Jāmiʿ al-ʿUlūm wa'l-Ḥikam 4: The Ḥadīth of Ibn Masʿūd on the Stages of Creation: Do We Act Because the Decree Preceded, or Did the Decree Precede Because We Act?

Occasion: Transcription of a Fajr khatira delivered on 19 April 2026 Source: A transcription of a video khatira by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — Watch the original video on YouTube

Our ḥadīth today is the fourth ḥadīth from the book «Jāmiʿ al-ʿUlūm wa-l-Ḥikam» by Imam Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī, may Allah have mercy on our scholars all and be pleased with them, and with everyone who followed the footsteps of the Prophet ﷺ and walked his path.

The ḥadīth is from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd, may Allah be pleased with him. He said: The Messenger of Allah ﷺ, the truthful, the one whose truthfulness is confirmed, narrated to us, and we will need this phrase shortly: «إن أحدكم يُجمَع خلقه في بطن أمه أربعين يومًا نطفة، ثم يكون علقة مثل ذلك، ثم يكون مضغة مثل ذلك، ثم يُرسَل إليه الملَك فينفخ فيه الروح، ويُؤمر بأربع كلمات: بكتب رزقه وأجله وعمله وشقيٌّ أو سعيد. فوالذي لا إله غيره إن أحدكم ليعمل بعمل أهل الجنة حتى ما يكون بينه وبينها إلا ذراع، فيسبق عليه الكتاب فيعمل بعمل أهل النار فيدخلها، وإن أحدكم ليعمل بعمل أهل النار حتى ما يكون بينه وبينها إلا ذراع، فيسبق عليه الكتاب فيعمل بعمل أهل الجنة فيدخلها» (Indeed, the creation of each of you is gathered in his mother's womb for forty days as a drop, then he is a clinging clot for the like of that, then a lump of flesh for the like of that; then the angel is sent to him and breathes the soul into him, and he is commanded with four words: to write down his provision, his lifespan, his deeds, and whether he is wretched or happy. By the One besides whom there is no god, one of you may do the deeds of the people of Paradise until there is only a cubit between him and it, and then the writing overtakes him and he does the deeds of the people of the Fire and enters it; and one of you may do the deeds of the people of the Fire until there is only a cubit between him and it, and then the writing overtakes him and he does the deeds of the people of Paradise and enters it). Narrated by al-Bukhārī and Muslim.^[1]

It is one of the aḥādīth that people find problematic to understand and absorb, but we will go through it in several steps.

«The Truthful, the One Whose Truthfulness Is Confirmed»

The first step is to pause at the saying of Ibn Masʿūd: «وهو الصادق المصدوق» (the truthful, the one whose truthfulness is confirmed). For when the Prophet ﷺ speaks about what takes place in the wombs, and no one knows what takes place in the wombs at that time except Allah, glory be to Him, his truthfulness is coupled with the confirmation of his Lord. And modern science, which is developing before us, came as a confirmation of what is established from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and of what is established in the Noble Qur'an of mention of such a meaning in direct wording. We ask Allah for good confirmation on behalf of His Messenger ﷺ.

Why These Changes?

Then we pause for a moment at these changes that our Lord tells us about, which are in origin a reality that every one of us passes through: he is created from a drop and remains in it for a time, then it becomes a clinging clot, then a lump of flesh. So why this change? And why was the human being not created all at once? Why did our Lord not bring us forth fully grown in one go?

It is as though this variety that occurs to a human being while he is in his mother's womb is a model of the changes that will occur in our lives afterward: a person remains for a time poor, then for a time wealthy, then well-off, then wealthier, then becomes poor again, and so on through the other conditions in which a human being changes. Those are the conditions of this world and its changes with creation, so let no one be deluded by his state, nor feel secure in a position or level he has reached at some time.

And let a person reflect that the change that took place in him in his mother's womb was something in which no one in this world had any part; no one can add to it or take from it. It is the will of our Lord, glory be to Him. And likewise is His will in the changes of life that we are in; no one among creation will be able to save me from a crisis or calamity. Glory be to the Most High, the Almighty, who does what He wills, who prevails over His affair, the Subduer above His servants, the Opener, the All-Knowing, exalted on high.

Why Does He Remind Us of Our First Weakness?

But I stop at the question: why does the Messenger of Allah ﷺ remind me of these words? Because a person, every now and then, needs someone to remind him of the places of weakness that were in his life, so that he is not deluded by what he is in now. And you see the Lord of Might, glory be to Him, always reminding people of the points of weakness they used to be in.

Read, for example: ﴿ٱقْرَأْ بِٱسْمِ رَبِّكَ ٱلَّذِي خَلَقَ ۝ خَلَقَ ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ مِنْ عَلَقٍ﴾ (Read in the name of your Lord who created; created man from a clinging clot).^[2] Why does He remind me of that? To remind me that He is the Most Generous, who ﴿عَلَّمَ بِٱلْقَلَمِ ۝ عَلَّمَ ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ مَا لَمْ يَعْلَمْ﴾ (taught by the pen; taught man what he did not know), and then says: ﴿كَلَّآ إِنَّ ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ لَيَطْغَىٰٓ ۝ أَن رَّآهُ ٱسْتَغْنَىٰٓ﴾ (No! Indeed, man transgresses; because he sees himself self-sufficient). So if he remembers that he was from a clinging clot, his soul returns to its first home and his station settles.

And read the saying of Allah, Blessed and Exalted: ﴿هَلْ أَتَىٰ عَلَى ٱلْإِنسَٰنِ حِينٌ مِّنَ ٱلدَّهْرِ لَمْ يَكُن شَيْـًٔا مَّذْكُورًا﴾ (Has there not come upon man a period of time when he was not a thing mentioned?),^[3] and you remember that you were once not a thing mentioned. Then the Lord of the worlds tells me: ﴿إِنَّا خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ مِن نُّطْفَةٍ أَمْشَاجٍ نَّبْتَلِيهِ﴾ (Indeed, We created man from a mixed drop, to test him), meaning, to put him to the test. Will he remember that weakness one day, or will he be deluded by what he has come to? Then people divide into two kinds, and our Lord, glory be to Him, says: ﴿إِنَّا هَدَيْنَٰهُ ٱلسَّبِيلَ إِمَّا شَاكِرًا وَإِمَّا كَفُورًا﴾ (Indeed, We guided him to the way, whether he be grateful or ungrateful). The basic point is that he is either grateful or not grateful, for the opposite of gratitude is lack of gratitude, and the opposite of disbelief is faith, so every grateful person was a believer and every ungrateful person a disbeliever. Identity is thus determined by acknowledging the places of origin and the point of departure.

So if a person remembers that he was not a thing mentioned, and Allah, Mighty and Majestic, empowered him in what he has in his hands, he knows Allah's right in what he has in his hands and never slacks in fulfilling it; he has no conceit in himself, no regarding as great the blessing he has in his hands, and no hope greater than his longing for the mercy of the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him.

The Four Words: Where Is Our Role?

Then you see the saying of the Prophet ﷺ: the angel comes and breathes the soul into him and he is commanded with four words, which are provision, lifespan, deeds, and wretchedness and happiness. And here the confusion occurs in people's understanding. Our belief that provision is written is a settled matter, and our belief that the lifespan is written, and that we will die at such-and-such a time, knowledge of which is with my Lord and none knows it but Him, is likewise a settled matter. As for deeds, how do we understand that Allah the Exalted wrote our deeds? And where is our role in these deeds? And what do we exert in order to do something good or bad when it has been written upon us beforehand?

The difference here is in a single letter: did Allah write for you or write against you? If you understand that Allah wrote for me beforehand what I will do, you understand that I am still within the framework of choice that the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, told me about: ﴿هُوَ ٱلَّذِي خَلَقَكُمْ فَمِنكُمْ كَافِرٌ وَمِنكُم مُّؤْمِنٌ ۚ وَٱللَّهُ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ بَصِيرٌ﴾ (It is He who created you, and among you is the disbeliever and among you is the believer; and Allah is Seeing of what you do).^[4] So He, glory be to Him, tells me that He remains Seeing of my deeds that I accomplished with my own hand, issued from myself, intended by my own self, carried out by my hand, pursued by my feet, with which my heart was at ease and upon which my mind settled. All of that is with me; I choose it.

An example of that: you had the ability to choose, so you apologize to people that you do not feel well and you stay in your bed, and people excuse you. And on the other hand, you were able, by the permission of the Lord of the worlds, to get up from your bed and to come to the place and be in it. Did the Lord of the worlds force you to this, or was it within your choice? It was in your hand to stay in your bed, or to pray in another place, or to go. This confusion between what Allah wrote for us on the basis of His prior knowledge, glory be to Him, and what He wrote against us, is what happens among people.

Even the Companions Asked

And that is not only in the minds of people today; it was also in the minds of the Companions of the Prophet ﷺ. You see that one of them asks the Messenger of Allah ﷺ: if the matter is so, then for what do we act? Why do we act? And this is in the ḥadīth of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, may Allah be pleased with him, that the Prophet ﷺ said: There is no soul that has been breathed into except that Allah has written its place in Paradise or the Fire, and that it has been written wretched or happy. A man said: O Messenger of Allah, should we not then rest upon our writing and abandon action? As though he were saying: the matter is finished from the beginning, so let us stop acting. And the Prophet ﷺ says: «اعملوا فكلٌّ ميسَّر لما خُلق له» (Act, for everyone is made easy for that for which he was created).

So what is written with the Lord of the worlds, glory be to Him, is only a mirror of what will be in the depths of life. And I always give students an example: when I receive a new generation or a new class as a teacher, the students sit before me, and I have long experience in teaching, I look into the students' eyes and say: this one will carry on the journey, and this one will leave after two weeks, and this one will strive until he reaches his goal but with hardship and difficulty, and this one such-and-such and this one such-and-such. Have I been truthful or have I lied? Let the days confirm me or belie me, for what I predicted, the days will show me whether it was true or not. Then the days tell me after two weeks that so-and-so is not present, so I return to what I recorded from studying people's eyes and find that I wrote that he would not complete. Did I force him to leave? Did I impose on him something he could not bear? No, but I knew his self from the beginning of looking at him.

Then the days passed and I found that so-and-so obtained a hundred percent on the papers, and this one seventy, and this one thirty, and this one did not pass, so I took these papers and compared them with what I had predicted beforehand and found them an exact match. Would you testify for these that they matched their deeds to what I wrote? Or would you testify for the teacher that he is a genius, may Allah bless him, his assessments were excellent even before he sat before the children, and he has very great experience, so if truth occurs in what he predicts? Is the testimony here for the student or for the genius teacher? And this is not the place for comparing this model with the knowledge of the Lord of Might, glory be to Him, of His creation: does not the knowledge of Allah precede all knowledge? ﴿أَلَا يَعْلَمُ مَنْ خَلَقَ وَهُوَ ٱللَّطِيفُ ٱلْخَبِيرُ﴾ (Does He who created not know, while He is the Subtle, the All-Aware?),^[5] glory be to Him, exalted on high.

So the matter, then, is not whether we act or do not act. Act, my dear; for the saying of the Prophet ﷺ is: «كلٌّ ميسَّر لما خُلق له» (Everyone is made easy for that for which he was created).

Is Our Action From Ourselves or a Reaction?

And we come to a very simple question: is what we do in line with the wishes of the self, or is it reactions to a reality we live in? Take the example we gave: the one who chose for himself to rise from his bed and get up for prayer, what self is inside him? If he came because he knows that people will reproach him if he is absent from prayer, and that he must be present among them because he does not want to appear before them in a bad light, then his companion whom he meets in the prayer place is the one who will meet him at work and say to him: So-and-so, where were you? and expose him among the people. So this one came to prayer because so-and-so would shame him if he did not come; that is the making of environment; the environment made him do it, and if he finds a chance to flee, he flees.

And there is another person who came because he loves to come, and loves drawing near to Allah, glory be to Him, the Exalted, and seeking His affection. And there is a self that takes out of its pocket and gives in front of people, saying: I am here, and advertises itself, and in reality it is completely different from the psychology of the one who feels the needs of people and feels the manliness that runs in his blood, so he sets out giving to them because this is something within him, and he comes to you and says to you: How much do you need? What do you want? What shall we do? How shall we treat so-and-so? How shall we console so-and-so? And so on. This is a different psychology.

So the question remains: are the deeds that happen in our lives reactions, or do they emerge from the self?

The One Who Worships Allah on an Edge

And look at the saying of Allah the Exalted, which is decisive for understanding: ﴿وَمِنَ ٱلنَّاسِ مَن يَعْبُدُ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ حَرْفٍ﴾ (And among the people is he who worships Allah on an edge).^[6] And this is a verse of the utmost gravity in our lives. Our Lord says: ﴿فَإِنْ أَصَابَهُۥ خَيْرٌ ٱطْمَأَنَّ بِهِۦ﴾ (If good befalls him, he is reassured by it), and he says to you: By Allah, this worship is the best thing, this worship is the ultimate sweetness, we are very strong people! ﴿وَإِنْ أَصَابَتْهُ فِتْنَةٌ ٱنقَلَبَ عَلَىٰ وَجْهِهِۦ خَسِرَ ٱلدُّنْيَا وَٱلْـَٔاخِرَةَ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ هُوَ ٱلْخُسْرَانُ ٱلْمُبِينُ﴾ (but if a trial befalls him, he turns on his face; he has lost this world and the Hereafter. That is the clear loss).

And our Lord, glory be to Him, tells us in His saying, Mighty and Majestic: ﴿وَمِنَ ٱلنَّاسِ مَن يَقُولُ ءَامَنَّا بِٱللَّهِ فَإِذَآ أُوذِىَ فِى ٱللَّهِ جَعَلَ فِتْنَةَ ٱلنَّاسِ كَعَذَابِ ٱللَّهِ وَلَئِن جَآءَ نَصْرٌ مِّن رَّبِّكَ لَيَقُولُنَّ…﴾ (And among the people is he who says, "We believe in Allah," but when he is harmed for the sake of Allah, he makes the persecution of people like the punishment of Allah; and if victory comes from your Lord, they will surely say…).^[7] Allah the Exalted tells me these realities to show me two kinds of models: there is one who believed and faith settled in his heart and his action set out on the basis of this faith, and to him applies the saying of the one who said: Whoever grew up on something grows old on it, and whoever grows old on something dies on it, and whoever dies on something is resurrected on it. And there is another who worships because that is the way things are done.

A Fighter Whose Heroism Is Put on Display, and a Man Separated From Paradise Only by a Few Dates

It is related in this regard about one of the Companions of the Prophet ﷺ that he used to attend the battle with him and fight in the best way it should be done, and the Prophet ﷺ looked at him and said: He is of the people of the Fire. People had come speaking of his courage and heroic deeds. When the Prophet ﷺ said that, one of the Companions followed him and found that he had killed himself because of a wound that had struck him. When he returned he said: I bear witness that Muḥammad is the Messenger of Allah; he has killed himself.^[8]

And I ask first: how did the Prophet ﷺ know? Although the question is illogical because he is the Prophet, there must have been indicators, because the Prophet ﷺ also teaches us the science of logic in deduction. For I am before a man about whose heroic deeds people come to speak, and I seem to smell the scent of showing off, showing off talents, competencies and abilities before people; he fights and seeks and wants to show people what he does, so he was not fighting from a self that tells him he is seeking Paradise.

Where is this compared to another person who stands before the battle and looks at dates in his hand and says to himself: Is there nothing between me and Paradise except that I eat these dates and then throw myself into the midst of these people and be among the people of Paradise? And he answers himself: Yes, what is the time difference between me and Paradise? The time in which I will eat these dates. He says: By Allah, that would then be a long life! And he throws the dates and sets off running. And from where did this report come to us? He was speaking to himself, not speaking to people.^[9]

So there is a great difference between one who acts as a show before people, so the writing overtakes him and he is of the people of the Fire, and one who acts because he wants to act, and sets out in his action and is of the people of Paradise.

I have gone on too long for you, so forgive me. And I ask Allah, Blessed and Exalted, to write our traces all together, and to make us among those who acted in confirmation of the faith that took firm hold in their hearts, and among those who believed in Allah, Blessed and Exalted, with certainty and with good expectation of what is with Him of good. I ask Allah, Blessed and Exalted, to bring our hearts to that faith with which they are at ease, and this decision in which they find rest. And I ask Him to grant us sincerity in what is in our hands, and truthfulness in what we claim, and that we not be tried in it with hypocrisy, showing off or flattery.

--- ^[1]: Editor's documentation: The speaker said that the ḥadīth was narrated by al-Bukhārī, and it is also in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim (agreed upon); the text quoted above follows his reading, and at the place «فينفخ فيه الروح» the transcript was garbled, so the phrase has been given as the speaker repeated it a little later. ^[2]: Editor's documentation: Al-ʿAlaq: 1–2, then 3–5, then 6–7. ^[3]: Editor's documentation: Al-Insān: 1–3, and the second verse contains ﴿إِنَّا خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَٰنَ مِن نُّطْفَةٍ أَمْشَاجٍ نَّبْتَلِيهِ فَجَعَلْنَٰهُ سَمِيعًا بَصِيرًا﴾; we have given as much as the speaker uttered. ^[4]: Editor's documentation: At-Taghābun: 2. ^[5]: Editor's documentation: Al-Mulk: 14. ^[6]: Editor's documentation: Al-Ḥajj: 11. ^[7]: Editor's documentation: Al-ʿAnkabūt: 10, and the completion of the verse is: ﴿لَيَقُولُنَّ إِنَّا كُنَّا مَعَكُمْ ۚ أَوَلَيْسَ ٱللَّهُ بِأَعْلَمَ بِمَا فِى صُدُورِ ٱلْعَٰلَمِينَ﴾; the speaker did not complete it, so the text has been left open. ^[8]: Editor's documentation: The speaker related the story by its meaning and did not attribute it or name its subject; it is, in similar form, in the two Ṣaḥīḥs from the ḥadīth of Sahl ibn Saʿd, may Allah be pleased with him, as far as we know, and it should be checked before publication. ^[9]: Editor's documentation: The speaker related the story by its meaning and did not attribute it; it is, in similar form, in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim from the ḥadīth of Anas, may Allah be pleased with him (the Battle of Badr), as far as we know, and it should be checked before publication.