Divine decree, occasionalism, and the quantum universe: a Quranic commentary

Presente by Zia H Shah MD

God is not a watchmaker who wound the universe and walked away — He is the sustainer who wills every photon’s path, every leaf’s fall, and every heartbeat into existence, moment by moment. This is the central claim of occasionalism, a metaphysical framework rooted in Ash’arite Islamic theology, articulated most powerfully by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali in the 11th century, and now finding striking resonance in 21st-century quantum physics. The Quranic verses on divine decree (qadr) do not merely assert that God knows everything in advance — they assert that He actively produces every event in real time, sustaining the cosmos at each instant. This commentary explores how the Quran’s vision of divine sovereignty, Al-Ghazali’s philosophical arguments, David Hume’s critique of causation, and modern quantum mechanics converge on a single, radical conclusion: what we call “the laws of nature” are not autonomous forces governing the universe, but descriptions of God’s habitual action — His sunna — which He maintains by choice and can suspend by will. thequran

The Quran’s uncompromising vision of divine omniscience

The Quranic verses on divine decree paint a picture of a God whose knowledge and power penetrate every atom of existence. In the translation of M.A.S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford University Press), these verses read:

Surah Al-Hadid (57:22–23): “No misfortune can happen, either in the earth or in yourselves, that was not set down in writing before We brought it into being — that is easy for God — so you need not grieve for what you miss or gloat over what you gain. IslamAwakened God does not love the conceited, the boastful.”

Surah At-Tawbah (9:51): “Say, ‘Only what God has decreed will happen to us. He is our Master: let the believers put their trust in God.’” Islam Awakened My Islam

Surah Yunus (10:61): “In whatever matter you [Prophet] may be engaged and whatever part of the Quran you are reciting, whatever work you [people] are doing, We witness you when you are engaged in it. Not even the weight of a speck of dust in the earth or sky escapes your Lord, nor anything lesser or greater: it is all written in a clear record.” My Islam

Surah Al-An’am (6:59): “He has the keys to the unseen: no one knows them but Him. He knows all that is in the land and sea. No leaf falls without His knowledge, nor is there a single grain in the darkness of the earth, or anything, fresh or withered, that is not written in a clear Record.” My Islam

Surah Qaf (50:4): “We know very well what the earth takes away from them: We keep a comprehensive record.” IslamAwakened

Surah Saba (34:3): “Still, the disbelievers say, ‘The Last Hour will never come upon us.’ Say, ‘Yes, by my Lord, [it will], by Him who knows the unseen! Not even the weight of a speck of dust in the heavens or earth escapes His knowledge, nor anything smaller or greater. It is all recorded in a clear Record.’”

Several features of these verses demand attention. First, the scope of divine knowledge is absolute and granular — extending to falling leaves, grains buried in darkness, and specks of dust. Second, events are “set down in writing before We brought it into being” (57:22), establishing that divine foreknowledge precedes creation temporally. Third, the practical consequence is not fatalism but equanimity — “you need not grieve for what you miss or gloat over what you gain.” The believer is freed from existential anxiety precisely because a wise, purposeful God governs all outcomes. Fourth, divine witnessing is continuous and total: “We witness you when you are engaged in it” (10:61), My Islam suggesting not a distant God reviewing records but an intimately present sustainer.

These verses collectively point toward the theological concept of Al-Lawh al-Mahfuz — the Preserved Tablet — the celestial record in which God inscribed the destiny of all beings and events before creation. The Quran states: “Nay, this is a Glorious Quran, inscribed in a Preserved Tablet” (85:21–22). Prophetic tradition elaborates: “The first thing Allah created was the Pen, and He said to it, ‘Write.’ It said, ‘What should I write?’ He said, ‘Write the destiny of everything until the Hour is established.’” Message International Islamic theology identifies four pillars of qadr: God’s eternal knowledge (‘ilm), His writing of all events (kitaba), His will (mashi’a) by which all things occur, and His creation (khalq) of all things including human capacity to choose. Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research +3

The critical theological point is that recording does not equal coercion. As scholars emphasize, a person’s action is not caused by what is written on the Preserved Tablet; rather, the action is written there because God already knows all occurrences without the restrictions of time. Wikishia His knowledge is like an infallible mirror — it reflects what will happen without forcing it to happen. Thequran

Al-Ghazali’s radical argument: fire does not burn cotton

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (c. 1055–1111), the towering Ash’arite theologian, stanford Thequran transformed these Quranic intuitions into rigorous philosophical argument in his Tahafut al-Falasifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers). His 17th Discussion opens with one of the most consequential sentences in the history of philosophy:

“The connection between what is habitually believed to be a cause and what is habitually believed to be an effect is not necessary.” Petrit Kola Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Al-Ghazali’s target was the Aristotelian-Avicennian philosophical tradition, which held that objects possess inherent causal powers Thequran — fire necessarily burns, stones necessarily fall — and that given the right conditions, effects follow from causes with logical inevitability. Thequran Al-Ghazali dismantled this with devastating precision. His famous fire-and-cotton example argues: when fire touches cotton and the cotton burns, we observe only that one event follows another. We never observe causation itself. Wikipedia Petrit Kola “Fire, which is an inanimate thing, has no action,” he wrote. “The only argument is from the observation of the fact of burning at the time of contact with fire. But observation only shows that one is with the other, not that it is by it and has no other cause than it.” thequran Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This means the connection between events is not intrinsic to the objects but is imposed externally by God: “Their connection is due to the prior decree of God, who creates them side by side, not to the connection being necessary in itself, incapable of separation.” Petrit Kola thequran Al-Ghazali pushed the logic further: “It is within divine power to create satiety without eating, to create death without decapitation, to continue life after decapitation.” thequran Thequran The regularity we observe in nature is real but contingent — it reflects God’s habit (‘ada), His customary way of acting, not any inherent necessity in created things. Wikipedia +2 This is why miracles are possible: when Abraham was cast into fire and emerged unharmed (Quran 21:69), God simply chose not to create burning at that moment. Petrit Kola +2

Al-Ghazali’s framework rests on the Ash’arite metaphysical atomism in which both time and matter consist of indivisible units recreated at every moment by God. thequran Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy An apple does not fall because of an innate gravitational force; at each instant of its descent, God creates the apple slightly lower than before, producing the appearance of continuous motion. thequran Thequran The universe’s persistence is not autonomous — it requires God’s continuous creative act, without which everything would collapse into nothingness. As Thomas Aquinas later echoed in the Christian tradition: if God withdrew His sustaining hand, the universe would lapse back into nothing in an instant. Thequran

The scholarly reception of al-Ghazali’s occasionalism is nuanced. The traditional reading (Michael Marmura, Binyamin Abrahamov) holds that he denied any genuine causal powers in creatures, making God the sole efficient cause. A revisionist reading (Frank Griffel, Richard Frank) argues his primary goal was defending the possibility of miracles against the falasifah, and he may have left room for non-necessitating secondary causes. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy What is undisputed is that al-Ghazali’s arguments fundamentally reshaped Islamic philosophical theology Thequran Muslim Philosophy and anticipated Western debates about causation by over six centuries.

Hume’s parallel discovery and the ghost of al-Ghazali

David Hume (1711–1776), writing in his Treatise of Human Nature and Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, arrived at strikingly similar conclusions through a purely secular philosophical analysis. His famous billiard ball example mirrors al-Ghazali’s fire and cotton almost exactly: “Motion in the second billiard-ball is a quite distinct event from motion in the first; nor is there anything in the one to suggest the smallest hint of the other.” We see ball A strike ball B, and B moves — but we never see any “power” or “necessary connection” passing between them. We observe only constant conjunction — one event regularly following another — and our mind projects causation onto this pattern through psychological habit. Wikipedia

Hume’s problem of induction deepens the challenge. All inductive reasoning presupposes that the future will resemble the past. But this presupposition cannot be justified deductively (it is conceivable that the sun will not rise tomorrow) or inductively (that would be circular). Therefore, our confidence that fire will always burn cotton has no rational foundation — it rests entirely on custom. As Hume wrote: “Having found, in many instances, that any two kinds of objects — flame and heat, snow and cold — have always been conjoined together; if flame or snow be presented anew to the senses, the mind is carried by custom to expect heat or cold.”

The parallels between al-Ghazali and Hume have generated significant scholarly literature. Yazıcı (2010) identified their shared rejection of necessary causal connections and their agreement that belief in causation stems from habit. But the divergence is profound: al-Ghazali arrived at theism; Hume arrived at skepticism. Al-Ghazali attributed regularity to God’s habitual action — a rational, purposeful agent who chooses to act consistently. Hume offered no ultimate explanation, only the psychological mechanism by which humans project causation. Wikipedia +2 And while al-Ghazali’s rejection of necessary causation supported the possibility of miracles, Hume used his theory to reject them. As Shah and Ahmad summarized: “Al-Ghazali and Hume arrived at similar conclusions rejecting natural causality as a logical necessity; however, they provide very different premises for this conclusion.”

Al-Ghazali’s blind man analogy captures the difference with elegant precision: a man born blind whose eyes are miraculously opened attributes his ability to see to the opening of his eyelids, not realizing it is the light entering his eyes. He mistakes the occasion for the cause. muslimphilosophy Hume would agree that the mistake is a mistake — but where al-Ghazali points to God as the true cause, Hume points to an irreducible explanatory gap.

Quantum mechanics reopens the door al-Ghazali opened

The most striking contemporary development in this centuries-old debate is the convergence between occasionalist metaphysics and quantum physics. As Zia H Shah MD argues in his extensive series of articles at The Muslim Times and thequran.love, quantum mechanics has “reopened a conceptual space for thinking about divine discretion in nature.” thequran

The heart of Shah’s argument centers on a deceptively simple event: a photon of light striking a water surface. As Richard Feynman described in QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (1985), approximately 4% of photons are reflected and 96% are transmitted — but no law of physics determines which individual photon will do what. “We cannot predict which of the two cases will occur. We can only calculate the probability.” thequran Shah identifies three possible explanations for what determines individual outcomes: pure chance (the materialist answer), hidden order (the determinist answer), or divine will — “the laws of physics determine the range of possibilities and their probabilities, but God determines the actual outcome of each individual event in accordance with His wisdom and will.” thequran

Several features of quantum mechanics support this occasionalist reading:

Quantum indeterminacy is not merely an epistemological limitation but appears to be ontologically fundamental. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle establishes that particles do not possess simultaneously definite position and momentum. Individual quantum events — radioactive decay, photon reflection, electron tunneling — are genuinely unpredictable in principle, not merely in practice. thequran Philosophy Buzz If material objects lack the intrinsic power to determine specific outcomes, something else must account for what actually happens.

Bell’s theorem and the 2022 Nobel Prize provided decisive evidence. The experiments of Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger confirmed violations of Bell inequalities, demonstrating that no local hidden variable theory can reproduce quantum predictions. thequran Wikipedia Entangled particles do not possess predetermined properties waiting to be revealed — their properties are genuinely undetermined until measurement. thequran Shah reads this as “a striking parallel to al-Ghazali’s occasionalist contention that natural causation is ultimately an illusion.” thequran As he notes: “It’s hard not to hear echoes of Ghazali when scientists report that entangled particles ‘do not have independent properties determined ahead of time.’ Al-Ghazali said as much of all things.” thequran

Wave function collapse presents the measurement problem in its starkest form. Quantum systems exist in superpositions of multiple possible states until measured, at which point a single definite outcome materializes. thequran +2 What causes this collapse remains one of physics’ deepest unsolved problems. The Copenhagen interpretation requires an observer; the Many-Worlds interpretation eliminates collapse by positing branching universes; Bohmian mechanics introduces non-local hidden variables. None has achieved consensus. Wikipedia The occasionalist interpretation — God actualizes each quantum outcome — is, as Shah argues, “at least as rationally defensible as pure materialism” since it predicts exactly the same empirical results. thequran Thequran

Oxford physicist Vlatko Vedral engaged directly with this connection in his 2024 analysis “Occasionalism and Quantum Entanglement,” noting that while statistical patterns remain causally linked to initial conditions, individual outcomes lack deterministic material causes: “Even though we have ruled out any material cause — in the sense that there are no local hidden variables in quantum mechanics — it is still possible that there are causes out there that we are unable to reach and quantify (like some conceptions of a deity).” vlatkovedral

Laws of nature as divine habit, not autonomous machinery

A crucial philosophical distinction runs through this entire framework: are natural laws descriptive or prescriptive? Do they merely describe observed regularities, or do they actively govern nature?

The Humean or “regularity” view holds that laws are merely efficient summaries of what happens — they describe patterns without enforcing them. utm David Lewis’s Best Systems Account defines laws as “the contingent generalizations that maximizes strength and simplicity” in describing the totality of events. On this view, there is nothing in nature itself that prevents violations of natural law — laws have no causal power. As the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes, regularists “eschew a view of Laws of Nature which would make of them inviolable edicts imposed on the universe. Such a view, Regularists claim, is simply a holdover from a theistic view.”

Ironically, this anti-realist position about laws supports the theistic framework it claims to have superseded. If laws don’t actually cause anything, the question becomes urgent: what does? Why do regularities persist? The occasionalist answer is elegant: regularities persist because God habitually acts in consistent patterns. Shah formulates it precisely: “What we call the ‘laws of nature’ are really just the regular patterns of God’s action — a consistent divine custom, not a constraint on Him.” thequran This is not arbitrary — God acts consistently because He is rational and purposeful. But the consistency is chosen, not necessitated. Wikipedia Science discovers how God habitually acts; theology explains why the regularities exist. thequran

Al-Ghazali’s framework thus yields what Shah calls “theological critical realism”: science can discover the regular patterns of nature (God’s habits), but the ultimate explanation for these patterns lies in God’s will. thequran Thequran This preserves the validity of scientific inquiry while rejecting the metaphysical assumption that nature operates autonomously. The universe, in Shah’s vivid metaphor, “is running on God’s electricity at all times, not on battery power.” thequran

Karen Harding’s 1993 paper mapped structural parallels between al-Ghazali’s philosophical critique of necessary causation and Bohr’s Copenhagen interpretation. thequran Wikipedia Physicist-theologians John Polkinghorne and Robert John Russell proposed that God might guide indeterminate quantum events without breaking any laws — “quantum divine action.” thequran The simulation hypothesis (Nick Bostrom) and David Chalmers’ Reality+ (2022) offer secular analogies: if we live in a simulation, the “laws of nature” are the software rules of the simulation — stable, consistent, discoverable by science, but not self-sustaining. As Chalmers quipped: “God said ‘Let there be bits!’ And there were bits.” thequran

How occasionalism preserves genuine moral agency

The most pressing objection to occasionalism is obvious: if God causes everything, how can humans bear moral responsibility? If God creates the act of murder when a murderer kills, how can the murderer be justly punished? Islamic theology has developed sophisticated responses to this challenge across multiple schools of thought.

The Ash’arite doctrine of kasb (acquisition) provides the foundational framework. God is the sole creator (khaliq) of all actions, but humans acquire (iktasaba) them through their will and intention. Wikipedia +2 The distinction is categorical: creation belongs to God alone, but acquisition — the taking of moral ownership through intention — belongs to the human agent. Al-Islam Al-Ghazali held that God creates the act at the moment of human choice; He is the metaphysical cause, but the human is accountable for the choosing. Thequran Human beings intrinsically recognize the difference between voluntary and involuntary acts WordPress — this phenomenological distinction grounds moral responsibility even within an occasionalist metaphysics. Thequran

The Maturidi school, predominant among Hanafi Muslims (the largest Sunni legal school), grants human will a significantly more independent role. The Muslim Times Where the Ash’aris hold that God creates both the will and the action, the Maturidis maintain that the will is genuinely the human’s own — God creates the action that follows from it. Ghayb Al-Islam Al-Maturidi argued directly that denying human freedom would make God responsible for human evil, which is “absolutely absurd and contrary to reason as well as to revelation.” Darul Uloom Trinidad & Tobago The Maturidi position functions as a stronger form of theological compatibilism: God creates all possibilities, but humans freely choose among them. The Muslim Times

Contemporary philosopher Nazif Muhtaroglu (2010) advanced the most philosophically rigorous modern defense, drawing on the Maturidi-Hanafi theologian Sadr us-Sharia. Springer Academia.edu His key insight: creation and choice belong to different ontological categories entirely. Creation is a brute ontological fact; choice is a nominal fact — analogous to Gilbert Ryle’s category distinctions or John Searle’s distinction between brute and institutional facts. Academia.edu Free will, as a nominal fact, does not fall under the domain of divine creative power — not because God lacks power, but because it belongs to a category that is categorically outside the scope of creation. Academia.edu This eliminates the infinite regress (if God creates choices, who creates the choice to choose?) by establishing a metaphysical boundary that preserves genuine human agency.

The Quran itself maintains this balance through a crucial distinction between God’s universal will (al-irada al-kawniyya) — encompassing everything that occurs — and His legislative will (al-irada al-shar’iyya) — what He commands and loves. Sin occurs by God’s universal will (He permits it) but against His legislative will (He does not love or command it). Islamjourney The Quran simultaneously commands moral effort and affirms divine sovereignty: “Indeed, Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves” (13:11), alongside “And you do not will except that Allah wills” (81:29). When companions asked the Prophet whether they should simply rely on destiny and abandon effort, he replied: “No, strive, for everyone is facilitated towards that for which he was created.”

Ali ibn Abi Talib addressed the question definitively at the Battle of Siffin: “Do you think it was a compelling decree or an inescapable judgment? If it were so, then reward and punishment would be void, and promise and threat would be meaningless.” Islamiqate The Islamic position rejects both hard determinism (which would negate moral responsibility) and absolute libertarian free will (which would limit divine sovereignty). It occupies a sophisticated middle ground: Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research God sustains the universe moment-to-moment and creates the capacity for choice, but humans exercise that capacity with genuine moral agency. Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research Thequran

The convergence that vindicates al-Ghazali

The threads of this commentary converge on a remarkable synthesis. The Quran asserts that every event — from cosmic disasters to falling leaves — is recorded and known by God before it occurs. Al-Ghazali demonstrated philosophically that what we call causation is merely observed correlation, not intrinsic necessity. Muslim Philosophy Hume independently confirmed this analysis six centuries later, though he stopped at skepticism where al-Ghazali arrived at God. Wikipedia Quantum mechanics has now provided empirical evidence that at the most fundamental level, individual events are genuinely indeterminate — no local hidden variables predetermine outcomes, and material objects do not possess the intrinsic causal powers classical physics assumed. thequran Wikipedia The descriptive view of natural laws removes the last naturalistic alternative: if laws merely summarize patterns rather than enforcing them, the persistence of regularity demands explanation — and occasionalism provides it through God’s habitual, rational, purposeful action.

This does not constitute a scientific proof of God — Shah himself acknowledges that “a God who transcends all empirical detection would, by definition, be indistinguishable from the absence of God to any purely empirical methodology.” thequran Thequran Most physicists do not draw theological conclusions from quantum indeterminacy. The connection is structural and philosophical, not evidentiary. But it establishes something significant: occasionalism is not merely a medieval curiosity but a metaphysical framework that is fully compatible with — and arguably supported by — the most successful physical theory in history. thequran

Al-Ghazali’s vision, as reinterpreted through contemporary physics by scholars like Shah, yields a universe that is empirically lawful yet metaphysically contingent — consistent in observable patterns yet utterly dependent on God’s will at every instant. Thequran The Muslim declaration of faith, La ilaha illa’Llah, becomes not merely a theological statement but a metaphysical one: there is no cause but God. thequran The everyday Muslim utterance of Insha’Allah (“God willing”) before any future action becomes, as Shah puts it, “the cultural-linguistic crystallization of radical occasionalism” — an implicit acknowledgment that God, not natural law alone, determines whether any event will occur. Thequran

The practical consequence is neither fatalism nor anxiety but profound trust (tawakkul). Thequran As Surah At-Tawbah declares: “Only what God has decreed will happen to us. He is our Master: let the believers put their trust in God.” My Islam The believer who understands occasionalism sees every moment — every photon reflected at a water surface, every quantum event resolved from superposition, every heartbeat sustained — as a fresh act of divine will, continuous evidence that the universe is not a cold, self-running machine but a living expression of an intelligent, purposeful, ever-present Creator. In Shah’s concluding words: “Every molecule and moment whispers, ‘Insha’Allah,’ if God so wills.” Thequran