Doctrines
Qadariyya
Orthodoxy and Dissent
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Origin from 680
Qadariyya is the position, current among some theologians in early Islam from the late seventh century, that human beings possess genuine free will, qadar, to choose their own actions including sin, rather than every act being wholly predetermined by God, so that a person bears real responsibility for wrongdoing rather than divine decree bearing it. Early figures associated with the teaching include Ma'bad al-Juhani, executed around 699 during the Umayyad period partly for it, and Ghaylan al-Dimashqi, executed under Caliph Hisham. Its opponents held that the Quran own language of divine decree leaves no room for an uncaused human choice, and that affirming an independent human power compromises God sole sovereignty over creation. No single council condemned the position the way a Christian council might; Sunni theology settled the question gradually, over centuries, and the underlying concern for moral responsibility resurfaced in modified form in Mutazilite theology and later in al-Ashari own more cautious formula balancing decree and accountability.
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Held ByA late seventh century position among early Muslim theologians, holding that human beings possess genuine free will to choose their actions rather than every act being wholly predetermined; associated with Ma'bad al-Juhani and Ghaylan al-Dimashqi, both executed partly for the teaching; not held by any major Sunni school in its original form today, though its underlying concern for moral responsibility resurfaced in Mutazilite theology and, more cautiously, in later Sunni formulas. 2 W. Montgomery Watt notes real scholarly disagreement over how unified an early Qadari movement actually was, as against a looser tendency later heresiographers retrospectively grouped under one name. Status
Status Within the TraditionRejected, or not held, within this tradition 1Tradition: Islam Doctrinal CategoryDivine Decree and Human Freedom 2 Position Profile
Principal ProponentMa'bad al-Juhani, an early proponent executed around 699 during the Umayyad period, and Ghaylan al-Dimashqi, executed under Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik, both put to death in part for the teaching. 1 Opposing PositionThat the Quran own language of divine decree, qadar, means God alone determines every event including human acts, so affirming an independent human power to cause action compromises God sole sovereignty over creation. 2 Origins
Origin Period Defining MomentThe executions of Ma'bad al-Juhani around 699 and Ghaylan al-Dimashqi under Caliph Hisham marked the position as politically dangerous as well as theologically contested; no single council settled the question, and Sunni orthodoxy formed its own more cautious middle position gradually over the following centuries. 1 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceThat human beings possess a genuine power, qadar, to choose and cause their own actions including sin, so that moral responsibility rests with the individual rather than with an all-determining divine decree. 2 Learn More
The Power to Choose, and What It Cost Its Earliest Defenders
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Ma'bad al-Juhani did not invent the question of free will in Islam, but he is among the first named figures executed at least partly for pressing it. Teaching in the late seventh century, in the unsettled decades after the early civil wars, he argued that divine justice requires human beings to possess real power over their own actions, qadar, since punishing a sinner for an act God alone caused would make God the author of injustice.
The Umayyad authorities who executed him in 699, and later Ghaylan al-Dimashqi under Caliph Hisham, read the position as more than abstract theology. A doctrine holding that rulers bear real responsibility for their own unjust acts, rather than acting as predetermined instruments, cut uncomfortably close to a regime whose legitimacy rested partly on claims of divine sanction.
The theological objection outlasted the political one. Opponents held that the Quran's own vocabulary of divine decree leaves no space for an uncaused human choice, and that Qadari teaching risked positing two independent powers, God and the believer, where Islamic theology insisted on one. No single council settled the dispute the way Nicaea or Chalcedon did in Christianity; instead the question circulated for centuries through the developing schools of kalam, reformulated by Mutazilite theologians and eventually answered, in a more cautious middle form, by al-Ashari's own doctrine of human acquisition, kasb, of an act that God alone truly creates.
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