You had repeatedly heard the Imam saying...

You had repeatedly heard the Imam saying: "We perform our duty, but what would happen is not our concern. Our duty is to struggle, but whether we are going to be successful or not is not our concern. Whatever Allah wants will happen. Such a person will never feel perplexed, nor will he regret his work. So, this belief is a factor of success, not of failure.

Consequently, qada' and qadar, if correctly understood, can be regarded as factors of progress, improvement and integrity of knowledge which is monotheism, not that they are factors of stagnancy, weakness and seeking excuses. The Difference between Qada' and Qadar Traditionally, qada' and qadar are of almost the same meaning and reciprocally used. It seems that this reciprocity has occurred long ago, in early days of Islam, as they thought them to be synonyms.

But by careful study of these two terms and their lexical differences it can be realized that they differ in precedence, degree and status. Qadar's status is prior to that of qada'. Qadar means measurement, while qada' denotes an end and finishing.

Comparing these two concepts, it can be observed that the status of qada', logically, comes later, because it is the finishing stage, whereas the concept of qadar denotes weighing and measuring, a stage which, logically, takes place before finality, and is regarded to be part of the preliminaries. Therefore, it can be said that qadar is the stage in which the phenomenon has not yet reached the stage of necessity, i.e.

the details of its Complete Cause have not yet been fulfilled completely, leaving them subject to possible changes, as they have not yet obtained their finality. But qada, being a final stage, is reached at when the complete cause is implemented, and there remains no room for expectations. In some narratives, qada' and qadar are used, in general, as synonyms, such as the narrative which divides the qada' into two kinds: the changeable qada', and the unchangeable qada'.

According to our studies, the changeable qada' is the very taqdir. Some other narratives confirm the difference between qada' and qadar, and that qadar precedes the qada'. In order to clarify the difference between the concepts of qadar and qada', and that the qada' comes after the qadar, as the qada' is the last and unchangeable stage, we shall study the Qur'anic ayahs using the term qada'.