Predestination is taught so explicitly in Islam that it is canonized as one of the six major beliefs in Sunni Islam - which comprises 80% of Muslims. The minority Shia Muslims who reject predestination, though, are simply wrong, as this article will demonstrate. Muhammad taught a cut-and-dry predestination.
Unlike in the Bible, where God wants every single person to be saved (1 Timothy 2:3-4: 2 Peter 3:9), it's made abundantly clear in the Quran that the false god of Islam doesn't want all to be saved. If he did, they would be:
Surah 10:99-100
99 Had your Lord so willed O Prophet, all people on earth would have certainly believed, every single one of them! Would you then force people to become believers?
100 It is not for any soul to believe except by Allah's leave, and He will bring His wrath upon those who are unmindful.
So, not only are you only able to believe if Allah wants you to, but he doesn't want everyone to believe, and he has wrath upon those who don't.
Neither of these false religions has ever been able to explain how God can have wrath upon people for unbelief if He is the only one choosing whether they are able to believe or not. That's not justice. That requires fantastic mental gymnastics to even attempt to justify such a situation.
When speaking on the revelation that Allah sends to humanity, Muhammad reveals:
Surah 14:4
4 We have not sent a messenger except in the language of his people to clarify the message for them. Then Allah leaves whoever He wills to stray and guides whoever He wills. And He is the Almighty, All-Wise.
This verse is exemplary of a major theme in the Quran - that Allah controls the beliefs and behaviors of human beings, and human beings are fixed into either belief or disbelief, unable to affect their own destiny.
What follows are some of the passages from the Quran that most clearly teach this:
Surah 2:6-7
6 As for the disbelievers, it is the same whether you warn them or not - they will never believe.
7 Allah has sealed their hearts and their hearing, and their sight is covered. They will suffer a tremendous punishment.
Surah 6:25
25 There are some of them who ˹pretend to˺ listen to your recitation ˹of the Quran˺, but We have cast veils over their hearts - leaving them unable to comprehend it - and deafness in their ears. Even if they were to see every sign, they still would not believe in them. The disbelievers would ˹even˺ come to argue with you, saying, “This ˹Quran˺ is nothing but ancient fables!”
Surah 6:35
35 If you find their denial unbearable, then build—if you can—a tunnel through the earth or stairs to the sky to bring them a ˹more compelling˺ sign. Had Allah so willed, He could have guided them all. So do not be one of those ignorant ˹of this fact˺.
Surah 6:107
107 Had Allah willed, they would not have been polytheists. We have not appointed you as their keeper, nor are you their maintainer.
Surah 6:125
125 Whoever Allah wills to guide, He opens their heart to Islam. But whoever He wills to leave astray, He makes their chest tight and constricted as if they were climbing up into the sky. This is how Allah dooms those who disbelieve.
Surah 6:149
149 Say, "Allah has the most conclusive argument. Had it been His Will, He would have easily guided all of you."
Surah 7:30
30 He has guided some, while others are destined to stray. They have taken devils as their masters instead of Allah—thinking they are ˹rightly˺ guided.
Surah 10:19
19 Humanity was once nothing but a single community ˹of believers˺, but then they differed. Had it not been for a prior decree from your Lord, their differences would have been settled ˹at once˺.
Surah 11:118
118 Had your Lord so willed, He would have certainly made humanity one single community ˹of believers˺, but they will always ˹choose to˺ differ—
Surah 13:31
31 If there were a recitation that could cause mountains to move, or the earth to split, or the dead to speak, ˹it would have been this Quran˺. But all matters are by Allah's Will. Have the believers not yet realized that had Allah willed, He could have guided all of humanity? And disasters will continue to afflict the disbelievers or strike close to their homes for their misdeeds, until Allah's promise comes to pass. Surely Allah never fails in His promise.
Surah 16:9
9 It is upon Allah ˹alone˺ to ˹clearly˺ show the Straight Way. Other ways are deviant. Had He willed, He would have easily guided all of you.
Surah 16:93
93 Had Allah willed, He could have easily made you one community ˹of believers˺, but He leaves to stray whoever He wills and guides whoever He wills. And you will certainly be questioned about what you used to do.
Surah 32:13
13 Had We willed, We could have easily imposed guidance on every soul. But My Word will come to pass: I will surely fill up Hell with jinn and humans all together.
Surah 35:8
8 Are those whose evil-doing is made so appealing to them that they deem it good ˹like those who are rightly guided˺? ˹It is˺ certainly Allah ˹Who˺ leaves to stray whoever He wills, and guides whoever He wills. So do not grieve yourself to death over them ˹O Prophet˺. Surely Allah is All-Knowing of what they do.
Surah 36:7-10
7 The decree ˹of torment˺ has already been justified against most of them, for they will never believe.
8 ˹It is as if˺ We have put shackles around their necks up to their chins, so their heads are forced up,
9 and have placed a barrier before them and a barrier behind them and covered them ˹all˺ up, so they fail to see ˹the truth˺.
10 It is the same whether you warn them or not—they will never believe.
Surah 42:8
8 Had Allah willed, He could have easily made all ˹humanity˺ into a single community ˹of believers˺. But He admits into His mercy whoever He wills. And the wrongdoers will have no protector or helper.
Surah 42:8
8 Had Allah willed, He could have easily made all ˹humanity˺ into a single community ˹of believers˺. But He admits into His mercy whoever He wills. And the wrongdoers will have no protector or helper.
Surah 76:29-30
29 Surely this is a reminder. So let whoever wills take the ˹Right˺ Way to their Lord.
30 But you cannot will ˹to do so˺ unless Allah wills. Indeed, Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise.
Surah 81:27-29
27 Surely this ˹Quran˺ is only a reminder to the whole world -
28 to whoever of you wills to take the Straight Way.
29 But you cannot will ˹to do so˺, except by the Will of Allah, the Lord of all worlds.
Surah 91:7-8
7 And by the soul and ˹the One˺ Who fashioned it,
8 then with˹the knowledge of˺right and wrong inspired it!
From the above, we see that:
Therefore, in Muhammad's little religion, humanity is just a puppet show, and no one can do anything to determine their own eternal destiny. Muhammad says that his false god has it fixed out ahead of time who will believe, and who won't, and their actions are presented simply as manifestations of what Allah already decreed for them.
Also, note Surah 91:7-8, which when omitting the theological interpretation that Mustafa Khattab added in brackets, says Allah "inspired them with right and wrong", or in other translations, "wickedness and righteousness". This not only shows that Muhammad's false god inspires evil, but also shows what frequently pops up in Islam - as covered in almost every Islam-related article on this site - Muslim translators altering their sources whenever they find something embarrassing or that they dislike.
Luckily, we have Muhammad's commentary on this verse, which says:
Sahih Muslim 2650
Two men of the tribe of Muzaina came to Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) and said: Allah's Messenger, what is your opinion that the people do in the world and strive for, is something decreed for them; something preordained for them and will their fate in the Hereafter be determined by the fact that their Prophets brought them teachings which they did not act upon, and thus they became deserving of punishment? Thereupon, he said: Of course, it happens as it is decreed by Destiny and preordained for them, and this view is confirmed by this verse of the Book of Allah, the Exalted and Glorious: "Consider the soul and Him Who made it perfect, then breathed into it its sin and its piety" (xci. 8).
Above, we see that Muhammad explicitly used Surah 91:8 as proof that Allah preordains sin, and that people are merely acting out their destinies, which were preordained for them.
The doctrine of predestination is very explicit in the Hadith. In both Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, the subject of predestination receives its own book, the numbers of which (according to the Sunnah.com numbering system) are:
Let's examine a few highlights that demonstrate the extreme extent to which Muhammad taught lack of free will, and also that everyone has a predefined fate that is immutable, regardless of anyone's efforts to change them:
Sahih al-Bukhari 6596
Narrated `Imran bin Husain:
A man said, "O Allah's Messenger (ﷺ)! Can the people of Paradise be known (differentiated) from the people of the Fire; The Prophet (ﷺ) replied, "Yes." The man said, "Why do people (try to) do (good) deeds?"
The Prophet said, "Everyone will do the deeds for which he has been created to do, or he will do those deeds which will be made easy for him to do." (i.e. everybody will find easy to do such deeds as will lead him to his destined place for which he has been created).
Sahih Muslim 2647a
Ali reported:
We were in a funeral in the graveyard of Gharqad when Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) came to us and we sat around him. He had a stick with him. He lowered his head and began to scratch the earth with his stick, and then said: There is not one amongst you whom a seat in Paradise or Hell has not been allotted and about whom it has not been written down whether he would be an evil person or a blessed person. A person said: Allah's Messenger, should we not then depend upon our destiny and abandon our deeds?
Thereupon he said: Acts of everyone will be facilitated in that which has been created for him, so that whoever belongs to the company of the blessed will have good works made easier for him, and whoever belongs to the unfortunate ones will have evil acts made easier for him. He then recited this verse (from the Qur'an): "Then, who gives to the needy and guards against evil and accepts the excellent (the truth of Islam and the path of righteousness it prescribes), We shall make easy for him the easy end and who is miserly and considers himself above need, We shall make easy for him the difficult end" (xcii. 5-10).
This is also narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari 6594, 6605, and Sahih Muslim 2647c, 2648a, 2649a, and 2650.
Above, we see that the reason people do anything is because they are acting out what has already been ordained for them. Their fates are written, and "the pens have dried". Muhammad taught that free will is an illusion, since Allah has made people inclined toward either good or evil, and that's the reason any person is one or the other.
Next, let's look at a prolific predestination Hadith that also contains blatantly wrong scientific guesswork:
Sahih Muslim 2644
Hudhaifa b. Usaid reported directly from Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) that he said:
When the drop of (semen) remains in the womb for forty or forty five nights, the angel comes and says: My Lord, will he be good or evil? And both these things would be written. Then the angel says: My Lord, would he be male or female? And both these things are written.
And his deeds and actions, his death, his livelihood; these are also recorded. Then his document of destiny is rolled and there is no addition to nor subtraction from it.
Sahih Muslim 2643a
Abdullah (b. Mas'ud) reported that Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) who is the most truthful (of the human beings) and his being truthful (is a fact) said:
Verily your creation is on this wise. The constituents of one of you are collected for forty days in his mother's womb in the form of blood, after which it becomes a clot of blood in another period of forty days. Then it becomes a lump of flesh and forty days later Allah sends His angel to it with instructions concerning four things, so the angel writes down his livelihood, his death, his deeds, his fortune and misfortune.
By Him, besides Whom there is no god, that one amongst you acts like the people deserving Paradise until between him and Paradise there remains but the distance of a cubit, when suddenly the writing of destiny overcomes him and he begins to act like the denizens of Hell and thus enters Hell, and another one acts in the way of the denizens of Hell, until there remains between him and Hell a distance of a cubit that the writing of destiny overcomes him and then he begins to act like the people of Paradise and enters Paradise.
Above clearly teaches that Allah makes people either good or evil. And, coupled with the Hadith that we looked at earlier, we know that this isn't just talking about foreknowledge, because there we learned the mechanism that Allah uses to make destiny come to bear - making them inclined to want either good or evil, depending on what he already wrote.
This is why the second paragraph of Sahih Muslim 2643a is so important to highlight - it explicitly shows that a person is utterly at the mercy of the destiny which has already been written for them. They may act a certain way for their entire lives, until they are just a step from Heaven, and then destiny kicks in, and they get sent to Hell.
This hadith or similar is reported many, many times (Sahih al-Bukhari 318, 3208, 6594, 6595, Sahih Muslim 2643b, 2645a, 2645c, 2646), most of which also contain the blatant lie about a person being a drop a semen for 40 days, "after which it becomes a clot of blood in another period of forty days. Then it becomes a lump of flesh, and forty days later Allah" (Sahih Muslim 2643a) gives the instructions concerning the person's destiny.
A man's seed does not live for 40 days, and I implore you to look up an ultrasound of a baby at 3 months, and tell me if it can be described as a "clot of blood" by any rational person.
Therefore, not only does this prove that Muhammad completely rejected free will, as he's teaching that everything someone does - good or evil - is immutably destined before each person is born, it also shows that Muhammad was a total false prophet, as his doctrinal teaching contains absurd scientific lies that anyone can verify today as false, as covered extensively in this article.
Next, let's examine another explicit statement that each person is specifically created for Heaven or Hell:
Sahih Muslim 2662c
A'isha, the mother of the believers, said that Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) was called to lead the funeral prayer of a child of the Ansar. I said:
Allah's Messenger, there is happiness for this child who is a bird from the birds of Paradise, for it committed no sin, nor has he reached the age when one can commit sin. He said: A'isha, peradventure, it may be otherwise, because God created for Paradise those who are fit for it while they were yet in their father's loins, and created for Hell those who are to go to Hell. He created them for Hell while they were yet in their father's loins.
Above we have Muhammad at the funeral of a child. Aisha comments on how the kid was like a "bird of paradise" - innocent - and is therefore in Heaven. Muhammad says, in essence, that the child may actually be in Hell, since children are created for either Heaven or Hell. This sick, twisted teaching is repeated in Sahih Muslim 2662b, Sunan an-Nasai 1947, Sunan ibn-Majah 82, and Sunan abu-Dawud 4713.
Finally, probably the most absurd, blasphemous thing I've ever read in any "holy" book:
Sahih Muslim 2657b
Abu Huraira reported Allah's Apostle (ﷺ) as saying:
Verily Allah has fixed the very portion of adultery which a man will indulge in, and which he of necessity must commit. The adultery of the eye is the lustful look, and the adultery of the tongue is the licentious speech, the heart desires and yearns, which the parts may or may not put into effect.
This is also narrated in Sahih al-Bukhari 6612, and Sahih Muslim 2658a.
The above is blasphemous slander of God stating that God ordains and forces people to commit adultery. Could you imagine someone telling you that, and thinking they are sent from God?
Realize, of course, that this is the same thing that Muhammad has been saying in a lot of these quotations, by implication, but he actually just came out and stated the logical outcome of his wicked, blasphemous false doctrine.
Given all of the above, the entire concept of Jihad - indeed, any proselytizing actions whatsoever (Dawah) - really just fall apart into total nonsense, when you actually logically consider the situation that Muhammad presents in his false religion.
For instance, in spite of repeatedly teaching that only those who Allah wills to believe will do so, Muhammad consistently talked about how he was commanded to fight against unbelievers:
Surah 9:29
29 Fight those who believe not in God nor the Last Day nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by God and His apostle nor acknowledge the religion of truth (even if they are) of the People of the Book until they pay the Jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.
Sahih Muslim 21b
It is reported on the authority of Abu Huraira that he heard the Messenger of Allah say:
I have been commanded to fight against people, till they testify to the fact that there is no god but Allah, and believe in me (that) I am the messenger (from the Lord), and in all that I have brought. And when they do it, their blood and riches are guaranteed protection on my behalf except where it is justified by law, and their affairs rest with Allah.
The situation that this presents us with is one where, for absolutely no reason, God made people not believe, and then began a religion predicated on the founder relentlessly fighting against these disbelievers until there are no more remaining.
Why would Allah begin this pointless, arbitrary, wild goose chase? Ostensibly, Muhammad wants us to believe that people disbelieving is displeasing to Allah, and so he has to fight them. But, if that were the case, why wouldn't Allah have made them all believe to begin with, considering that he makes it clear that it's one hundred percent in his control?
Also, to point out the obvious - a large portion of the Quran consists of Muhammad castigating unbelievers, exhorting people to avoid sin, and live "righteously" in a very specific way. None of this makes any sense in light of the fact that everyone's good and evil deeds, as well as whether or not they can believe, has been unalterably pre-ordained.
Even in regard to Jihad, though, Muhammad predictably showed off his trademark nonsensical, illogical, hypocrisy, when he famously said:
Surah 2:256
256 Let there be no compulsion in religion, for the truth stands out clearly from falsehood. So whoever renounces false gods and believes in Allah has certainly grasped the firmest, unfailing hand-hold. And Allah is All-Hearing, All-Knowing.
Yes, the man who said, (paraphrasing) "I have been commanded to fight until everyone is Muslim", wants us to believe that he's genuine when saying "Let there be no compulsion in religion". If there's no compulsion in religion, why are you fighting, threatening, besieging, and taxing the entire Arabian Peninsula until they are compelled to accept your religion?
It's evident, then, that the false prophet Muhammad spoke out of both sides of his mouth on this issue, depending on what was politically expedient for him at the time he was talking. If he had the upper hand, it was "fight fight fight!", if he was grooming a political alliance, or on the defensive, it was "let there be no compulsion in religion - it's all the will of Allah". He was a warmongering pragmatist first, "prophet" second.
When you bring this mass of information to the attention of Muslims, you will typically have one of two responses.
The first will be a passive "Allah knows best", or something to that effect, from those who either don't care or don't see an issue with a God that foreordains all evil, capriciously, for no reason.
The second response is immediately to try to find a way to negate this teaching, as they are appalled at what they are being shown, as it's so obviously unjust. They will then, in spite of, and completely ignoring, everything above, show you the following:
Surah 18:29
29 And say, O Prophet, "This is the truth from your Lord. Whoever wills let them believe, and whoever wills let them disbelieve." Surely We have prepared for the wrongdoers a Fire whose walls will completely surround them. When they cry for aid, they will be aided with water like molten metal, which will burn their faces. What a horrible drink! And what a terrible place to rest!
This verse clearly makes it seem as though it's actually up to human agency to choose to believe. However, in showing this verse, all the Muslim is doing is showing yet another blatant contradiction in their false religion, as there is no possible way that this is a genuine invitation, in light of everything we've already looked at.
In other words, the Muslim wants us to believe that "whoever wills let them believe, and whoever wills let them disbelieve" is a genuine invitation, in light of the following:
Surah 10:99-100
99 Had your Lord so willed O Prophet, all people on earth would have certainly believed, every single one of them! Would you then force people to become believers?
100 It is not for any soul to believe except by Allah's leave, and He will bring His wrath upon those who are unmindful.
These passages cannot be reconciled. If Allah wants you to believe, he'll make you, and otherwise, you can't. That deceptive "invitation" to believe given in Surah 18 just shows that Muhammad couldn't cook up a coherent, logically consistent doctrine, because he was a false prophet not sent from God.
Furthermore, we can look at a few passages already covered above, which demonstrate that if someone were to will to go on the Straight Way, it would only be because Allah already willed them to do so:
Surah 76:29-30
29 Surely this is a reminder. So let whoever wills take the ˹Right˺ Way to their Lord.
30 But you cannot will ˹to do so˺ unless Allah wills. Indeed, Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise.
Surah 81:27-29
27 Surely this ˹Quran˺ is only a reminder to the whole world -
28 to whoever of you wills to take the Straight Way.
29 But you cannot will ˹to do so˺, except by the Will of Allah, the Lord of all worlds.
Above are yet another testament to Islam's doctrine that free will is merely an illusion, which is why the view of denial and rejection of libertarian free will has dominated Islam for over one thousand years.
Muhammad was not a prophet, and the false god that he invented is a moral pervert, who arbitrarily chooses to doom people for no reason, when he could stop it, and is in utter control of whether someone believes or not.
Even if Muhammad's little religion were true, which it isn't, rest assured that there would be no choice that you could make, no prayer that you could offer, and no deed that you could perform, that would make any difference whatsoever in your eternal destiny. You're simply a biological automaton acting out instructions that God wrote for you, for better, or, as Muhammad blasphemously declares, for worse.