Compulsion and Delegation

Qur'an 2:26 · Al-Baqarah

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يَسْتَحْىِۦٓ أَن يَضْرِبَ مَثَلًا مَّا بَعُوضَةً فَمَا فَوْقَهَا ۚ فَأَمَّا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ فَيَعْلَمُونَ أَنَّهُ ٱلْحَقُّ مِن رَّبِّهِمْ ۖ وَأَمَّا ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا۟ فَيَقُولُونَ مَاذَآ أَرَادَ ٱللَّهُ بِهَـٰذَا مَثَلًا ۘ يُضِلُّ بِهِۦ كَثِيرًا وَيَهْدِى بِهِۦ كَثِيرًا ۚ وَمَا يُضِلُّ بِهِۦٓ إِلَّا ٱلْفَـٰسِقِينَ

(2:26) Indeed Allah is not ashamed to draw a parable whether it is that of a gnat or something above it. As for those who have faith, they know it is the truth from their Lord; and as for the faithless, they say, ‘What did Allah mean by this parable?’ Thereby He leads many astray, and thereby He guides many; and He leads no one astray thereby except the transgressors

The question

Are human actions compelled by God's will and decree (jabr), or handed over entirely to man so that God has no part in them (tafwīḍ) — or is the truth “a position between the two”?

Views answered: al-Mujabbirah (those who believe in compulsion), the Ashʿarī view of divine will and decree, the Muʿtazilites

Al-Mizan's argument

The verse says that God causes none to err by the parable “except the transgressors”. In the narrations on it, al-Mizan takes up the teaching of the Imams of the Ahl al-Bayt: “There is neither compulsion nor delegation, but a position between the two.” He explains how the believers in compulsion went wrong — reasoning that because every action is decreed by God, man has no power over it, and that whatever God does is good and whatever He forbids is evil — and how the Muʿtazilites went to the other extreme, making man the independent owner of his actions, illustrated by the parable of a master who gives his slave a house and property. He distinguishes an action's existence, which is from God, from its relation to its doer, which is man's, and sets out the five kinds of argument the narrations use against both views. (The essays on this subject before and after the narrations are in the Al-Mizan App.)

Reading guide

Each part opens the commentary at that point.

1. “Neither compulsion nor delegation”
2. Imam ʿAlī and the old man after Ṣiffīn
3. The early dispute: the view that God's will alone makes things good or evil
4. Imam al-Riḍā's principle
5. Where the believers in compulsion went wrong
6. The Muʿtazilites' opposite error, and the parable of the master and the slave
7. Are man's deeds created? The two aspects of an action
8. Imam al-Riḍā's answer to al-Bazanṭī, and related narrations
9. The five kinds of argument in the narrations
10. An objection and its reply

Read the whole commentary on 2:26 →