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QADR OR TAQDIR - Foreknowledge of God

Encyclopaedia of Ismailism by Mumtaz Ali Tajddin

The doctrine of predestination or the decreeing of a good course for one man and an evil course for another, thus finds no support from the Koran, which plainly gives to man the choice to follow one way or the other. But, it is said, the doctrine of the decreeing of good and evil follows from the doctrine of the foreknowledge of God. If God knows what will happen in the future, whether a particular man will take a good or an evil course, it follows that that man must take that particular course, for the knowledge of God cannot be untrue. Now in the first place, it must be clearly understood what God's knowledge of the future means? The fact is that the future is an open book to God. The limitations of space and time, which are everything to man, are nothing to God. Man's knowledge of things is limited both by space and time, but to the Infinite Being, unlimited space is as it were a single point and the past and the future are like the present. God sees or knows the future as a man would know what is passing before his eyes. God's knowledge of the future therefore, though far above and far superior to man's knowledge, is like his knowledge of the present, and mere knowledge of a thing does not interfere with the choice of the agent or the doer. Hence God's foreknowledge has nothing to do with predestination.


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