There is a simple law which applies to human life as well as to the universe in general. Indeed, it has a direct bearing on the task Allah has assigned to man when He first created him, namely, building human life on earth. That is the law of cause and effect. No individual or community can ignore this law or its implications without suffering disastrous consequences. Let us take a simple example: When a certain area has a good rainy season, agricultural produce is bound to be plentiful. A drought means shortage of supply and, in consequence, higher prices, poverty, hunger and even famine. If a country knows from experience that it has a "dry" winter every two or three years when rain is scarce, it can plan ahead and preserve certain supplies in order to alleviate the effects of the drought. Allah gives us in the Qur'an a very good example of this when He tells us that Prophet Yousuf foretold the king of Egypt that after seven years of good harvest, the land will go through a patch of terrible drought lasting another seven years. A program of preparedness for the forthcoming emergency was devised and put into operation. It was Yousuf himself who supervised it and the people of Egypt and the surrounding areas were able to live through the drought period without much affliction.

If someone suggests that without that program of preparedness, which meant stocking more than half of the harvest, in the first seven good seasons, the population would not have suffered any consequences and those who managed to live easily would have continued to live in the same way and no one would have starved, then we can only tell him that he does not know what he is talking about.

A drought of seven consecutive years will play havoc with the lives of the population of any country. However, the people of Egypt were able to stand this long hardship because of the wise policy adopted by Yousuf, peace be upon him. That was a good example of how the law of cause and effect works. What we need to know is that it does not contradict Allah's will because it is part of it. It is Allah who set that law in operation and allowed its consequences to be fulfilled. It only needs a little stretch of the mind to understand that this law is also part of predestination, in its broad, Islamic sense.

Let us take another example. Until recently smallpox was a major childhood disease which caused death and a great deal of suffering to millions of victims every year. As a result of a worldwide campaign of vaccination, smallpox has disappeared from the face of the earth. It is now 16 years since the last known case of smallpox was recorded in Somalia. Many of us remember friends, relatives or schoolmates who fell victim to this disease. Some of us still have its effects on our faces and bodies. Without that long campaign of vaccination, smallpox would have still been with us, causing untold suffering to our children. There is no doubt that smallpox has disappeared by Allah's will, but the medium of its eradication was the vaccination campaign undertaken by man in fulfillment of Allah's will. Can anyone suggest that smallpox would have disappeared from the face of the earth in 1977 whether the campaign of vaccination was organized or not?

A similar effort of immunization of children against six major childhood diseases is going on, with the eradication of one of them, polio, being clearly in sight. As efforts of monitoring the effects of the program show, incidence of these diseases have dropped with increased coverage of children with immunization. Since most of these diseases could kill their victims, the fall in occurrence has meant a commensurate drop in child mortality as a result of these illnesses. You have only to look at facts and figures to realize that in a certain country, the number of children dying with, say, measles, is half what it was ten years ago after the rate of coverage with vaccination against measles has reached 50 percent of the children of that country. Are we not required by Islam to relate these facts to each other and draw the appropriate conclusions which will tell us that a 100 percent coverage of children with immunization will inevitably mean that the occurrence of the disease will be minimal if not stopped completely.

Human beings fall ill and then they do recover. Do we ask ourselves how and why? When a person falls ill, he is required by Islam to seek medical treatment if it is available. The Prophet tells us to seek medical treatment because, as he puts it, "Allah has not created an illness without creating a cure for it." This is a good example of cause and effect. When you take a medicine, you are cured by Allah's will, because He has put into that particular medicine the qualities which enable the human body to overcome a certain disease.

The Prophet tells us that "a human being cannot fill a worse container than his stomach." He also advises us that if we want to eat our fill, let us divide our tummy into three portions, one for food, one for drink and one for breathing. By giving us this valued advice, the Prophet is certainly showing us one way to avoid disease. Medicine has established for certain that the consumption of particular substances is associated with certain diseases. Cigarette smoking, for example, has been established as a direct cause of lung cancer, cardiovascular diseases and other types of cancer. On the basis of this certainty, the majority of scholars are giving rulings that tobacco consumption is forbidden in Islam. They argue that Allah would not permit us to use a substance which is likely to cause killer diseases. Does not their ruling tell us that Islam recognizes the fact that by avoiding such a substance, we spare ourselves the possibility of falling victim to these diseases? Similarly, a healthy diet is important for health. When a person eats "rich" food, which means that his diet has a large proportion of fat and sugar, he is liable to put on weight and if he is in the habit of "washing down" his fatty meal with a couple of drinks, he exposes himself to increased risk of a heart attack. Are we not, as Muslims, required to relate these scientifically proven facts to the Hadith which I have just quoted? When we do so, we conclude that Islam likes its followers to have a balanced diet which also means that they should not eat too much.

But why would Islam want us to do so when what has been written will take place whatever we do? If the death of a particular person will occur at a particular moment of time, whether he follows a healthy lifestyle or not, why should it matter what he eats, drinks, smokes, etc.? Is it true that there is a "deadline" which no one can cross?

May I ask in this connection why does Islam prescribe capital punishment for a murder? And why is a martyr rewarded with heaven in addition to forgiveness of all his past sins? If the victim of a murderer would have died any way when the weapon of the murderer caused his death and if the martyr would have died at the same moment whether he was fighting for Allah's cause or not, then the severity of the punishment in the first case and the abundance of the reward in the second can be called into question. There is no doubt in my mind that the punishment for murderer is the right one and the reward of a martyr is the one which is most befitting with Allah's grace and generosity. It is true that a murdered person died at the point in time when his life ended, as it was known to Allah long before the creation of man. But if the murderer did not pull the trigger and the bullet did not hit the victim, that victim would not have died at that particular moment. Read, if you will, the Hadith which states, "He who likes to have his provisions increased and his life extended should be kind to his relatives." Here the Prophet is speaking of an extended life duration. We should not explain his statement away as meant figuratively, because it is not. What he tells us is the truth.

All the above examples can be easily understood within the general framework of the law of cause and effect which Allah has set into operation. Therefore, it works with Allah's will and as a means of bringing about what He determined. Most of our actions are done by our free will. This means that it is up to us to do them or not. It is up to me to sit at this moment of time and write this answer to your question. I can easily stop and go and do something else. Similarly, you could have decided not to send your question to me. If you did not, I would not be writing on the subject. By the same token, the murderer could have refrained from pulling the trigger and his victim would have lived. That does not mean that he would have violated Allah's will because it is also Allah's will for a man to live if he is not hit by a bullet in his head or in his heart. The same man will meet his death sometime later when a different cause of death will have occurred. Its occurrence is also part of what Allah has predetermined.

No sir, my answer has taken Islamic teachings into account, because God has instructed us to look around us and learn from the lessons that life events may place before our eyes. He says in the Qur'an: "Say: Reflect on what there is in the heaven and on earth. But of what benefit can signs and warnings be to the community that would not believe." The Qur'anic verses and the Hadiths that call on us to study, reflect, take heed and learn are numerous indeed.

Besides, we have learned from Islam as well as from what we see around us that there is a law of cause and effect which operates by God's will. For example, fire burns. Therefore, when you put something close to a fire, it is burned. If you light up a match and put your finger on top of its flame, you will immediately feel a burning sensation. If you do not, no such feeling will be experienced by you. This is an example of the working of the law of cause and effect. You do not place your finger close to the flame of a match and say that God's will may prevent the fire from burning it. It is certainly true that God may stop the action of the fire, but it is His will that fire should burn. Therefore, when we place things in a fire they are burned.

This applies to everything and all conditions and situations in life. A person who smokes has a much higher risk of suffering one of the serious diseases that smoking causes, such as a wide variety of cancer, cardiovascular diseases, chronic bronchitis, etc. Most of these are fatal. Therefore, the effect of being a heavy smoker is likely to be the suffering of one or more of these diseases, any of which can cause death. That same person would most probably not suffer from the disease which kills him if he does not smoke. If we were to say that he would still have suffered the same disease, which is caused by nicotine or carbon monoxide, when he did not have either of them through smoking, then we are saying that an object could be burned without a fire, or drowned without coming near water.

Perhaps you would say that he might not have suffered that disease, but he would still die at the same moment, by some other reason. I would say that we do not know that, but most probably he would have lived longer, because he would be enjoying better health over a longer period of his life.

Here we come to the Hadith which you have mentioned, and which is at the center of this argument. There is no doubt that the Hadith is authentic. Let us not speak about the details of the writing and why it should be written, or where it is written, etc. We know than an angel writes down four things, including the duration of the life of the yet unborn baby. Now, the angel does not determine that duration. It is God who determines it, according to His knowledge which is perfect, absolute, unlimited by the confines of time or place. I have explained on several occasions that God's knowledge is perfect and complete. Nothing is added to it as a result of any event, because time does not apply to God in the same way as it applies to us. When God instructs the angel to write these four things, He is fully aware what the person concerned will be doing in his life and what harm he will cause to himself and what damage to his health he may perpetrate. He takes into account the effect of all these on his health and knows whether he will have lung cancer as a result of smoking or coronary heart disease as a result of drinking, or he would be obese as a result of overeating and lack of exercise. So He gives him forty or fifty or sixty years of life in accordance with the effect of so many factors on his health and on his life as a whole. God will certainly give a longer life duration to a person whom He knows will be following a healthy lifestyle.

Now the choice of lifestyle is a personal choice, which we do by our own free will. Had our actions been imposed on us by God's will, then God would not have held us to account for what we do in this life. It is because He has given us free will that He subjects us to His judgment on the day of resurrection. He knows that what we do is our own personal choice. Therefore, we cannot escape the consequences.

Moreover, there are authentic Hadiths which speak of prolonging life. In one of these, the Prophet is quoted as saying: "He who likes to be given an increase of provisions and a longer duration of life should be dutiful to his parents." Another Hadith which uses the same wording in its first part mentions that the results of increased provisions and longer life depend on being kind to one's close relatives. Again, dutifulness to parents and kindness to relatives are things that we do by our own free will. They are not imposed on us. But we should reflect that both the things that depend on them — increased provisions and longer life — are written down by the angel when everyone of us is still a fetus. Scholars have explained this and given two points by way of explanation.

The first is that they point out a fact to which reference is made in Verse 39 of Surah 13 which includes this statement: "God may erase or confirm whatever He pleases." This is in direct reference to what is written concerning the future. So, what has been written may be changed as a result of what we do.

The other explanation is that when the angel is given his instructions to write down four things, he is told to write: "This person shall live for sixty years if he is not dutiful to his parents, but will continue to live until he is seventy if he is dutiful to them." Now, God knows in advance that the person concerned will be dutiful or not dutiful and at what moment exactly he will die. The angel does not know. Therefore, the extension in the person's age as a result of his actions is true in relation to all creatures, including human beings, angels and all living things on earth and in the wide universe. To God the extension is known in advance.

As you are well aware, we are accountable to Allah for what we do in this life. He rewards us in accordance with our deeds. Hence, our deeds are chosen by us, since we have been given such a free choice. If we were denied such a choice and if our actions were determined for us by Allah, then it would not fit with Allah's justice that we should be accountable for them.

There is some confusion in people's minds about this question. This confusion is compounded by a wrong understanding of some Hadiths like the following one: "The creation of each one of you is gathered together in his mother's belly for forty days in the form of a seed, then he is a clot of blood for a like period. The angel is then sent to him to blow the breath of life into him. He is commanded to write down four matters: his means of livelihood, life-span, actions, and whether happy or unhappy." (Related by Al-Bukhari and Muslim). This writing down of these matters is not an imposition, except in such areas over which the man has no influence, such as duration of his life. When the angel writes a man's action, he simply documents that Allah has known long before the conception of that person in his mother's womb. We must not forget that Allah's knowledge is not increased as a result of any event of circumstances. He has known the number of human beings that would walk on earth, the fortune of each and every one of them, and the feelings of every single one of them at every moment of his or her life, long before the creation of Adam, the first human being. This is part of Allah's knowledge, but it is not predetermination, because Allah has created us with our free will and ability to choose. That ability must work within us. It is we who choose whether to obey Allah and disobey Him. Hence, we are accountable for our choices.