Hawzah News Agency (Qom, Iran)‌ ­– Human free will is a self-evident reality which can be assimilated by man in various ways, some of which we shall discuss here:

1. The conscience of each person bears testimony to his ability to decide either to perform or to abstain from a given action; if this self-evident fact be denied, then no axiomatic truth whatsoever can ever be accepted.

2. Throughout human society—religiously governed or otherwise—one finds that widely differing persons are subject to praise or blame; this should be taken as a sign that the attribution of free will to the individual is a universally encountered
fact.
 

3. If the free will of the individual were non-existent, the dictates of religion would be vain and futile. For if each individual were helpless in regard to his life, he would be compelled to continue to follow the course of life that had been established for him previously, and thus unable to deviate by even an inch from that path; in such a case, the religious commands and prohibitions, promises and threats, rewards and punishments, would all be utterly meaningless.

4. Throughout the course of human history, one observes that the reform of the individual and of society has been an overriding concern, to which end many programmes and policies have been promulgated, yielding clear results. It is evident that such efforts are entirely incompatible with belief in determinism as regards human action, for if the individual were assumed to be devoid of free will, all such efforts would be a waste of time.
 

These four points decisively and irrefutably establish the reality of free will. However, the principle of free will does not allow us to conclude that man possesses absolute liberty, and that God exercises no influence over his actions. For such a belief, called tafwid, contradicts the principle of man’s eternal dependence upon God; it also restricts the sphere of power and creativity proper
to God. This is an erroneous opinion, as will be made clearer in the following Article.
 

Reference:

 Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani, Doctrines of Shii Islam, A Compendium of Imami Beliefs and Practices, Translated and Edited by Reza Shah-Kazemi, published by I.B.Tauris Publishers, London • New York  2003