Abdur Rahman ibn Yusuf Mangera – Free Will Explained

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