What is destiny? How do we recognise it, and when does it arrive?
Is it the moment two people meet by chance, the opportunity that appears unexpectedly or the road that closes despite every effort to keep it open? Or does destiny become visible only in retrospect, once a life has unfolded enough for seemingly unrelated events to form a pattern?
Our Arabic word of the week, qadar, explores this concept.
Most commonly translated as destiny, fate or divine decree, qadar comes from the Arabic root qaf, dal, raa, associated with measuring, determining and possessing ability or power.
That sense of measure is important. Qadar is not simply the idea that something was always going to happen. It carries the suggestion that events exist within a wider order, even when that order cannot be seen by the person experiencing those events.
The question has occupied philosophers and theologians for centuries.
The influential Muslim thinker Al-Ghazali saw events as part of a chain of causes that ultimately existed within divine knowledge and determination. Human beings still acted, chose and intended, but those choices also existed within a wider order beyond their complete understanding.
That tension between what is decided and what can still be changed sits at the heart of qadar.
It appears powerfully in Arabic poetry.
Tunisian poet Abu Al Qasim Al Shabbi gave destiny an almost responsive quality in his famous poem The Will to Live. Its best-known line declares that if people truly desire life, then destiny must answer them.
Here, qadar is not an excuse for surrender. Human will confronts destiny and demands something from it.
The word takes on a more intimate character in Arabic music, where destiny frequently appears in songs about love, separation and encounters that seem beyond anyone’s control.
Emirati singer Balqees, for example, has a song titled Qadar, while Saudi singer Rashed Al Majed has also recorded a song of the same name. In both cases, destiny becomes closely tied to love and relationships, reflecting one of the word’s most common uses in popular culture.
To describe a relationship as qadar can suggest that two people were destined to meet, just as a painful separation can be understood as something that was ultimately written for them.
In Islamic belief, qadar refers more specifically to divine decree and God’s knowledge of all that happens. Belief in it is traditionally counted among the articles of faith.
Yet it does not remove the expectation of human effort.
A person may pursue a career, relationship or ambition with everything available to them while accepting that the outcome cannot be guaranteed.
Qadar begins, in a sense, where control ends.
The same root appears in qudra, meaning ability or capability, and qadr, which can mean measure, value or worth. Laylat Al Qadr, the Night of Power or Night of Decree, observed during Ramadan, belongs to the same linguistic family.
Perhaps this is why qadar remains such a compelling idea.
We rarely experience destiny as destiny in the moment. We experience choices, accidents, disappointments and coincidences.
Only with distance do we sometimes look back at them and call them qadar.
