Epigraph

Assuredly, We have created man and We know well what kind of doubt his mind throws up. We are closer to him than his jugular vein. (Al Quran 50:16)

Written and collected by Zia H Shah MD

Introduction

Al-Ghazālī (1058–1111), the eminent Sunni theologian, is famous for defending occasionalism – the doctrine that all causal power ultimately resides with God. In Ashʿarī theology, which Ghazālī championed, created things have no independent efficacy; every event occurs directly by God’s will and intervention . This view stood in contrast to the Aristotelian idea of natural causality and even to some Islamic theologians who affirmed secondary causes. Ghazālī’s metaphysical critique of natural causality, especially in his Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (“Incoherence of the Philosophers”), argued that accepting real causes in nature compromises God’s omnipotence. He posited instead that what we call “cause and effect” are only the habitual sequence of events God decrees, which He can alter at any moment.

This essay defends Ghazālī’s occasionalism using the Qur’an itself – in particular, verses 8:9–18 as a primary proof-text – supplemented by other Qur’anic passages from the Prophet Muhammad’s lifetime. These verses, especially those revealed about battles and miracles, explicitly credit God with actions that outwardly seem to be done by humans or nature. They strongly support the view that victory, defeat, and wondrous phenomena are due solely to God’s agency. Drawing on classical Sunni perspectives, we will show how events like the Battle of Badr and other episodes reinforce the principle that “help comes only from God” . In doing so, we will connect the Qur’anic narratives to Ghazālī’s theological framework, demonstrating that his occasionalism is not a philosophical novelty but a doctrine rooted in scripture and the lived experience of the early Muslim community.

Al-Ghazālī’s Occasionalism in Ashʿarī Theology

In classical Ashʿarī Sunni creed, God is the sole creator of every action and effect in the universe at each moment. Created beings and objects have no intrinsic causal power – fire does not burn by itself, nor do swords cut on their own . Rather, it is God who creates the burning when fire meets wood, and God who causes the cutting when a sword strikes. Al-Ghazālī ardently upheld this view, arguing that to suppose “natural” causes work independently is to set up partners with God in power, subtly undermining true tawḥīd (divine unity). He taught that what we observe as regular cause-and-effect is only by the constant permission (izn) and customary practice (sunnat Allāh) of God, not due to any necessity in the objects themselves. At any time, God can suspend or contravene the usual order – which is precisely what miracles are .

Ghazālī’s famous example is the burning of cotton: if a flame is applied to cotton and it burns, it is because God created the property of burning at that moment. There is nothing in the cotton or fire that forces the outcome – indeed, God demonstrated this by protecting Abraham from the fire, which did not burn him by God’s command (Qur’an 21:69) . Likewise, God could prevent a knife from cutting, as in the story of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of his son. These Quranic precedents undergird Ghazālī’s stance. He insisted that philosophers who claimed causal necessity (e.g. “fire must burn when in contact with fuel”) were wrong – all that exists is a habit established by God, which He can break whenever He wills, as scripture attests.

To preserve human moral responsibility despite God’s total causal control, Ashʿarī theologians developed the doctrine of kasb (acquisition) . They argued that although God creates the act, humans “acquire” the act through their intention and will, making them accountable. Imām al-Ashʿarī and later scholars like Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī cited the Qur’an itself for this dual attribution: “It was not you who threw [during battle] when you threw, but God threw” (Qur’an 8:17) . In this view, the physical motion of throwing was from the Prophet, but the effective result (hitting the enemy with sand) was entirely from God . Thus, an act can be ascribed to the human as acquisition and to God as creation simultaneously. Ghazālī embraced this nuanced teaching, reinforcing that nothing – from the sweep of empires to the fall of a sparrow – lies outside God’s immediate control.

Quran 8:9–18 and the Battle of Badr: God’s Direct Intervention

The primary textual evidence for occasionalism comes from the Qur’an’s own recounting of events. Surah al-Anfāl (Qur’an 8:9–18) describes the Battle of Badr (2 A.H./624 CE), the first major battle in Islamic history, in which a small, ill-equipped Muslim force triumphed over a much larger Meccan army. The Qur’anic narration of Badr makes it unmistakably clear that the victory was due to God’s direct intervention, not the Muslims’ own prowess.

Divine Aid through Angels (Q 8:9–10): The passage opens by reminding the believers how they begged God for help on the eve of battle: “When you begged your Lord for help, He answered, ‘I will reinforce you with a thousand angels in succession’” . This refers to the Islamic tradition that God sent angelic warriors to assist the outnumbered Muslims. The next verse emphasizes the source of victory: “God made this a message of hope to reassure your hearts: help comes only from God, He is Mighty and Wise.” . The italicized clause declares the theology of causality in plain terms – nasr (victory, help) is only from God, no matter the apparent means. Even though angels fought alongside the Muslims, their help was but an instrument of God’s help. The verse pointedly attributes all reassurance and triumph to God’s agency, aligning with the Ashʿarī view that creatures (even angels) have no autonomous power. Classical exegetes note that God’s promise of angels was to calm the believers’ hearts, while making sure they understood that ultimate help is min ʿindi Allāh – “from God alone” .

Providential Control of Natural Elements (Q 8:11): The Qur’an continues to describe how God aided the believers with otherwise mundane phenomena: “He made drowsiness overcome you as an assurance from Him, and sent down water from the sky to cleanse you and remove Satan’s impurity from you, to strengthen your hearts and make your feet firm.” . Each of these occurrences – an unusual drowsiness or calm that gave the anxious Muslims rest before battle, and a timely rain that provided drinking water, ritual purification, and firm ground – is explicitly ascribed to God’s action. What a skeptic might call coincidence or natural fortune (rainfall at night, etc.), the Qur’an calls the work of God. This illustrates Ghazālī’s point that even “natural” events are only ostensibly natural; in reality, they unfold by God’s decree to serve a wise purpose. At Badr, the rain improved the Muslims’ conditions and hampered the enemy (whose camp became muddy), thus functioning as divine support . The Quranic author does not say “it rained” in impersonal fashion – it says God sent down water from the sky, again underscoring that nature has no independent causal role.

God’s Command to the Angels (Q 8:12–14): Further emphasizing that the battle’s course was determined by God, not by human strategy, the Qur’an discloses God’s unseen command to the angels: “Your Lord revealed to the angels, ‘I am with you, so give the believers firmness; I will instill terror into the hearts of the disbelievers – strike [them] above their necks and strike all their fingertips.’” . This dramatic instruction portrays God as the supreme general of the forces: even the angelic intervention was on God’s order. The angels were simply executing God’s will to terrorize and rout the enemy. From an Ashʿarī perspective, this shows that every aspect of the battle – from the psychology of the opponents (their hearts filled with fear) to the physical outcome – was decreed moment-by-moment by God. Verses 13–14 add that this punishment was because the enemies had opposed God and His Messenger, and thus they earned divine retribution: “that is what you get – taste it!” (addressed to the defeated foes) . The Qur’an’s theology is clear: the enemy’s loss was not merely by arms, but by incurring God’s punishment. The victors were but instruments of God’s judgment.

“It was not you… but God” – Ultimate Causation (Q 8:17): The most striking statement of occasionalism in the Qur’an comes in verse 17. Addressing the Muslims (and the Prophet) regarding the battle, God says: “It was not you who killed them; it was God. And when you [Prophet] threw [sand at them], it was not your throw that defeated them, but God’s, so that He might test the believers with a good test. God is all-hearing and all-knowing.” . This verse is extraordinary in the way it negates the believers’ own agency in their victory. Historically, the Muslims did fight and kill enemies in the Badr battle, and the Prophet Muhammad did throw a handful of sand or pebbles toward the enemy ranks (Islamic sources recount that this gesture preceded the enemy’s flight) . Yet the Qur’an bluntly states “you did not kill them – God did.” Any success in the killing was from God alone. Similarly, the Prophet’s symbolic throw is denied: “you did not throw, but God threw.” In other words, God made that handful of sand strike the eyes of the enemy, or made it a cause of their defeat, in a way the Prophet by himself never could. The purpose, as the verse says, was to grace the believers with a great favor (and test their gratitude).

Classical Sunni scholars frequently cite Qur’an 8:17 as proof that all acts are created by God. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) comments that this verse illustrates how one action can be attributed to two actors on different levels: the acquisition (kasb) by the human and the creation by God . The Tafsīr of al-Bayḍāwī (d. 1286) similarly notes that God willed to manifest the truth of “no power except through God” by this event. Al-Ghazālī himself, in line with Ashʿarī doctrine, would argue that if even in a physical battle the Qur’an insists the sword did not truly slay nor the hand truly throw, then certainly in all ordinary events the true actor is only God. There is a theological elegance in 8:17: it uses real historical events to make a metaphysical point. The believers should not credit themselves for the victory at Badr at all – doing so would verge on attributing power to other than God. Instead, they must realize it was Allah who carried out the entire affair, from the initial resilience to the final triumph. As Ashʿarī theology teaches, “La hawla wa la quwwata illa bi-llah” – there is no might nor power except by God. Verse 17 of al-Anfāl is a concise, revealed expression of that creed.

Finally, verse 18 concludes: “That is what you get! – and God will weaken the disbelievers’ designs.” . Any stratagems or plans the enemy had were destined to fail, because God undermined them. This coda reinforces the lesson: human plots and calculations have no efficacy when God decrees otherwise. In sum, Qur’an 8:9–18 attributes the cause of every critical element of the Battle of Badr to God – from morale, weather, and fear in hearts, to the sword strikes and projectiles. Such verses provided a scriptural backbone for Ghazālī’s occasionalism, giving him confidence to say that not only can God intervene in nature, but indeed nothing in nature moves or impacts anything without God.

Other Battle Narratives Affirming God’s Agency

The Quran does not only reserve this language for Badr. Throughout the Prophet Muhammad’s mission, several key events – especially battles – are described in terms that leave no doubt of God’s direct agency. These further examples from the Prophet’s lifetime bolster the argument that outcomes are determined by divine intervention, not by material causes alone.

• Battle of Uḥud (3 A.H.) – Conditional Victory by God’s Leave: The second major battle, Uḥud, initially saw Muslims gaining the upper hand, which the Qur’an describes as God fulfilling His promise of help “by His permission”. But when some Muslims disobeyed the Prophet’s orders, the tide turned. The Qur’an explains that God allowed this setback “to distinguish the true believers and martyrs” and to test the Muslims (Q 3:140–142). Notably, Qur’an 3:123 reminds the Muslims of God’s past help at Badr as a reassurance that God’s support, not their numbers, is decisive . At Uḥud, when Muslims asked why they lost, the answer came: “It was from yourselves” (3:165), meaning their error caused God’s help to be withdrawn. The underlying principle is consistent: victory comes only if God wills – human error can forfeit divine aid, and then no human effort can win. Thus, even in defeat, God’s agency is central (He allowed the loss for a wise purpose). This again underscores occasionalism: God can connect or disconnect the chain of events as He pleases, granting victory or defeat.
• **Battle of the Trench (5 A.H.) – God’s Unseen Hand: In the Battle of the Trench (Al-Khandaq, also called the Battle of the Allies or Confederates), a coalition of Arab tribes besieged Medina. The Muslims were in a desperate situation, having dug a defensive trench. Here, God’s intervention came not through combat by believers, but via the natural elements and unseen forces. The Qur’an recalls: “Believers, remember God’s favor to you when forces came against you. We sent against them a wind and forces you did not see. God saw all that you were doing.” . According to historical accounts, a fierce windstorm lashed the enemy camp at night, sowing chaos – tents were overturned and fires extinguished – which, along with a mysterious panic, caused the coalition to retreat. The verse explicitly says that the wind was sent by God and that additional invisible hosts (interpreted by commentators as angels) were dispatched to confound the enemy . No human action from the Muslims caused the lifting of the siege; it was entirely God’s doing. This event directly parallels the Badr narrative: what “really” defeated the confederates was not luck or weather, but God unleashing the wind. For Ashʿarīs, this is a paradigmatic example of how even in seemingly “natural” occurrences, God is the causal agent. The wind blowing at that crucial moment was not random – God “unleashed” (or sent) it . The enemy’s plans fell apart because nature serves God’s command, not human desires.
• Battle of Ḥunayn (8 A.H.) – Lessons in Reliance on God: Soon after the conquest of Mecca, the Muslim army faced a surprise attack in the valley of Ḥunayn. The Qur’an in Surah at-Tawbah (9:25–26) uses this event to deliver a powerful theological lesson: “God has given you victory on many occasions, even on the day of Ḥunayn. You were well-pleased with your great numbers, but they did you no good; the earth, for all its expanse, closed in on you and you turned to flee. Then God sent down His tranquility upon His Messenger and the believers, and sent down forces you did not see, and punished the disbelievers. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.” . This passage underscores two points. First, it chastises the Muslims for briefly feeling confident in the material cause – their numerical superiority – thereby implying a subtle reliance on something other than God. God showed them that numbers alone guarantee nothing: the Muslims initially panicked despite being more than 10,000 strong, illustrating that if God withholds help, no size of army can avail. Second, once they regrouped, it was Allah’s sakīnah (calm/tranquility) sent down that steadied them, and unseen forces (again interpreted as angels) that turned the tide. The enemy was defeated by God’s action. The wording “forces which you saw not” deliberately draws the listener away from the visible realm (where one army clashes with another) to the invisible realm of divine causation. Just as at Badr, angels fought unknown to the believers, at Ḥunayn God’s invisible help sealed the victory. The combined lesson of Ḥunayn is quintessential occasionalism: no worldly cause – not numbers, strategy, nor arms – has effect unless God allows, and God can grant victory even in dire odds by His sheer command. The believers are thus taught to place zero reliance on material causation and complete reliance on God . Ghazālī could not have illustrated his doctrine better than the Qur’an itself did here.
• The Prophet’s Hijra (Migration) – Divine Protection: Another event from the Prophet’s life often cited in this context is the Hijra, when Muhammad and Abū Bakr took refuge in a cave while escaping Mecca. The Qur’an refers to this in 9:40: “If you do not help him, [know that] God helped him… when the disbelievers drove him out… he said to his companion, ‘Do not worry, God is with us.’ Then God sent His tranquility upon him and supported him with forces you did not see…”. This again highlights that God directly ensured the Prophet’s safety (according to tradition, angels or other divine measures shielded the cave). Every step of Muhammad’s mission, especially in crises, is thus attributed to God’s intervention rather than human skill or chance.

In all these examples – Uḥud, Khandaq, Ḥunayn, and the Hijra – the Qur’anic rhetoric consistently drives home the point that God orchestrates the outcomes. Victory or safety is “sent down” from heaven, not manufactured on earth. For the early Muslim community, these verses were a constant reminder that “God is with us” in the most literal sense: His hand controls the wind and rain, His angels fight alongside them, and His will gives either triumph or trial. This nurtured a strong sense of trust in God (tawakkul) and humility in success, aligning exactly with the theological worldview Ghazālī articulates. The Ashʿarī understanding of causality is, in fact, a formalization of this Quranic vision of history.

Miracles in the Prophet’s Life as Signs of God’s Power

Beyond battles, the Prophet Muḥammad’s lifetime included miraculous events that further affirm Allah’s exclusive agency. These muʿjizāt (divine signs) suspend or break the usual causal order, making God’s power manifest. They provided tangible demonstrations that nature has no independent laws when faced with the command, “Be,” of the Creator. Two well-known examples from the Qur’an itself are the splitting of the moon and the Night Journey, each reinforcing Ghazālī’s contention that only God is the true cause of extraordinary and ordinary events alike.

• The Splitting of the Moon: The Qur’an in Sūrat al-Qamar (54:1–2) recounts a famous miracle: “The Hour draws near; the moon is split in two. Yet whenever the disbelievers see a sign, they turn away and say, ‘Same old sorcery!’” . According to Islamic tradition, the Meccans challenged the Prophet to show a sign, and by God’s power the moon appeared to split. Whether one interprets the verse as a past miracle or a sign of the impending Day of Judgment, the wording uses the past tense “has been split,” indicating a manifest event. Importantly, the Qur’an calls it a sign (āyah), which in Islamic theology means an act of God displaying His omnipotence. No human could possibly cause a lunar split – it is solely the act of the Almighty. The skeptical response of the disbelievers (“magic”) in verse 2 only underscores that if it happened, it could only be by a super-natural causation. For our purposes, the significance is this: the Qur’an includes at least one public physical miracle for Muhammad, and it attributes it entirely to God. The Prophet did not cause the moon to split; he merely prayed or indicated it, and God enacted it. This resonates with Ghazālī’s view that prophets performing miracles are actually occasions for God’s customary order to be overturned by His will. Just as fire normally burns but did not burn Abraham, the moon normally stays whole yet was split for Muhammad – in both cases, nature obeyed God against its usual pattern, proving that natural law is subservient to the Divine Lawgiver. The moon-splitting, therefore, is a vivid confirmation that all of nature is subject to God’s direct command, with no autonomy. It validates the occasionalist premise: what we consider inviolable laws of nature (e.g. the integrity of celestial bodies) can be instantly violated if God so wills, meaning those “laws” have no independent force.
• The Night Journey (Isrā’): Another miraculous event is the Prophet’s Night Journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and his Ascension to the heavens. The Qur’an opens Sūrat al-Isrā’ with: “Glory be to Him who made His servant travel by night from the Sacred House of Worship [in Mecca] to the Furthest House of Worship [in Jerusalem], whose surroundings We have blessed, in order to show him some of Our signs. He alone is the All Hearing, the All Seeing.” . This verse (17:1) clearly attributes the extraordinary night voyage to God: “Glory to Him who took His servant by night…”. The form of the verb (asrā bi-ʿabdihi) indicates God as the actor and Muhammad as the one acted upon (His “servant”). The journey – which normally would take over a month by caravan – was accomplished in a single night by God’s power. Later Islamic sources detail that the Prophet was transported on a heavenly steed (Burāq) by the angel Gabriel and shown the realms above. But the Qur’an’s own phrasing suffices for our theme: it was not any human or animal capability that enabled this; it was God who carried His servant. The purpose stated is telling: “to show him some of Our signs (āyātinā).” In other words, the entire event was a demonstration of divine agency transcending the usual bounds of space and time. Al-Ghazālī could point to the Isrā’ and Miʿrāj (Ascension) as proof that God can circumvent all natural constraints – distance, gravity, etc. – at will. It reinforces to believers that no matter how impossible something seems (traveling to Jerusalem and back in one night, or ascending through the seven heavens), it is effortless for the One who created the cosmos. Consequently, Muslims are to understand that even in daily life, whenever they traverse distances or overcome obstacles, it is ultimately God who carries them. The Night Journey is but an extreme case that highlights the principle underlying every journey and every movement: “Glory be to Him who makes things happen.”
• Qur’anic Emphasis on Divine Permission: In addition to specific miracles, the Qur’an repeatedly teaches that the Prophet (and by extension all people) have no power to cause benefit or harm independent of God. For instance, the Prophet is instructed to say: “I have no control over benefit or harm to myself except as God wills” (Q 7:188). When skeptics demanded miracles, the Qur’an responded: “Signs are only by God’s command” (Q 13:38) and “Nothing prevents Us from sending miraculous signs, except that earlier peoples rejected them” (Q 17:59). These verses solidify the theological stance that miracles are entirely at God’s discretion – the Prophet could not summon them on his own. This is perfectly in line with occasionalism: only God has causal efficacy. The Prophet Muhammad is the most beloved of God, yet even he had no innate supernatural powers – every miracle in his life was God acting on his behalf. This humility before God’s omnipotence is central to Sunni doctrine. In effect, the Quranic paradigm leaves no room for the Prophet (or anyone) to be a “secondary god” in control of events; they are recipients of God’s help, not originators. Ghazālī’s strict insistence on God’s exclusive agency mirrors this Quranic insistence.

In sum, the miracles and signs during the Prophet’s life – whether recorded in the Qur’an or reported in Hadith – serve as luminous instances of God’s direct action in the world. They remind the faithful that causality is not a closed system; it is open at all times to its Creator. For Ghazālī, these miracles underline a key logical point: if God can suspend causality at particular moments (like splitting the moon or preventing fire from burning), then inherently causality has no absolute power – it functions only as long as God lends it power. What is true in the exceptional case is true in the ordinary case as well; the difference is only that God usually wills consistency, whereas in miracles He wills an exception. Therefore, the occurrence of miracles vindicates the occasionalist view over the peripatetic philosophers’ view of necessary causation. The philosophers struggled to explain miracles without contradicting their naturalistic assumptions, but Ghazālī’s theology easily accommodates miracles as simply God directly doing something different in that moment. The lifetime of Muhammad, filled with divine aids and signs, thus stands as a narrative proof of Ghazālī’s thesis that God alone is the real cause of every event.

Synthesis: Scripture and Theology in Harmony

When we reflect on the Qur’anic evidence – the battle narratives and miracles – a consistent picture emerges: an omnipotent God meticulously guiding events, big and small, with created actors having no power independent of Him. This is precisely the worldview that al-Ghazālī articulated in philosophical terms. Far from being an abstract doctrine, occasionalism was the lived reality of the first Muslims, as taught by the Qur’an. They saw themselves as instruments of God’s will. As the Qur’an says, “You did not throw when you threw, but it was God who threw” .

Ghazālī’s metaphysical arguments in the Tahāfut were in service of this Quranic vision. He famously criticized the falāsifa (Islamic Neoplatonists) for hollowing out the doctrine of God’s omnipotence. If fire burned necessarily or medicine healed of itself, where is God’s power? The philosophers held that God only works through secondary causes, but Ghazālī, echoing the Quranic perspective, asserts that God works directly, with causes being mere occasions. The coherence between Ghazālī and scripture is evident: the Qur’an attributes outcomes to God in a very immediate sense, which Ghazālī systematizes by denying “intrinsic causal power to created things” . He even pre-empts the skeptic’s question about regularity: why do things usually follow cause and effect then? Ghazālī would answer (and did, in essence) that God, in His wisdom (ḥikma), generally operates the world in a consistent way – “God’s practice (sunnah) is never changing” – so that we may live and be tested in an orderly universe. But this regularity is voluntary on God’s part, not due to any constraint on Him. The Qur’an supports this by frequently using phrases like “bi-idhni’Llāh” (by God’s permission) whenever something occurs. For example, Jesus healed the blind “by God’s permission” (Q 5:110), etc. Every cause is bracketed by the caveat of divine permission. As one modern scholar puts it, “the Qur’anic verses teach that every future event hinges on God’s permission – a lesson al-Ghazālī took to its logical conclusion” .

The classical Sunni understanding, especially in the Ashʿarī school, thus saw no dichotomy between theology and scripture here. Quranic āyāt were invoked in creedal texts to affirm that “no creature can bring about benefit or harm to another, except by God’s leave”. The omnipotence of God and the contingency of creation were non-negotiable tenets of Sunni orthodoxy. Māturīdī theologians (contemporaries and fellow Sunnis to the Ashʿarīs) largely agreed, albeit allowing that God’s customary patterns are rationally intelligible. But on the fundamental point that God is the only true actor, there was consensus. They read verses like “God is the Creator of everything” (Q 39:62) in an absolute sense – not a single movement of a leaf or a man occurs outside His creative act. The Qur’an asks rhetorically: “Is there any creator other than God?” (Q 35:3), and Sunni theologians answered: no, only God creates effects.

It is worth noting that Ghazālī’s occasionalism, while sometimes portrayed as philosophically radical, was in essence a defense of prophetic understanding of the world. The Prophet Muhammad taught his companions reliance on God in all affairs. For instance, he said “Know that if the whole world gathered to benefit you, they would not benefit you except if God has written it for you; and if they gathered to harm you, they would not harm you except if God has written it against you” (reported in al-Tirmidhī’s Hadith collection). This Prophetic teaching echoes Qur’an 8:17’s lesson and is a succinct summary of occasionalism’s practical impact: complete trust in God’s decree. Al-Ghazālī, being not only a theologian but also a Sufi mystic, appreciated the spiritual significance of this doctrine. It fosters tawakkul (trust in God) and tafwīḍ (consigning one’s affairs to God), virtues praised in Islam. It also guards the purity of worship: if one deeply knows that rain, wealth, health, and victory come only from God, one will direct one’s hopes and fears only toward Him, not toward worldly means. This is the essence of true monotheism in practice. Ghazālī’s contribution was to fend off ideas that might subtly reintroduce a kind of “nature worship” or over-reliance on cause and effect. By dismantling the philosophers’ causal determinism, he kept the focus on the Divine Will behind all phenomena.

Conclusion

In conclusion, al-Ghazālī’s theory of occasionalism finds strong vindication in the Quranic portrayal of causality during the Prophet Muhammad’s life. The verses of Qur’an 8:9–18 about the Battle of Badr vividly show God’s direct hand in delivering victory – from sending angels and rain to attributing the very acts of throwing and striking to Himself . Supplementary episodes from other battles (Uḥud, Khandaq, Ḥunayn) and miraculous signs (the splitting of the moon, the Night Journey) all converge on the same message: “Victory comes only from God, the Mighty, the Wise.” Human beings, even prophets, do not possess independent causal power; they are the arena in which God’s power is manifested. This is precisely what Ashʿarī occasionalism asserts.

Al-Ghazālī, standing on a rich Sunni tradition, argued not from abstract philosophy alone but in harmony with revelation. His insistence that fire does not burn and medicine does not heal by themselves was a reaffirmation of Quranic principles in the language of kalām (theology). Ultimately, Ghazālī’s occasionalism serves to exalt God as Al-Qādir al-Muṭlaq (the Absolute Powerful) and to humble the creation. The Qur’an’s primary goal is to inculcate tawḥīd (recognition of God’s oneness in essence, attributes, and acts) – and occasionalism is tawḥīd applied to causation, acknowledging God’s oneness in action. The classical Sunni scholars recognized this alignment; hence occasionalism became the dominant view in Sunni creed .

By defending occasionalism with Quranic evidence, we see that this doctrine is not a mere speculative quirk of Ghazālī’s thought, but rather a reflection of the Quranic worldview. The Quranic God is not a distant clockmaker who set up nature and left it to run; He is an ever-present agent, “closer to man than his jugular vein” (Q 50:16), actively involved in every occurrence. For believers then and now, this means that one should ultimately depend on and thank God for all outcomes. As the Muslims of Badr learned, one can wield the sword, but one must never forget that “it was not you who killed them, but Allah.” Such verses cement the principle that causality rests in God’s hand alone. Al-Ghazālī’s occasionalism is, therefore, nothing other than the philosophical articulation of this Quranic faith: La ilaha illa’Llah, there is no deity – and no cause – except God.

Sources:

1. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem (trans.), The Qur’an: A New Translation. Oxford University Press, 2004. Relevant verses: 8:9–18; 9:25–26; 17:1; 33:9; 54:1–2 .
2. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Mafātīḥ al-Ghayb (Qur’an Commentary), on Qur’an 8:17 – discusses dual attribution of acts .
3. Al-Ghazālī, Tahāfut al-Falāsifa. Discussion on causality and miracles (Second Discussion: refutation of the philosophers on natural causation). Summarized in  .
4. Ziauddin Sardar (ed.), Islamic Theology: Traditionalism and Rationalism. Contains analysis of Ashʿarī and Muʿtazilī views on causality .
5. Sahih al-Tirmidhī, hadith on predestination and trust in God (No. 2516, Kitāb al-Qadar), illustrating dependence on God’s will in all matters (no harm or benefit except by God’s decree).