# If God Determined My Destiny, What's My Fault?

- Language: en
- Published: 2026-08-26
- Canonical: https://blog.towardseternity.com/en/blog/if-god-determined-my-destiny-whats-my-fault
- Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfawpscMYvQ
- Channel: Towards Eternity

This is the cleaned transcript of the source video. The speech is unaltered.

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our topic is fate and we have prepared very difficult questions for you if you're ready let's begin okay let's begin is marriage faded with a person i'm going to marry come and find me even if i never left the house does the god know whether i will end up in heaven or hell of course he does then why should i put in any effort no matter what i do i will not be able to change the outcome a person cannot choose the time and place he was born or his parents a person becomes an atheist deist or christian according to these factors why does he end up in hell then welcome to the cross examination our topic is fade and we have prepared very difficult questions for you if you're ready let's begin

okay let's begin what is fate it is that the god encompasses the past future and current time simultaneously and knows all events that will take place at the same time the fate is the fact that actions of a person are known beforehand and then played out in his or her life which means that god creates these actions and then they're played out by the person does the god know whether i will end up in heaven or hell of course he does then why should i put in any effort no matter what i do i'll not be able to change the outcome we think that if god knows something then we are forced to do it as if we do things because god knows it for example if you're sitting on the top of a mountain and you

saw two trains rushing towards each other from opposite sides of the mountain and then you took a pen and paper and wrote these two trains will crash in about 23 seconds at this point and this really did happen those two trains crashed could the people in those trains say why did you write such a thing we were forced to crash because you wrote it of course not this would be illogical why they didn't crash because you wrote it you wrote it because they were going to crash just like this god knows what has happened what is happening and what will happen in the future simultaneously and he has written this as fate just like those two trains didn't crash because you wrote it down you're not

forced into doing anything because god wrote it god wrote it because he knew you were going to do so what do you mean by saying allah solely knows things does he not interfere at all what about earthquakes or other natural phenomena am i the one who causes these of course i don't mean that god does not create anything that we did not will that's not what this means there's no problem with god knowing what we are going to choose before we decide to make the choice no one is forcing you to make that choice that is what i meant other than that if we get ill of course this is from god we are not responsible for events that happen outside of our control why was there an earthquake you will not be

responsible for this because such things occur as a part of god's will you don't have control over these but you do give a reaction to things that happen to you so you are responsible for this let's say there was an earthquake and your house collapsed if you say why did the god do this to me then this is a reaction that you choose and you will be responsible for this so there is no problem in god's decreeing such things for you but the reactions you give will determine what your profile will be like and you will be held responsible for these is the person i will marry predetermined will i determine who this person will be or will the god determine it is marriage faded would the person i'm

going to marry come and find me even if i never left the house marriage may be predetermined by god's infinite will or by an individual's partial will but because there's no way of us knowing this we must strive to gain a result for example the prophet muhammad peace be upon him gives advice about what to look for in a spouse a person is married for four things wealth beauty nobility and religion so you should marry the religious and prosper this is a well-known hadith we understand that we're not supposed to sit around and wait for the person whom we are going to marry of course we are supposed to look for that person and consider their qualities we should show some effort there sometimes

the god may reject the will of his subject you meet a person and intend to marry them and they do too but if god does not want this match he may reject your wish to get married or maybe not looking at this we cannot say i should just stay put that person will come and find me we definitely cannot say this because if we are given tactical advice about how to get married then we have to be involved in the process but this marriage still may not occur even though you wanted to and this is determined by god's will somewhat like offering a prayer and hoping it is granted a person cannot choose the place and time he was born or his parents a person becomes an atheist deist or christian according

to these factors why does he end up in hell then now the person who asked this question accepts place of birth as the cause of an absolute result actually i will complicate the question even further is a person who was born in the time of the prophet muhammad peace be upon him luckier than a person who was born 1400 years later and has never seen the prophet peace be upon him if we look at it from this perspective we should say that a person who lived in the time of the prophet peace be upon him is luckier but there are people who live side by side with him and became unbelievers and even went so far as to fight against him if a person's place of birth determines whether he will die as a

believer or non-believer then everyone who was born in the time of the prophet peace be upon him would go to heaven and those who weren't would have had to go to hell as they were born in another time but this is not the case we can even state the opposite the pharaoh would say i'm a god but a prophet was raised in his household what does it mean to be a prophet a person closest to god grew up in their midst and prophets have willpower too in a place where everyone calls the pharaoh as the god or where there are various gods that are worshipped being a prophet seems like a difficult task am i right the odds are against him everything is against him if you're born in such an environment it's

only logical that you'd worship them too otherwise you would have been born in some other form this shows us that the place of birth is not a factor in determining if one believes or not let's talk about the concept of interenum what is this a person is born and not told about islam meaning that they were not given the message of the god's prophet our prophets peace be upon a message did not reach him if this person dies in this state god will not directly put him in hell hence there is no problem or harm here either but like i said it is illogical to say a person's place of birth determines his end if he is born here he will die as a muslim or an atheist so are people mere puppets do they

only play out the roles even the person who asks this question knows that he has a will in all consciousness everyone knows that we possess willpower how can we say we're puppets what is meant by being a puppet if puppets have no willpower they can be manipulated okay but i know that i make my own choices for example i chose whether or not to sit here and you choose whether or not to sit there i choose whether to talk or not i choose what i eat i choose what i wear and if it's clear that i do have willpower it seems that saying are we puppets are we just playing out our roles is mere escapism of course there are some issues that allah determines and we've talked about these but you also make

choices with your free will so we can't say that we are puppets our hour of death is determined there's a verse about this too for example let's say a man has a gun in his hand and he shoots someone with it and that person dies even if the man didn't shoot that person his death was determined and he was still going to die on that day then why is the person we call a murderer guilty firstly there are some faulty pieces of information in the story i need to clarify them first one of them is someone that was shot dead today was still going to die no matter what we can't say this because god creates the cause and effect together meaning that god creates the effect because there is a cause but if

you remove the cause which is the shooting then you can't say whether the person would die or not because there is no evident cause god may take a person's life or let him live and that's why we say that we cannot know only after the event has unfolded and that person is shot dead do we say god has decreed his death to be so but if he wasn't shot would he have died or lived what would the decree be of course we cannot know this so it is wrong to say that it's 100 guaranteed that the person was going to die on that day and that would not change no matter what anybody did if this wasn't so would that person live or die we cannot know this because we cannot know this we cannot say he's not a

murderer the person was going to die anyway because that man used his willpower and he will definitely be held responsible for this in the beginning you said that the fate was god's knowing god's knowledge does not change we know this okay well there is a hadith that says charity lentens one's lifespan what about that if our hour of death is determined by god how can giving to charity lengthen one's lifespan first of all i didn't say that the fate is only god's knowing that's another issue but i understand what you're saying there are two kinds of fate one is the clear record and the other is the clear book what do i mean by this there is a non-changeable fate and a changeable fate

changeable fate is like god's erasable board so he can write i'm going to send this calamity on this day this is changeable fate let's say you gave to charity then you can dismiss that calamity the calamity is erased and a new fate is written without it but there also is the preserved slate which is an even deeper concept what will or will not happen to you is fading meaning that it was already written that this calamity would not happen but it was going to happen according to your changeable fate you gave to charity and god erased the calamity that was going to happen but again the way everything unfolded was already written on the preserved slate or in the clear book what you're talking

about is the clear record so because god even knows whether or not you're going to give to charity your lifespan is noted in the preserved slate accordingly and it is unchangeable but the issue of lengthening your lifespan was written in your changeable fate let's say you were going to die on a certain day but you gave to charity your lifespan lengthened but when you will die is still written on the preserved slate and there is also a point made by vadiya zaman saeed nursi lengthening a lifespan may mean that giving to charity results in a life of abundance this is what it points to these are all our questions for now we will have more difficult questions for you in the next episode okay i

have always said this and i'll say it again you can ask me anything i trust the quran not myself you