Al-Hakam: The Arbiter

"...Now surely His alone as the Master is the Judgment..." (6:62).

The Arbiter is like an arbitrating magistrate and an avenging judge whose decisions no one overturns or corrects. Among The Arbiter's rulings in respect to the human being are that "the human being has only that for which he strives and that his effort will be seen,"(53:39-40) and that "the righteous verily will meet happiness while the wicked verily will be in hell" (82:13-14). The Arbiter's ruling regarding happiness for the righteous and misery for the wicked is that Allah makes good or evil, positive or negative, a cause which leads those who practice them to happiness or misery. In a similar way, Allah makes medication and poison the causes which lead those who take them to recovery or death. If the meaning of ruling is to arrange causes to their effects, then Allah is the absolute arbiter because Allah is the cause of all causes in general and in particular. The Divine Decree and predestination (qada' wa qadar) issue from the Arbiter. Causes are directed to the effects in the Arbiter's judgment. The decree (qada') provides the universal causes--original, fixed, and stable--like the earth, the heavens, the stars, the celestial bodies, and their harmonious and eternal movements which do not change in their orbit and do not cease to exist "until the term prescribed is run" (2:235). Allah says, "Then He ordained them seven heavens in two days and inspired in each heaven its mandate" (41:12). The Arbiter applies these causes with their harmonious, defined, planned, and tangible movements to the effects resulting from them, moment after moment. This is known as predestination (qadar). The ruling of the Arbiter is the initial planning and the first command which is like "a twinkling of the eye" (16:77). In other words, the decree posits universal and constant causes while predestination applies these universal causes with their foreordained and measured movements to their effects, numbered and defined, according to a determined measure which neither increases nor decreases. This is how nothing escapes from Allah's decree and predestination.