These verses present creation, design, and direction (qadar and hidāya) as interlinked stages.

This essay touches many interconnected topics. Because the text is linear, we will not delve deeply into each — we will mark them as signposts for later detailed treatment.

The core concepts of this essay:

— Creation and proportioning / design
— Destiny, qadar (constraint, limitation) and guidance
— Relational soft determinism and the will

Proportioning / design. Sawwā: to equalize, to order. Sawwāka: 'He equipped you with an infrastructure that fulfils the purpose of your existence' (Rāghib). The proportioning of a thing is its being granted the infrastructure that lets it operate toward its purpose (mā khuliqa lah).

We see here that creation is intended not as a direct 'end-state' but as a staged process. Instead of bringing forth tree and fruit at once, what is described is creating a seed and embedding within it the potential / program of tree and fruit. A picture of existence drawn not over objects but over processes.

How is design recognized? One criterion: if emergent concepts arise within a whole and these concepts can also arise on other substrates, then design is in play.

A chair can be made of metal, wood, or LEGO bricks. 'Chair-ness' is emergent — independent of substrate. There is an invariance across its parts. What is targeted is this emergent feature. In Aristotle's vocabulary, this is telos; from a time-transcendent vantage, top-down causality.

At the head of this teleological (purposive) process lies design.

Likewise, intelligence is not bound to a biological substrate. It can arise on a silicon substrate — this is artificial intelligence. So with the wing: a bird's wing, an aeroplane's wing… 'wing-ness' is emergent.

David Deutsch's new physical theory, Constructor Theory, picks up precisely here — placing at the center the concept of 'information' in what we have been calling design. Matter is the carrier; what is essential is the transmission of information.

Qadar is the imposition of a constraint. Human DNA, for example, bounds traits like height and skin colour within a certain range. Not as an absolute measure, but defined within an interval through its relations with other factors — and so a remarkable harmony emerges.

This approach can also be called soft determinism.

Let us step further back. The conceptual hierarchy (ontology) of existence points out that the determination (qadar) of a thing may itself come at different levels of flexibility.

For instance, the following are statements at different resolutions but with the same truth value:

— Part of the glass is filled with liquid.
— A bit less than half of the glass holds water.
— The reddish glass holds 120 ml of Zamzam water.

Note how, without changing the truth value of a statement, I can raise or lower the resolution of its information content.

Another example — the cow in Al-Baqarah:

— Sacrifice a cow (Al-Baqarah 2:67)
— Sacrifice a cow neither old nor very young, midway, vigorous (Al-Baqarah 2:68)
— A bright-yellow cow giving joy to onlookers, neither too old nor too young… (Al-Baqarah 2:69)
— Untrained for ploughing or watering crops, sound, with no blemish or speckle, bright-yellow, joyful to onlookers… (Al-Baqarah 2:71)

At every step the indeterminacy decreases and the resolution rises. The count of possible states shrinks.

As one interacts with reality and as choices turn into action, resolution and certainty grow. Yet they still remain within a frame and mould already drawn in essence.

The verse's phrase 'qaddara fa-hadā' — 'He determined, then guided' — signals the actualization of one path among those laid out within the frame of constraint. Hence the later verses, and verses in other sūrahs, that speak of one being directed to al-yusrā (the easy path) or al-ʿusrā (the hard path) — being led to the easiest or the hardest among the determined paths — relate to how, as the pen of destiny raises the resolution and events grow more distinct, paths are also selected by prayer and seeking-forgiveness in the two hands of the will.

Through the power of will and prayer, the human can exert influence on destiny, and the predetermined destiny may even take shape through different possibilities. This process is a consequence of destiny's hierarchical structure and flexibility.

Suppose a person's traffic accident has been determined in destiny. There are thousands of different paths by which it might come about — sleeplessness the night before, a distracting message during the drive, a deer crossing the road, and so on.

What narrows these possibilities is the relations between destinies of other factors. The destiny of the other driver, or of the deer, gradually shrinks the possibilities until only one outcome remains. Like a system of equations: as the number of equations grows, the number of solutions shrinks.

Not all beings are equal regarding destiny. Because they form fewer relations, some beings possess a more local, particular destiny. Other beings — like the human heart — hold far broader relations. Other galaxies or living beings from thousands of years past can be inscribed within their inner world. This grants them a more universal (global) identity.

As a being's nature broadens from the local to the global, from the particular to the universal, its destiny too broadens and changes. It ceases being something determined and passes into the position of determiner.

The final point of this process touches the secret of lawlāka, qāba qawsayni aw adnā, nūr-i Muḥammadī, or ḥaqīqat-i Aḥmadiyya. The person gains universality in proportion to his aspiration (himma).

(For richer context, Felsufi refers to: 'Human, Cosmos, and Quranic Terminology-1: Local and Global Perspectives' — the first essay of this series.)

Through the partial will and deeds, the human can alter the things with which he stands in relation, and so reach the same outcome via another of the thousand possibilities. At times, will and prayer rise to a level where even the decreed verdict (qaḍāʾ) may shift. Such an arrangement comes about through destiny's hierarchical structure and flexibility.

Creation, design, and destiny stand in close relation. The concept of destiny is flexible, relational, and hierarchical. The human's will, prayer, and the relationships he builds can affect and transform this system.

Thus, instead of absolute determination, destiny becomes a dynamic determiner whose resolution / certainty grows through process. Destiny becomes, in a sense, a pen. Like the position of an electron — constrained by its quantum wave function, then, on being observed, resolving from many possible points to only one (qaddara fa-hadā).

As emphasized throughout this essay, destiny's resolution grows with time and relations, following a course from indeterminacy to distinctness. Just as in the cow example of Sūrah Al-Baqarah, the initial frame is drawn at a low resolution and large; as relations and interactions accumulate, this frame becomes ever more defined.

The effect of will and deed on destiny is articulated through the principle of 'qaddara fa-hadā': God first decrees, then guides. This two-stage process raises the human's destiny from a passive reception to active participation. The choice between al-yusrā (the easy) and al-ʿusrā (the hard) is shaped by the human's deeds, intention, and prayer.

The Quran's concept of 'al-najdayn' (the two highways) discloses the will's role within destiny. Every human possesses a sphere of influence reaching from local to global, in proportion to particular and universal capacity. A person gains universality in proportion to aspiration (himma) — and as this universality grows, his power to shape his destiny broadens with it.