TAFTAZANI'S VIEWS ON TAKLIF, GABR AND QADAR:

A NOTE OF THE DEVELOPMENT

OF ISLAMIC THEOLOGICAL DOCTRINES

BY
ZAFAR ISHAQ ANSARI

Commentayy of Sa'd al-Din al-Taftazani (d. 794 A.H.) on the

THE
-Creed of Nagm al-din 'Umar al-Nasafi (d. 537 A.H.) contains
hardly anything original. Our author's claim to significance does
not rest, at least primarily, on brilliance or profoundness of thought.
What is striking about him is his approach to theological problems.
This approach is marked with open-mindedness which seems to
be rooted in his intellectual integrity. In grappling with theological
questions which were quite explosive and had behind them a long
tradition of polemical bitterness, Taftazani appears to be relaxed,
seems to suffer little from any phobias or obsessions, and refuses
to give any but perhaps minimal due to prejudice. As it is well-
known, he belonged to the Aš 'ari school. But this association does
not seem to weigh much on his mind and he shows hardly any
hesitation in abandoning the doctrines of his own school in favour
of those of other schools.
The approach of Taftazani cannot be explained, however,
merely in terms of his personal characteristics as an intellectual
or as a person. It is vitally linked with history; i.e. his approach
reflects not only his intellectual personality but also a particular
phase in the development of Aš'arite doctrines, indeed of Muslim
theology as such. His Commentary represents the culmination
of a process which had continued since the time of Abu 1-Hasan
al-Aš'ari (d. 324 A.H.) down to his own days-the eighth century
of higya. This process was one of effecting modifications in the
Aš 'arite doctrines so as to blunt the edge of its extremism and
bring it closer to the more moderate doctrines of the school initiated
by Abu Hanifa (d. I50 A.H.) and developed by Abu Mansur
al-Maturidi (d. 333 A.H.), a contemporary of As'ari. By the time
of Taftazani very appreciable change had taken place in the
doctrines of the Aš'ari school. The Commentayy epitomizes the
extent of this change. It shows that by the time of Taftazani
66

(and in him ?), the and Maturidi traditions had fused together,
having become almost indistinguishable and having attained a
meaningful synthesis.
In the opinion of this writer, the observation that has been
made above is particularly true with regard to Taftazani's views on
taklff, gaby, and qaday.

Before assessing the significance of Taftazani's views on taklif,

an important point should be noted with respect to the discussion
among Muslims on this subject. Despite disagreements and contro-
versies, the idea that man is answerable to God and is incumbent
with moral responsibility was never brought into question 1.
The controversies on the question had arisen as a result of relating
the question of man's responsibility to some of the bigger questions:
questions about the nature of God. What these people were really
discussing was not whether man was incumbent with taklif or not.
They were rather discussing the rationale of this taklff, which was
related to their views about the rationale of the operations of God.
Does God do something merely because He will to do so, or is He
subject to considerations of right and wrong, of just and unjust ?
If He has imposed some responsibility on man, has He imposed it
in consideration of some principle of right and wrong, or without
2
any regard for it ?
The early Muslims who had begun to speculate on these questions,
(and they had begun to do so at the latest during the second half
of the first century of the higya), tried to answer these questions
in the light of their understanding of God, particularly in the light
of two aspects of His Being: His Omnipotence and His Righteous-
ness. Both these notions formed an integral part of the Muslim
conception of God since both have been stressed in the Qur'dn.
Differences arose largely because of bringing these concepts to
bear on the understanding of the nature of the activity of both
man and God. This intellectual activity led to the development
of what are known as the doctrines of qadar and gaby, and sub-

1. W. Montgomery Watt arrives substantially at the same conclusion.

See Free Will and Predestination in Early Islam, (London, 1943), p. 167.
2. It is questions such as these which lay behind the question: can God
impose upon man a responsibility beyond his capacity ?
 67

sequently to debates on all possible implications of these doctrines

during the following centuries.
The rudiments of (what was later called) Qadari doctrine can
be traced back to some of the Hdrigi sects in the latter part of the
first century. These Hdrigis were led to favour this doctrine because
of their stress on God as One who demands righteousness from his
creatures must of necessity be himself Righteous 1.
In al-Aš'ari's Maqjljt we find reference to several Hdrigi sects
who believed in the Qadari doctrine 2. One of these sects, the
Maymuniyya, believed that God has endowed man with the capacity
required to discharge the responsibility imposed on him, that man
has the power to believe as well as not to believe, that God has
no Will in respect of acts of men, and that human acts are not created
by God 3. Then we find two other noted figures, namely Ma'bad
al-?uhani (d. circa 80 A.H.) and Gaylan al-Dimasqi (put to death
during the reign of Hisam 105-125 A.H.), and some of the Murgi'a
following the Qadari trend of thought 4. According to Ritter,
however, it is the famous al-Hasan al-Basri (d. IIO A.H.) who
should be considered the founder of the Qadari doctrine. It was
because of his exhorting men to righteousness that he felt that he
must assert that they had been given the power to achieve it 5.
The real champions of qaday, in the developed form of this
doctrine, however, were the Mu'tazila who flourished mainly
during the second and third centuries of the Islamic calender
and produced a galaxy of brilliant thinkers. They considered
themselves to be the upholders of [God's] "Unity and Justice",
which shows the centrality of the idea of "righteousness" in their
understanding of God. The motive underlying their views on taklif,
as in the case of all Qadaris, was their concern for not fixing evil
on God 6. Their strong revulsion against the doctrines of gabr
which denied the reality of human acts and attributed human acts
to God, was mainly because it seemed to them incompatible with

1. See WATT, op. cit., pp. 32 ff.

2. See Maqalat al-Islamiyyin, ed. H. RITTER, 2 vols., (Istanbul, 1929),
vol. I, pp. 93, 96, 104, 116.
3. Ibid., p. 93. These views, as we shall see later, were the quintessence
of Qadari and Mu tazili doctrines.
4. For an account of these see WATT, pp. 40 ff. and pp. 53 f.
5. See ibid., pp. 54 f. See particularly the Treatise of Basri in Journal
of the American Oriental Society, vol. LV, pp. 138 ff., passim.
6. Cf. WATT, p. 53.
68

God's justice and righteousness. They had two main arguments

against the doctrine of kaby, which are the following:
First : a number of human acts are evil. According to the doctrine
of gabr these acts must be regarded as acts of God, which leads
to the blasphemous conclusion that God commits evil.
Second: if a man is under the compulsion of God in whatever
he does, this makes a mockery both of man's responsibility and of
God's justice. For, if man has neither done any good nor any evil,
there is no justification for praise and blame, or reward and punish-
ment. God could be right in punishing a person for committing
an evil, but not if God had himself compelled him to do so ; not
if he had been left, due to the overpowering Will of God, with no
other alternative. It is for this reason that the Mu'tazila insisted
that man had been endowed with the power over an act as well
as its opposite, that this power was a part of human nature and
preceded all human acts. Again, since God is just and righteous,
He can impose responsibility only to the extent of man's capacity,
but not beyond that 1.
Thus, the essence of the Mu'tazili position was that God's Will
was not related to human acts and so man was free to do good
or evil, that God had imposed on him responsibility commensurate
with his capacity. They interpreted the Quranic verses about
Term, Sustenance, Sealing of hearts, Guidance, Succour 2, etc.,
with a view to showing that man's destiny lay in man's own hands,
and stripped God of every role except that of recorder and observer 3.
Al-Mas'ildi summarises their views on the question under con-
sideration as follows:
"Allah does not approve of evil, and does not create the acts of creatures;
rather, it is they themselves who do [the acts] they had been commanded
or forbidden; [and they do this] by virtue of the power which God has created
for and put into them. He commands only what He approves, and forbids
only what He disapproves.... He is innocent of every evil which He has
forbidden. He never made incumbent on them anything of which they
were incapable, nor does he desire them to do what is beyond their power....
If He had desired, He would have compelled the creatures to obedience and
prevented them from sinning. But He does not do so, for in it there is with-
drawal of the test [to which men have been put.] 4"
1. For the views of Mu tazila, see AL-SAHRASTANI, al-Milal wa-l-nihal,
ed. M. F. BADRAN,(Cairo, 1947), pp. 61 ff.; Ahmad AMiN, Zuhr al-Islam,
vol. IV, (Cairo, 1955), especially pp. 15-19, 77-81, 82-83, and WATT, pp. 61 ff.
2. See their explanations in loc. cit. 3. Ibid., p. 68.
4. MAS UDI, Murug al-dahab, ed. M. M. ABD AL-HAMID,4 vols., (Cairo,
1958), vol. III, pp. 234 f.
 69

What was implicit in the Mu`tazili approach was the application

of human rational criteria, of the human notions of righteousness,
to God. While fervently upholding the righteousness of God,
the Mu'tazili arguments presupposed the capacity of man's reason
to determine the "ought" even for God. Even in its implicit form
this trend of thought had drawn the fire of other theologians.
The Mu'tazila shocked them even more when the rationalist
al-Naz;z;am replaced this "ought" in respect of God by "must",
thereby introducing an altogether new element in the conception
of God. In the words of Watt:
"He attributed to his rational ideas of value such absoluteness that
God Himself must bow before them. God must do what is best for men;
God must not assign men to Paradise or Hell except in accordance with just
principles. 1"
The Mu'tazila, except in the last period of their efflorescence,
showed scarcely any awareness of the limitations of the human
notions of right and wrong, and the inappropriateness of applying
those notions in attempting to understand the ways of God.
When revolted against the Mu'tazila he was in fact
revolting against the inadequacy of their rational system to com-
prehend the ways of God 2. What he was trying to impress was not
the arbitrariness of God, but the inscrutability of His ways, the
inadequacy of reason to unfathom Divine mysteries. Underlying
the notions of justice cherished by the Mu'tazila was their view
of God as "a superior kind of magistrate or administrator" 3.
The Mu'tazili view of the nature of human activity too seems
to suffer from the same defect: naivité born out of an exaggerated
confidence in the absoluteness of their rational notions. For,
even if the question of God's interference in human affairs is set
aside, there are numerous other factors which are beyond an
individual's control and yet influence the course of his life: his
birth, heredity, environment, etc.
If the Qadariyya hand the Mu'tazilah had used their views
on God's righteousness as the starting-point of their reflection

1. WATT, p. 73.
2. The well-known story that al-Aš'ari put a perplexing problem before
his master before abandoning his school, is very instructive. See its mention
in TAFTAZANI,Sarh cala-l-cAqa id al-nasafiyya (Cairo, Dar Ihya al-Kutub
al-carabiyya, n.d.), p. 13.
3. WATT, p. 68. Ahmad AMIN makes precisely the same observation,
Zuhr al-Islam, vol. IV, p. 80.
70

on taklif, the point of departure of the Gabris was the idea of

God's Omnipotence. They linked every human act to the Will
of God in a manner which left for man hardly any share in his acts.
The first vigorous exponent of gabr was Gahm b. Safwan (d.
128 A.H.) who seems to represent the lunatic fringe of the Gabri
school. His basic idea was:
"None acts in reality except God alone. He is the Agent and men have
acts attributed to them metaphorically. Thus it is said that the stone
moves, the sphere revolves, the sun sets. 1"
Even though the Gabris disagreed among themselves, their dis-
agreement was not substantial. The essence of the Gabri position,
according to al-Šahrastäni, was that: "Compulsion (gaby) means
denying that act can really come from men, and attributing them
to God ... The pure Gabriyya are those who affirm that no act
at all can be man's or that [he does not have] the power to perform
any act. The moderate Gabriyya [are those who] affirm for men a
power [in respect of their acts] which has no influence at all" 2.
If the Mu'tazila's main concern was to prevent evil being fixed
on God, the 6abris were keen to see that weakness was not ascribed
to God. Their idea of God's activity as well as man's (?), to a large
extent suffered from the same kind of weakness as that of Mu'ta-
zila : the tendency to solve a big, involved, perhaps insoluble
problem by employing a simple formula and carrying its logical
implications to the farthest point. Moreover, if their doctrines
were to be taken seriously and their implications applied rigorously,
they are likely to undermine the whole notion of man's moral
responsibility. The main question that arises is: if God alone acts,
why should man be asked at all to act righteously ? These doctrines
could only engender a fatalistic attitude of mind and a disregard
for righteous conduct.
Maturidi was, therefore, not far from the truth when he rejected
this doctrine as likely to deprive man "of hope and fear" 3.

II
One thing seems to have been common to the extremist Gabris
and Qadaris, at least to most of them. This was their robust con-
viction that they possessed a sure key to understanding the ways

1. Maqalat, vol. I, p. 279.

2. al-Milal, p. 133.
3. Cited in WATT, p. 155.
 71

of God relating to man's action and his destiny. This aspect was
particularly prominent in the Mu'tazila. The Aš'ari revolt
against the Mu'tazila, as we have already noted, was a revolt
against this naiviti, this absolutism of Mu'tazill rationalism.
point of emphasis was God's Omnipotence. He did
not repudiate the concept of God's righteousness and justice.
The difference between the positions of al-Aš'ari and that of Mu'ta-
zilah was a subtle, and nevertheless significant one. The Mu'tazili
view was that God was righteous because (and only so long as?).
His operations conformed to a set of norms of good and righteous-
ness. on the other hand, thought God-if we might put it
in our own words-to be righteous unreservedly. He thought
of Him as One transcending all human ethical notions. The very
idea of subjecting God to human criteria of right and wrong appeared
to him blasphemous. His view was that whatever God willed was
right for Him due to the very fact of His willing, irrespective
of whether it conformed to the human notions of right and wrong
or not.
Coming to his views relating to the questions in discussion,
Aš'ari did not designate his doctrine as gaby. As for qadar, his
opposition to it is well-known. According to his view, all human
acts are created by God, whether they are acts of belief or unbelief.
This view is linked with his profound concern with God's Omni-
potence ; with the idea that the taking place of any act not
willed by Allah implies weakness on His part. However, he affirmed
that human acts took place by an originated power. This power is
concomitant with an action 1. What makes al-Aš'ari very close
to 6abris is his view that by this power man can perform only a
certain act, and not its opposite. If this is read together with his
views on Sealing, Appointed Terms, Guidance and Straying,
and qadar 2, one understands why Mu'tazila should have branded
his school as part of 6abriyyah3. Nevertheless, he did, even if
1. For his views see al-Ibana can usul al-diyana, ed. and tr. W. C.
KLEIN, (New Haven, 1940), pp. 107-III, and Theology of al-Ashlcari, ed. and
tr. R. J. McCARTHY,(Beirut, 1953), pp. 76-90. 97-100.
2. Ibana, pp. 107 ff.
3. It is important to note that the concept of kasb or iktisab plays hardly
any significant part in al-Ašcari's theology. He hardly ever uses it in connec-
tion with his own doctrine. In one of the few instances when he uses it,
he points out that iktisab means that a human act comes about through
an originated power and is an acquisition (kasb) for the person through
whose power it comes about (WATT,p. 143). It is definitely a misconception,
72

inchoately, effect a breach in the citadel of pure gabr. Within a

hundred years after the death of Aš'ari, Abu Bakr al-Baqillani
(d. 403), a savant of his school, employed the term kasb and defined
the position of the school in these words: "For the servant there
is acquisition (kasb), and he is not compelled (magbur)"; and that:
"the actions of men are their acquisitions, and creation of God" 1.
He argued in favour of this position on the basis of distinction
between voluntary and involuntary action, e.g., bodily movement
or trembling of a man in a state of fever, and movement of his
bodily organs deliberately and by choice 2. Thus Baqillani made a
leeway towards the recognition of man's part in his actions, though
this element was not much developed.
In the following centuries this trend was further developed
in the school and Taftazani stands at the summit of this
important course of development.
What were the factors which contributed to the development
of this trend of ideas? For one thing, the doctrine on this
question as it had been enunciated by Aš'ari himself, was quite
vulnerable. At various points it bore the imprint of being inspired
by Aš'ari's anti-Mu'tazila prejudice, instead of being the result
of calm, dispassionate reflection or being based on some incontro-
vertibly clear teachings of the Qur'dn. Moreover, the subsequent
decline of the Mu'tazila led to relaxation of tension and to the
waning of prejudice against their doctrines, even though the
Mu'tazila were remembered with considerable bitterness and
hatred. This enabled the Mu'tazili views to exert some influence
on the theological doctrines of the orthodox theological schools.
What is no less important is the contribution made by Maturidi
(d. 333 A.H.) (a contemporary of al-Aš'ari and a follower of Abu
IIanifa's doctrines in the realms of law as well as theology)
and his school of theology. Abu Hanifa himself had taken a
moderate view on this question. Even though he believed in the
idea of God's Decree (qadar), he had also held that the power

as Watt has proved, to consider al-Ašari to be the one who introduced

this concept in Islamic theology. This had been introduced by the group
of theologians known as ahl al-itbat and had been in much common use in
the century before al-Ašcari. See WATT, pp. 98 and 168.
1. BAQILLANI,al-Insaf fi ma yagib al-Ictiqad, ed. M.Z. AL-KAWTARI,
(Cairo, 1952), pp. 40 f.
2. Ibid., p. 41.
 73

by which men could sin was the same by which he could obey 1.
Maturidi developed this trend of thought even further. Like the
he affirmed that human actions were created by God.
But he disagreed with their view that the power which was able
to effect evil was not able to effect good. He considered this to be
tantamount to gabr 2. His own doctrine, which stressed man's
choice of alternatives, asserted that "reward and punishment
are according to the use (isti'mi7l) of the created act" 3. The view
of the school is summed up as follows:
"The creating is the act of God and consists in the originating of power
in man, but the use of the originated power is the act of man, really not
4"
metaphorically.
Mdturicli's position, however, was different from that of the
Qadariyya and Mu'tazila. For, he adhered to the notion em-
phasized by the school that everything that takes place,
even sin and unbelief, takes place by the will of God: and that what-
ever man does is known to God from eternity 5.

III

Nasafi belonged to the Maturidi school and expounded the view

of his school on taklif in his Creed. This view stresses man's choice
of action, and the principle that taklff is based on, and is limited
by, man's capacity. In his Commentary, Taftazani develops his
own doctrine, and significantly enough, this is almost indistinguish-
ably close to that of Nasafi.
Like Nasafi, Taftazani does not abandon some of the important
doctrines which had been cherished by both the and
Maturidis. The first of these on which Taftazani lays great stress
is that all human actions, "whether of Unbelief or Belief" are the
creation of God: that they are by His willing and desiring, His
judgment, His ruling, and by His decreeing" 6. Taftazani in-
sisted with great force that the Mu'tazilite position of denying
that Allah wills wicked and vile things, was erroneous. To him
this position was "abominable", and in this his motive is the same

1. WATT, p. 155.
2. Ibid., p. 154.
3. Cited in ibid., pp. 154 ff.
4. Ibid., p. 155.
5. Ibid., p. 157.
6. TAFTAZANI,op. cit., pp. 96 ff.
74

as had been in other Aš 'ari theologians: that this amounted to

ascribing weakness to God 1.
But even while emphasising that everything takes place by the
Will of God, he is keen to point out that this is not essentially
the position of gabY, and that he disagrees with that position by
virtue of his view that man has the "power of acquisition and
choice" :

"[The Mu'tazilites] ... said that if everything were by the creative act
of Alldh, the imposing [on the creature] of legal responsibility (taklif) would
be unsound, as would be all praise and blame, reward and punishment [of
him] .... The answer is that this argument should be addressed to the
Gabrites who deny absolutely to him [that is, the creature] the power of
acquisition and choice.2"
Taftazani's vision of man-God participation in human acts
shows that far from being a monolithic operation, the process by
which human action takes place is a fairly complex one. What
he is very sure of, and is very vehement about, is that both do
participate in it, not in a metaphorical but in a real sense. In this
connection he starts by making a distinction between voluntary
and involuntary actions as al-Baqillani had made earlier. Taftazani,
like Baqillani, distinguishes between "the movement of grasping
and that of trembling". The first is by man's choice, while the
second is not 3. For an act to be real, i.e., the one for which man is
accountable to God it is necessary that purpose and choice should
precede them, as they do precede in such actions which are described
by statements such as "he worshipped", "he fasted", which are
different from the statement "the boy grew tall", etc 4.
It is because of this fact-having been endowed with the capacity
to make choice-that man has been made responsible; were it not
so, investing man with responsibility would be unjustified 5.
But he is equally insistent that God is the creator of human acts.
How does He create them ? True, God's will is related to these acts,
but not in a compulsive manner. Taftazani's view seems to be that
the principle according to which God creates human acts is by
creating in a man a power to perform the act, a power which is

1. He illustrates this by the story of a Magian's discussion with cAmr b.

cUbayd, ibid., p. 99.
2. Ibid., pp. 97 f. See also his view on pp. 100 ff.
3. Ibid., p. 100.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
 75

concomitant with the act. This power, which is in the nature of

succour, is essential for the act to take place, and hence man's
dependence for all his acts on God. But even the creating of this
power is in accordance with a certain principle :
"In general, ability is an attribute that Alldh creates within the creature
following upon the soundness of the causes and the instruments where
there is the purpose for acquiring the action. So, if the creature purposes a
good action Allah creates the power to do good, and if the purposes an evil
action Alldh creates the power to do evil and he thus loses he power to
do good and deserves blame and punishment. For this reason Alldh blames
the Unbelievers because they are lacking [in the ability] to hear. 1"

At another place he observes:

".. , when the creatures expends his power and will in action it is an
acquisition (kasb), and when Allah brings it into existence following upon
that.... The creature's action is by Alläh's creating and bringing into
existence exercised along with what the creature has of power and choice. 2"

His denial of the compulsive nature of God's participation in

human action is quite vehement. He mentions the objection that
could be made with regard to the concept of taqdír: that man was
made an object of compulsion in his unbelief, and because of this
compulsion it would not be sound to make him responsible for that :
"To this we reply that Alldh willed for them unbelief and evil-doing by
their own choice, so there is no compulsion. For just as He knew that on
their part they would choose unbelief and evil-doing, so He did not make them
legally responsible for the impossible [because they had choice].3"
Taftdzdni is conscious of the difficulty in spelling out with clarity
and precision anything on the subject, because of the magnitude
of the obscurity of the subject itself.
"We can only say that since it has been established by proof that the
Creator is Alldh, and that of necessity the power and will of the creature
enter into some actions like the movement of grasping though not into others
like the movement of trembling, we needed to escape from this perplexing
problem by saying that Alldh is the Creator (al-Haliq) of everything and
the creature is an acquirer (kasib).4"

What he is keen to stress is the dual nature of human action:

God and man can be seen as participants in it from two different
standpoints. "It is a maqdür of Alldh from the standpoint of being

1. Ibid., pp. 103 f.

2. Ibid., p. 102.
3. Ibid., p. 99.
4. Ibid., p. 102.
76

brought into existence; and a maqdür of the creature from the

standpoint of acquisition" 1.
That, according to him, does not amount to establishing a
co-partnership between man and God. The accurate similarity
would be that of a piece of land which belongs to God by virtue
of that He created it, and to man because of his having established
control over it2.
There remains Taftazani's view on ability or power. Like Nasafi,
he considers this to have two meanings: first, that ability which
is an accident, is essential for action, and which God creates con-
comitant with the action. The nature of this ability, as we have
already explained, is such that it follows, perhaps automatically,
man's choice and will to do something. Ability has another meaning
too: it applies to the soundness of causes, instruments, and members
of the body 3. It is ability in this sense which justifies responsibility
and determines its extent. It is ability in this second sense beyond
which man is not responsible 4. Thus, God does not demand man
to perform whatever is impossible, whether something impossible
in itself like uniting together of contraries or something which is
impossible for the creature, like the creation of a body 5.
The impression that one gets from Taftazani's treatment of the
subject is that he had veered away from the original position of
his school, and accepted the doctrine of Maturidi school in its
entirety. He is very fervent in his conviction that the notion of
compulsion with regard to man's action, in all its forms, is inconsist-
ent with taklif. Taklif is sound only if it is based on man's capacity
to choose. He speaks almost in the Mu'tazili vein when he remarks:
"It [the position denying man's choice and acquisition] is also unsound
because were the creature not to have any part at all in the action, it would
not be sound to impose responsibility on them or to base his deserving reward
and punishment on his actions, nor would it be sound to ascribe to him
actions which demand for being real that purpose and choice precede them.e"

Taftazani had not abandoned the Aš'ari position completely:

he insisted on God's creation of man's acts, both good and bad-

1. Ibid.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 105.
4. Ibid., pp. 106 f. Needless to say that this position is opposed to that
of al- Aš cari
5. Ibid., p. 106.
6. Ibid., p. 100.
 77

which is perhaps essential to retain the element of the supremacy

of God's Will as an important aspect of man's conception of the
Creator and His creation. It is this motive, again, which is evident
in his support of the orthodox positions on the questions of tawallud,
agal and yizq, and the rejection of the Mu'tazili view that what
is best for creatures is incumbent on God 1. Thus, instead of taking
the Mu'tazili position, he tries to maintain the balance-but tilts
it considerably against gaby.
IV
In the following centuries since the time of Taftazani, the doc-
trines that he had developed have remained broadly the same.
For one thing, when he wrote his Commentary, the creative period
of Muslim theology already lay behind. We do not suggest that
the writings of Taftazani proved instrumental in establishing
the supremacy of the doctrines which he had expounded. In fact
his significance seems to lie in the fact that he impressively in-
tellectualized what might be roughly termed the of the com-
munity, which had been arrived at gradually as a result of centuries
of discussions and controversies.
The position in the contemporary Muslim world seems to be that
more or less the same doctrines are being adhered to. A Muslim of to-
day feels deeply conscious of the Omnipotence of God, and realizes
that he is absolutely dependent for everything on God, on His
Succour, on His Mercy, on His Guidance. He is, however, not at
all sceptical as to his inherent capacity to choose between right
and wrong which justifies the imposition of taklff. And even though
he depends on God's succour to absolve himself of this taklif,
he knows he is not under compulsion. He feels the true position
is somewhere between absolute gabr and absolute qadar, though
thanks to the nature of the question, he finds it hard to define
precisely what it is 2.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ABU ZAHRA, Muhammad. al-Madahib al-islamiyya Cairo, n.d.
AMIN, Ahmad. Duha al-Islam, vol. II, III edition, Cairo, 1952.
- Duha al-Islam, vol. III, V edition, Cairo, 1952.
- Fagr al-Islam, VII edition, Cairo, 1955.
- Zuhr al-Islam, vol. IV, Cairo, 1955.

1. See ibid., pp. 108-112.

2. Mawlana Abu l-A la MAWDUDI'Sbrief treatise Mas'alah'i Gabr wa-
Qadar, (Pathankot, n.d.) provides a very good illustration of this.
78

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