Reddit reply in r/AcademicQuran: sean w anthony on predestination and free will in — February 23, 2025 | Ali Shukri Amin

Since the post is about Sunni Islam and not the Quran or Islam in it's earliest days, I will answer according to the historical views of Sunnis.

Sunni scholarship generally responded to the excesses of the Umayyads by emphasizing free will and to the Mu'tazilite claims around absolute freedom with determinism. Ultimately, the scholarship coalesced moreso on the side of determinism but to varying degrees.

Hasan al-Basri's Risala fi Huriyyah al-Ikhtiyar penned to the Umayyad sultan makes a very clear case for free will using the Qur'an and accusing the Umayyad leadership of misinterpreting the concept of Qadr.

Umar bin Abd al-Aziz's letter on Qadr only a short while after is more in line with modern Atharism.

Abu al-Hasan al-Ash'ari attempted to reconcile the radical free will of the Mu'tazilah (God doesn't create sins, He doesn't know our actions before we do them) with the harder determinism of the muhadithin through the concept of Kasb.

Kasb was initially only adopted by the Mutakallimun but became accepted by the Atharis at some point, I'm not sure exactly when.

Kasb is the idea that Allah creates a menu of possible deeds you can do and then you choose the deed that you want. Allah knows beforehand what you will choose, and He has written that foreknowledge down as evidence against you, but He doesn't compel the choice. Out of these possible options, you still make a choice.

The idea of Kasb is closely related to the wider Ashari theological dependance on atoms and accidents.

So on one hand you have Atharis who claim to believe in free will but rely heavily on concepts of predestination, on the other you have Hasan al-Basri who claims to believe in predestination but focuses heavily on free will, and in the middle you have Ash'aris who try to create a theology that accomodates both.

There are also Atharis like ibn Taymiyyah/ibn al-Qayyim who tried to have sophisticated systems to accomodate both.

The issue of Qadr was one of the main theological controversies of early Islam. It was still widely discussed later but it wasn't a point of intra-Sunni contention unlike the Sifat for example. In Sahih Muslim the first narrations he brings after his introduction are on this topic of Qadr.

Nearly every work of Aqidah mentions Qadr. It's considered one of the six articles of faith mentioned in hadith. It is mentioned in the Quran. Sunnis have been thinking about Qadr since the earliest days of the denomination until today.

The discussion also became influenced by Greek and Christian philosophical thinking as the borders of the Muslim empire expanded.

Ibn Sina, a Muslim philosopher, also had some interesting heterodoxical takes on the issue.