LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

24 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XV
ISLAM
Christianity is not the only religion that struggles with predestination. The
Qur’an of Muhammad (570-632) posits a sovereign god who is above and
beyond all creation. Allah rules with an absolute sway. All he foreknows
must come to pass. All human action is predestined, for good or ill. Thus a
fatalistic determinism is implicit in Islam. All human choice and action is
ultimately insignificant.
As I have argued elsewhere, theological problems in Islam arise from its
first premise, that there is no God but Allah:
Foremost of these is the problem of predestination. If there is one supreme
Being who created the universe and rules over all things, then He must be allpowerful
and all-knowing. Hence He knows everything that is going to
happen, and since He knows everything that is going to happen, everything
He knows must inevitably come to pass by His divine foreknowledge and
eternal decree. Truly, Allah is great. In fact, Allah is so great in this context
that man is nothing. He has no free will at all and is reduced to a mere
puppet. Muslim theology attempts to solve this problem by moving Allah
upstairs—that is, to consign His omnipotence to the realm of general,
universal, and natural law, so as to leave room for human free will and action
in this world below. As soon as this is done, however, another problem
emerges. God becomes what Reformed theologian Karl Barth called totaliter
aliter (totally other). That is, He is completely of a different nature and mind
than that of human beings, and He cannot be known at all as He is in His
essential being. He is remote, detached, a God who is unapproachable, who
cannot be known, with whom one cannot have a personal relationship. 25
Some passages in the Qur’an set forth a fatalistic predestination. Sura 54,
“The Moon”, refers to the judgement of God against Pharaoh—a favourite
example also for Christian theologians who espouse double predestination—
and attributes human action to the will of Allah:
Truly those in sin are the ones straying in mind, and mad. The Day they will
be dragged through the Fire on their faces, (they will hear:) “You taste the
touch of Hell!” Verily, We have created all things in proportion and measure.
And Our Command is but a single (Act)—like the twinkling of an eye. And
(oft) in the past, We have destroyed gangs like you: then is there any that will
receive admonition All that they do is noted in (their) books (of deeds):
Every matter, small and great, is on record. 26
25 Frederic W. Baue, The Spiritual Society: What Lurks Beyond Postmodernism (Wheaton,
IL: Crossway, 2001): 91.
26 Abdullah Yusuf Ali, transl., The Qur’an Translation, 8 th edition (Elmhurst, NY: Tahrike
Tarsile Qur’an, Inc., 2001), Sura 54:47-53. All citations from this text. Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s
translation of the Qur’an into English was first published in Lahore, Pakistan in 1934. It is the