Levels of Belief in Qadar

Belief in Qadr has four Levels:

1. The first level is to have belief in the knowledge of Allah; which encompasses everything. Not even the like of a weight of an atom in the heavens or the earth escapes His knowledge. And He, the Most High, knew about all His creation before He created them. He knew their provision, appointed terms, their speech and actions, all their doings, their secrets and that which they declare openly, and those among them from the People of Paradise and those from the People of the Hellfire.

2.   The second level is to have belief in the recording of that knowledge; and that He, the Most High, wrote all that will exist according to His prior knowledge. Included in this is belief in the Preserved Tablet (al-Lawh al- Mahfooz).

3.  The third level is to have belief in Allah’s executive will and His omnipotence. They necessitate each other with respect to what was and what will be. But they do not necessitate each other with respect to what will not be and what was not. So what Allah, the Most High, wishes exists by His omnipotence, and it could not be any other way, and what Allah does not wish does not exist, due to the absence of Allah’s wish for it and not due to Allah’s inability to make it exist, may He, Most Great and Glorious, be far removed from that.

4. The fourth level is to have belief that Allah Most High is the Creator of everything and that there is not a single atom in the heavens nor in the earth, nor that which is between them, that Allah did not create. He is the creator of their movements and their lack of movements, may He be glorified. There is no creator besides Him and no Lord except Him.[1]

[1] The First Category: a) Knowledge. The belief that Allah is All-Knowing with respect to His creation and that they act in accordance with His prior knowledge which is infinite and eternal. b) Writing. Then Allah wrote in the preserved tablet the destiny of the creation.

The Second Category: a) Will. It is the executed will of Allah and His all-encompassing ability. It is the belief that whatever Allah has willed will occur and whatever He has not willed will not occur. b) Creation. Allah has power over all things, existent and non-existent.” (See Notes on al-‘Aqidah al-Wasitiyah, pp. 170-3)

And others explained the levels at length. See, for example, Ibn al-Qayyim’s work,

In the Commentary on the Creed of at-Tahawi, Ibn Abil-‘Izz lists five levels of Qadr. He stated that “Qadr is the ordaining of things according to the knowledge Allah has of them and it involves the following principles:

First, Allah knows things before they come into existence. This means that His knowledge is eternal. This is a refutation of those who deny that His knowledge is eternal.

Second, fore-ordainment (taqdir) is to fix the measures of things, namely the properties and attributes which they will have. Allah has said,

" وخَلقَ كلّ شيءٍ فقدّرهُ تقديرًا "

“He created all things and ordained them in due measure.” (Surah al-Furqan, 25: 2).

This means that creation involves two kinds of pre-measurement: ordaining things as such or fixing their measures, and doing so before they come into existence. Since Allah has fixed the measures of things in all their details, qualitative and quantitative, His knowledge of each and every individual thing is perfect. Hence, those who think that Allah knows only the universals and not the particulars are wrong. Qadr involves eternal knowledge as it involves the knowledge of each and every individual thing.

Third, qadr means that Allah reveals detailed information about things before their creation. Therefore, it is not ruled out that some of His servants may know about various things before they are brought into existence (if Allah chooses to tell them such).  This further enforces the truth that their Creator must be even more knowledgeable about them. If He has informed His servants about them, He cannot Himself lack that knowledge.

Fourth, qadr means that Allah is free to decide what to do, or to create what He wills, and nothing is incumbent or obligatory upon him.

Fifth and finally, it means that the things that He ordains are contingent, that they come into being after they were not there. He first determines their measures and then creates them.”

(Commentary on the Creed of At-Tahawi, pp. 219-220)