Belief in Divine Decree (Qadar)

Qadar, belief in divine decree, is the conviction that everything that happens — good or difficult — occurs within God's knowledge, will, and permission. It is the last of the six pillars of faith and one of the more discussed points of Islamic theology, because it raises a question every religious tradition has to answer: how does a person's free choice relate to a God who already knows everything that will happen? Mainstream Islamic theology holds these together rather than choosing one over the other: God's knowledge of the future is complete, and nothing happens outside His will, yet human beings are still genuinely responsible for the choices they make. A common way scholars describe this is that God's knowledge of what a person will choose does not force that choice — it simply is not separate from it. In practice, belief in qadar is meant to shape how a person relates to hardship and success alike: neither is attributed to blind chance, and neither is treated as reason for despair or arrogance. A well-known piece of prophetic guidance encourages striving for what benefits a person, relying on God, and not dwelling on 'what if' once an outcome has already occurred — treating qadar as a source of steadiness rather than fatalism.