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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Fifty Lessons on Principles of Belief for Youths Lesson 16: The Issue of Predestination and Free Will One of the issues which is directly related to the issue of the justice of the Creator, is the question of predestination or free will.

According to the fatalists (those who believe in predestination), a human being has no choice whatever in his or her acts, behavior or words and the movements of his organs are just like the predestined movements of tile parts of a machine. Thus, this question arises, how does this opinion relate to Divine Justice? And perhaps because of this, the group of the Asharites — the group we previously mentioned, who deny intellectual good and evil — have accepted predestination and deny justice. Why?

Because when one accepts predestination, justice makes no sense. In order to further clarify this point, we are obliged to study several subjects with care: The Roots of the Belief in Predestination All people within their being sense that they are free to make decisions.

For example, whether or not to give a loan to such and such a friend or that one drinks a glass of water placed before one, if one so desires or does not drink it or if another person commits an error in relation to this person, this second person can forgive or not forgive the error or that everyone distinguishes a hand which shakes because of illness or old age from a hand which one purposefully causes to shake.

In spite of the fact that the issue of free will is a general human sense, why do some people follow the school of the fatalists? Of course, there are several important reasons which we shall recall here and they are that a human being sees that an environment has an effect upon another person, education is another, propaganda and social culture also, without doubt, affect the thoughts and spirit of a person.

Sometimes, even, one’s economic position can provide a motive for movement in a human being and one cannot deny a factor. The totality of these cause one to assume that a person does not have free will, but rather that the external and internal factors join hands and force us to make a decision and that if these factors did not exist, we would not be faced with these problems.

These are things which can be called ‘the environmental determinants’, ‘economic determinants’, ‘educational determinants’ and predestination are among the factors considered to be important by the school of fatalists.