Among the questions I have in studying Islam nothing vexes me more in my study is understanding the issue between free will and determinism. Various schools of thought approach this subject differently and chief among them Jahm ibn Safwan (d. 745) believed human actions were powerless, and that God made our actions and choices eternally. According to ibn Safwan:

"Man, like a feather in the wind, cannot have will, ability or choice. All events and human acts are created by God. It is not true to say man has his own acts; rather he has them metaphorically. For instance, when we say the tree bears fruit, the water flows, or the sky rains, truly it is God who performs the acts of tree, water and sky. Nevertheless, God created man with a power to act as well as creating him with will and the desire to be a distinguished creature. But there is no creator but God, so if we were to say man that creates his own acts, this would obviously lead us to polytheism,” (Muslim Thought and Its Source. p. 49).

For political and theological reasons ibn Safwan believed in an extreme form of determinism (that mankind had no agency and that all actions are dictated by God) which the result lead to many scholars rejecting his idea of determinism due to the fact that his thought abolished the obligation of Muslims to stand up to injustice and unjust rulers. Jahm ibn Safwan's philosophy would apparently seem to be compatible with Islamic extremism in the sense that the actions performed by terrorist would also be sanctioned by God, because it is God that is controlling the behavior of terrorist.

Naturally, in opposition to this form of extreme determinism would arise the school of thought called Mutazilitism which developed out of the philosophy of fatalism. These earlier fatalist would argue that if human acts are determined totally by God, then why should would he punish man for them on Judgment Day? It is very clear these acts would be God’s responsibility, if God ordained them and man had had no ability to act differently. So if there is a Judgment Day according to Islam then mankind must have agency to commit both good and evil acts in order to be judged accordingly. In addition, extreme determinism in accordance to ibn Safwan's view would render God evil because if mankind has no control over his action and let's say a pedophile decides to rape and murder a 12 month old baby, it is God, not man, controlling the action of the man.

The Mutazilites also state that human agency is central to Islam as it is the foundation of belief and that justice is the center of the Islamic faith:

“Whoever works righteousness benefits his own soul;
Whoever works evil, it is against his own soul.” (41:46).

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Definitions:

Human agency- The capacity of an entity to act in any given environment It is normally contrasted to natural forces, which re causes involving only unthinking deterministic processes.

Free Will- Although there are various understandings of free will, typically free will is the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.

Determinism-Holds that every thing and event is a natural and integral part of the interconnected universe. From the perspective of determinism, every event in nature is the result of (determined by) prior/coexisting events.

Fatalism-Holds that the natural world causes events in human life but is not itself influenced by human will or behavior. No matter what you do, the same things will happen to you.