Supplication vs Fate
In the name of God, the Abundantly Merciful, the Extremely Merciful.
My Sayyid the Successor and the Yamani.
May the peace, mercy and blessings of God be upon you.
There is confusion about how to reconcile between the divine command to be satisfied with fate, and the divine command to pray and supplicate to God Almighty and ask him for even the smallest of things.
In other words, doesn’t the command to be satisfied with fate contradict the command to supplicate? And how can we apply both commands?
Answer:
In the name of God, the Abundantly Merciful, the Extremely Merciful.
Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds.
May the prayers and peace of God be upon Muhammad and the progeny of Muhammad, the Imams and the Mahdis.
Our supplication that the fate to come to be good for us does not oppose our satisfaction with our present reality and fate. For example, I am satisfied with my current illness because it is included in the decree of God and at the same time I pray that I heal after this moment. Therefore, my knowledge that my current illness is included in the decree of God and my satisfaction with it does not mean that I know or say that Allah decreed that I remain ill for another day, another year, or the rest of my life. It does not mean the result is that I say I am satisfied with the decree of God which does not change, and therefore abandon supplicating.
Moreover, even if you knew from God through one of the paths of knowing the unseen—such as a vision that warns—that a harmful or hurtful event would occur tomorrow, you can pray to God or give charity. This would be in order that God would push this harm away, because it is not a decree of God that does not change, nor is it written in the Mother of the Book. Rather, it is a telling of one of the possibilities existing in the Board of Erasure and Confirmation for a specific matter, and it may not occur. Instead, another possibility [outcome] may occur.
So we pray because we do not know the final and definitive result that will occur, which God’s future decree for us. And we pray that the harm we are inflicted with due to our mistakes does not remain:
{And whatever strikes you of disaster, it is for what your hands have earned; but He pardons much.} Quran Chapter “The Consultation” 42:30.
Our supplication does not conflict with our satisfaction with the decree of God that has been placed upon us now. It is a reality we live in, and we thank God for it.
Ahmad al-Hassan
1433 A.H.