He decides what he wants to do and which way he wants to go.

He decides what he wants to do and which way he wants to go. His work is subject to his own personal desire. Inevitable And Non-Inevitable In the reports and traditions, fate and destiny have been described as revocable and irrevocable. There are hints in the Qur’an also to that effect. It appears that there are two kinds of fate and destiny, one inevitable and unalterable and the other non-inevitable and alterable. Now the question is: what is the meaning of non-inevitable fate and destiny?

Let us take any particular event in view. Have the Eternal Knowledge and Will of Allah attached to it? If they have not, there is no question of destiny. If they have, the event must take place, otherwise that would mean the nonconformity of the Divine Knowledge to the reality and the nonfruition of Allah’s Will. To be more precise we may say that destiny means the emanation of all the required causes from the Knowledge and Will of Allah, who is the First Cause.

As we know, the general law of causation necessitates inevitability. This law requires that the occurrence of an event should be sure under its own special temporal and spatial conditions and its non-occurrence also should be certain in other circumstances. The finality of the scientific rules is due to this very law. Man can make scientific predictions to the extent of his limited knowledge of the causes.

Therefore the decision of fate and destiny which determines the occurrence of the events through the system of causation, must be regarded as conclusive. As such to divide destiny into inevitable and non-inevitable appears to be meaningless. At this stage a dilemma arises.

Either we should, like the Ash’arites, believe in destiny in its limited sense only or say that it is absolutely unalterable and that man has no power to change it; or like the Mu’tazilites deny its role at least as far as human acts and deeds are concerned. Let us see how we can resolve this dilemma.

It may incidentally be said that just as the Ash’arite view implies the denial of man’s liberty and his control of his destiny, the Mu’tazilite view also besides being contrary to the monotheistic principles and the concept of divine knowledge, does not serve any useful purpose from the angle of human freedom.

Even if we do not accept the fate and destiny in their divine sense, what shall we do of their material concept, according to which every event in the world is controlled by the system of causation? That also amounts to compulsion.