Premise 1: Al-Kāfī, Kitāb al-Tawḥīd: Imam al-Ṣādiq (a) was asked about jabr (compulsion) and tafwīḍ (full delegation). He replied: "Neither compulsion (lā jabra) nor absolute delegation (wa lā tafwīḍa) — rather a matter between two matters (amrun bayna amrayn)." This single statement is the foundational Imami resolution of the free will problem.
Premise 2: What "between two matters" means precisely: human action is real — the human being genuinely chooses, genuinely acts, genuinely bears responsibility (not jabr). AND human action occurs entirely within the encompassing divine will, power, and decree — the human is not an independent agent outside God (not tafwīḍ). Both are true simultaneously.
Premise 3: The ontological framework: divine causality is the primary/encompassing cause; human agency is a real secondary cause within it. This is not a logical paradox — it is an ontological hierarchy. The human will is real as secondary causality; the divine will encompasses it as primary causality. God wills that humans choose — the human choice itself is within God's will.
Premise 1: The theological argument against jabr: if God compels all human actions, then God compels sin. If God then punishes humans for sins He compelled, this is ẓulm (injustice). Q 4:40: "Allāh does not wrong anyone by even the weight of a speck." Divine ẓulm is theologically impossible — therefore jabr is impossible.
Premise 2: The taklīf argument: God imposes religious obligations (taklīf) on human beings — prayer, fasting, justice toward others. Taklīf only makes sense if the person obligated has genuine capacity to fulfill or fail the obligation. Obligating someone to do what they are compelled to do anyway (jabr) is meaningless; obligating someone to do what they are prevented from doing is ẓulm. Therefore taklīf itself proves genuine human agency.
Premise 3: Muṭahharī: "The jabr position makes divine justice a meaningless concept — God punishes what He determined. The Imami position: God created humans with genuine agency precisely so that divine justice would be meaningful — reward and punishment correspond to real choices."
Premise 1: Q 76:29-30: "Indeed, this is a reminder, so whoever wills may take to his Lord a way (man shāʾa ittakhadha ilā rabbihi sabīlan). And you do not will except that Allāh wills (wa mā tashāʾūna illā an yashāʾa Allāh) — indeed, Allāh is ever Knowing and Wise."
Premise 2: The theological structure of these two consecutive verses: v.29 affirms human willing (man shāʾa = whoever wills — human agency is real, it is the human's own choice to take the path to God); v.30 immediately subordinates this human willing to divine will (wa mā tashāʾūna illā an yashāʾa Allāh = you do not will except within Allāh's will).
Premise 3: Neither verse cancels the other — they must both be true simultaneously. This is precisely al-amr bayna al-amrayn expressed in Quranic form: the human will is real (v.29 is not a metaphor) AND it is encompassed by divine will (v.30 is not a limitation on human freedom but a description of ontological hierarchy). The Quran itself states the Imami position.
Premise 1: The Ashʿarī solution to the jabr/tafwīḍ problem: kasb (acquisition). God creates (yakhluq) the human action; the human "acquires" (yaksib) it by performing it. This is Ashʿarī's attempt to maintain divine omnipotence (God creates all actions) while giving humans something — the kasb — that grounds responsibility.
Premise 2: The standard critique of kasb (from both Muʿtazilī and Imami theologians): if God creates the action, what does the human's "acquisition" add? If I cannot do otherwise than what God has created, my "acquiring" the action adds nothing — I am still determined. Kasb is jabr in philosophical disguise.
Premise 3: Shaykh al-Mufīd's Imami critique: kasb evacuates genuine human agency without admitting it does so. The al-amr bayna al-amrayn position is honest: it affirms real human agency (ikhtiyār — genuine capacity to choose otherwise) within divine encompassment, rather than manufacturing a pseudo-agency that changes nothing about determination.
Premise 1: The practical theological question: if everything is by qadar, why act? Why plant if God controls the harvest? Why treat illness if God controls life and death? The fatalistic reading of qadar produces tawākkul (passive abandonment) — the corruption of the proper concept of tawakkul (trust in God while acting fully).
Premise 2: Imam ʿAlī (a) in Nahj al-Balāgha: when asked about qadar, he instructed a questioner to lift one leg — the man did. He then asked him to lift the other while keeping the first raised — the man said he could not. The Imam: "This is qadar. You act within the capacity God gave you. The capacity is divine; the action within it is yours." Tawakkul = acting fully with God-given capacities while trusting God with outcomes.
Premise 3: The distinction: tawakkul (correct) = doing everything within your capacity and submitting the outcome to God. Tawākkul (incorrect/fatalism) = not acting on the pretext that "God will arrange it." Imam ʿAlī explicitly condemned passive fatalism as a misunderstanding of qadar — it confuses "trusting God with outcomes" with "doing nothing."