Free Not Peace but a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam by Robert Spencer Page A

(13:26).
    Thus far, we are in the realm of free will and personal responsibility. But then we read, “God outspreads and straitens His provision unto whomsoever He will. They rejoice in this present life; and this present life, beside the world to come, is naught but passing enjoyment” (13:27).
    If Allah “outspreads and straitens His provision unto whomsoever He will,” then the decision of whether someone will be a believer and be saved or an unbeliever and be damned is up to him. When asked why he hasn’t performed a miracle that would be a definitive sign that his message really is divine, Allah tells his messenger to say essentially that: “The unbelievers say, ‘Why has a sign not been sent down upon him from his Lord?’ Say: ‘God leads astray whomsoever He will, and He guides to Him all who are penitent’” (13:28).
    Allah shortly thereafter tells Muhammad: “Thus We have sent thee among a nation before which other nations have passed away, to recite to them that We have revealed to thee; and yet they disbelieve in the All-merciful. Say: ‘He is my Lord—there is no god but He. In Him I have put my trust, and to Him I turn’” (13:31). He dismisses the possibility that those who have rejected the Islamic message would accept it if they saw a great sign, and concludes by affirming that the decision to believe or not believe is entirely up to Allah:
If only a Koran whereby the mountains were set in motion, or the earth were cleft, or the dead were spoken to—nay, but God’s is the affair altogether. Did not the believers know that, if God had willed, He would have guided men all together? And still the unbelievers are smitten by a shattering for what they wrought, or it alights nigh their habitation, until God’s promise comes; and God will not fail the tryst. (13:32)
    And again:
Nay; but decked out fair to the unbelievers is their devising, and they are barred from the way; and whomsoever God leads astray, no guide has he. For them is chastisement in the present life; and the chastisement of the world to come is yet more grievous; they have none to defend them from God. (13:34-35)
    “ They have none to defend them from God .”
    In the New Testament, it is God who defends human beings from the condemnation of the accuser, Satan. In the book of Revelation, Satan is referred to as “the accuser of our brethren” who “accuses them day and night before our God” (Rev. 12:10). But defending the brethren in the face of this accuser is God himself, by virtue of the cross of Jesus Christ. In the Qur’an, by contrast, the one whom Allah has decided to condemn has no one to defend him from the Almighty.
    The Qur’an even makes it clear that it did not have to be this way. Had Allah wanted it that way, everyone on earth would have believed in the true religion: “And if thy Lord had willed, whoever is in the earth would have believed, all of them, all together.” He chides his prophet about trying too hard to make these unbelievers believe, when Allah has already decreed that they would reject him: “Wouldst thou then constrain the people, until they are believers? It is not for any soul to believe save by the leave of God; and He lays abomination upon those who have no understanding” (10:99-100).
    Mainstream Muslim exegetes have interpreted these verses to mean exactly what they appear to mean. Says Ibn Kathir: “Allah has decreed that they will be misguided, so warning them will not help them and will not have any effect on them.” 68
    In Islamic theological history, a party known as the Qadariyya tried to advance the concept of individual free will. The pioneering Islamic scholar Ignaz Goldziher explains that the Qadaryya were protesting against “an unworthy conception of God,” and yet they “could not find a large body of supporters” among Muslims. Their opponents “battled them with the received interpretation of the sacred scriptures.” 69 And won. Ultimately, Muslim authorities