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Are a person's voluntary actions and statements, such as marriage or university specialization, predetermined and preordained in the Preserved Tablet?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

The summary of the belief of Ahl al-Sunnah is that everything that occurs in the universe is known to Allah beforehand and recorded with Him in the Preserved Tablet fifty thousand years before the creation of the heavens and the earth. He is the Creator of all that and wills it existentially and by divine decree. Nevertheless, servants have a will and volition that Allah has created for them, and by which their actions occur, so they are fully responsible for them, not coerced, whether in obedience, disobedience, or permissible matters. Allah has decreed everything through causes, and He created for the servant a will and volition by which he chooses with complete freedom, in fulfillment of His saying, the Almighty: "For whoever wills among you to take a straight path. And you do not will except that Allah wills, Lord of the worlds." There is no problem in this, because the servant does not know what Allah has decreed eternally, and he strives by means of causes according to his will and choice, then nothing happens except what Allah has decreed and ordained.

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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