The Comment Section #10 – The Truth About Free Will

Someone was asking about how do we reconcile freewill with Allah's father, right. And we there's various ways we can translate a lot of Kabbalah and color, like his decree or whatever have you. And there's a lot of people who have gone into this in more detail that you could probably refer to, but I'm just going to share one response that I got from a shave from before I was a Muslim, I asked this question to one of the first Imams or Musharraf that I ever came across. And he gave me an analogy like this, he, you know, he was there with his son. And he said, if I put my hand in my pocket, and I tell my son, run over to that fence and run back, and I'll give you what's in my

pocket, I know what my son is going to say, even before he does, because he's my son. He's from me, he's a piece of me. He's part of me, I live with him. 24/7 I know his habits. I know his you know, his predilection, I know what motivates him, right? I know what he's going to do. Does that mean that he didn't choose to do it by himself? No, of course, he chooses to do it. Now imagine Allah subhanaw taala, Allah created us, He knows us even more than anybody knows anybody else. And anybody knows their spouse, or anybody knows their son, or anybody knows anything. So wouldn't you think he's even more knowledgeable about what we're going to do before we even do it. But for us, and for

our purposes, obviously, we don't have the knowledge that Allah has. And so sometimes we get tripped up thinking, well, a lot already knows it. And so how is that? How is that a choice? Well, forget about I mean, don't forget about Allah, but forget about a lot for a second, think about yourself, you don't know. So what does it matter that Allah knows everything, you don't know everything. So you don't know whether your destiny is to do this or your destiny is to that or your decreed to do this, you're decreed to do that, or whether you're you don't know, that's what matters. And since you don't know that it's a choice, and you're going to be responsible for your choice, your

intention, are you going to intend to do the good thing or intend to do the bad thing that's up to you, and the last one is going to hold you accountable for that. And then a loss plan is what brings about the results, right? Because you could intend to do whatever it doesn't mean, it's going to happen, right? You could intend to move you could intend to hurt somebody else, you could intend to do something good. And it doesn't mean that the conditions are going to align in such a way that you're actually going to be able to realize that thing or achieve it right. That's part of Allah's plan. So this is why we have the hadith of him and I bass where the Prophet alayhi salatu salam, he

said that people are rewarded according to their intentions, right? If somebody intends something good, and they're prevented from doing it, they're still rewarded, because they intended Allah's plan is what decided or determined whether that thing was going to actually happen or not. And if somebody's intent is good, and actually is able to do it, then they get even more reward because now it's got all these sorts of other benefits. And if somebody intends to do evil, but then changes their mind, they're rewarded because of their intention, right? They turned back but if somebody intends to do evil, and then they actually do it, then that's something that they're eligible to be

punished for.