ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Learnings of the Glorious Quran Divine Decree Foreordainance is one of the stages of Allah's act. It is, thus, worthwhile to handle it in this chapter.

As it had already been discussed in the past chapters, some narratives have references to the subject that every act or phenomenon which takes place in the world is preceded by a number of preliminaries: knowledge, will, want, permission, Book, term, divine, decree and fate and (perhaps there can be some differences in the transposition of the narratives. This arrangement, however, is temporal). It suffices to arrange these concepts according to their intellectual sequence.

There is no need, for example, to say that the stage of "knowledge" temporally comes before the stage of "will" or "permission". It is enough to have these transpositions done according to reasoning, taking into consideration the concepts which the mind abstracts from the relation between the act and the person who performs it. In some other instances the correlation is temporal and accordingly the transpositions would take place.

For example, there can be a temporal transposition between qada' and qadar, fate and divine decree, which would be obvious in the following explanation. Nevertheless, it is not necessary to attach big importance to the temporal transposition in all stages. By saying that "will" is preeeded by "knowledge", we do not necessarily mean that there must be a temporal distance between them.

Fate and Divine Decree One of the topics of theology which is used to raise a great fuss is the question of Fate and Divine Decree, which is not, practically, confined to the circle of the Islamic theologians. This question is noticeable in almost all sects and religions, even in the distorted ones. Scholars have diverse opinions about it. It appears to be so complicated to a topic that many scholars confessed being incapable of explaining it.

In a number of narratives some persons had been advised not to think about it, though it can be gathered from other narratives, which explain the qada' and the qadar, that to think about it is not prohibited. It is stated in Nahjul Balaghah that Amirul Mu'minin, Ali (A.S.) was asked about qadar. His answer was: "It is a dark path. Do not tread upon it.

It is a deep ocean." Yet, in other instances, he himself and other Imams (A.S.), referred, in details, especially by the Imam al-Hadi (A.S.), to this subject, quoted in the books of narratives.