbied, I am not one to oppress
even in the least my servants, I will not oppress at all, lie
awfully. Che Allah does not oppress even the slightest, Allah
will only punish us for wrongs that we have committed. Nobody
will go into hellfire thinking that they have been oppressed or
wronged or
put in without justice, they will realize the wrongs that they have
done because Allah only is just and nothing else. Allah is just
there's no opera, you know, unfair doesn't apply to Allah subhanaw
taala.
So because of the fact that we have free will, there is paradise
and as * or this * and Paradise and because of that we
have free will you can see it either way. It's the grand scheme
of Allah subhanho wa taala. Now once we've established freewill,
then how is it possible that we exercise our free will, our
volition, our choice? Right? We're independent and autonomous in
doing so. But then it's all written. It's already written. So
how have we got free will when it's already written? Whatever
we're doing is in accordance to what's written, and what's written
is in accordance to what we're doing. So how do you understand
that then, if you've got your free will, and you experienced it,
nobody is Does anybody deny Free Will here? Right? None of it has
anybody? I mean, there were groups who denied it theoretically,
practically, you can't. Because you know, you feel free will? Then
how is it possible that you're going according to what's written
in the divine tablet in a local math booth? Once I was, I would
say, in a half guilty sense. I was
racing down the Moto, the highway in California, the freeway 101 on
the coast, and I was stopped by I was only going about 80 miles an
hour, by the way, right, which in England is nothing. Generally
people 80 is kind of like tolerable, people go 90 and 100.
But in America, that was a big deal. Because 65 is the limit in
California in most places. So he was a bit. Now for some reason, I
was coming back and this police stopped me.
And I said a few things to him. I said, you know, please stand over
there. He says really, it's your free. It's your it's your destiny.
So I said, Okay, what what's destiny? So we had a little chat
and I explained
this understanding that I'm about to give you about destiny as to
how it goes in accordance with what's written, how it is destiny.
He still gave me a ticket. He appreciated what I mentioned, but
he still ended up giving me a ticket because that was the
destiny. Right? That was my destiny that on the day.
Now what happens is going back to that question, how do you
reconcile the fact that every
Nothing has been written, but we still have free will. And we don't
feel forced. The reason is simple. Whatever Allah had written in that
divine tablets, if you understand this, it will make a lot of things
simple for you, then inshallah you will not feel doomed, you will not
feel depressed, you will not feel as if you know your future,
because nobody does. Nobody does. Whatever is written in there is
written based on the knowledge of what Allah knew.
Right? The knowledge of Allah, of what we were going to do with our
freewill. So for example, what's your name, brother?
Allah knew that brother Osman, when he comes into it, I'm going
to call you off man. If you don't mind.
When he comes into this world, he's going to be doing this this
this this with this free will. He's going to come to Masjid Abu
Bakr on this New York New Year New Year's Eve, with his free will.
And that's what Allah wrote, he will do this with a Free Will he
will do this, you know, it was a descriptive detail, not
prescriptive, not that off man has to do this use of has to do this.
And Abdurrahman by has to do this. He didn't write that. That's not
what it was written. If it was written in that fashion, Zaid has
emailed or Antiva clarifies this, clearly, if it was written like
that, then that means we would be compelled, compelled, wouldn't
have any free will. But we experienced the free will. And
that's what's written only because Allah knew what we were going to
do.
I'll give you another example. If you're a teacher, you've taught
somebody for a year or two, you're under, you're kind of understood
their capability. come time for exam, what you did was before the
exams, you wrote down what you predicted, you predicted some
grades of this, then after that, they go take their exams, their
tests, after the test, you get the results, and you compare your
results. Sorry, you compare the actual results with your
predictions, you will see that most of it is very similar, you
can still make mistakes, because we're human beings, we don't
really know the future, we think we can speculate about our future.
So they will be very similar. We may have missed out in something,
right? This guy was a straight A student, but for some reason on
that day, he messed up. But most of the others were the same,
right? with Allah subhanaw taala there's never a mess up. It's
absolute knowledge. 100% There's never a mistake or an error at
all. So whenever he knows, it's because for him, time doesn't
apply to me. It's like the whole universe is less than, you know,
imagine you have one of those medicine medical capsules, Medic
medicine. Imagine an entire an entire universe taking place in
there of bacteria, you can get 1000s of bacteria on a pinhead. So
imagine that scope. Now, again, Allah is even beyond that. But
just to understand the entire universe is taking place in me
What difference does it make? And that's not even a proper example.
Allah is beyond us. But we must understand that what's written is
not prescriptive. It's descriptive. Allah wrote what we
were going to do with our freewill because he knew what we were going
to do with our freewill. We end up doing exactly according to what's
in the divine tablet because Allah knew what we were going to do with
our freewill. So now do you feel more free now? Do you feel less
compelled hamdulillah