KASB

(Arabic: acquisition), a doctrine in Islam adopted by the theologian al-Ash'ari (d. 935) as a mean between predestination and free will. According to al-Ash'ari, all actions, good and evil, are originated by God, but they are acquired (maksub, whence kasb) by men. As for the criticism that his kasb theory attributes evil to God, al-Ash'ari explained that, by creating evil, God is not an evildoer. Al-Ash'ari chose the term kasb to avoid attributing khalq (creation) to anyone but God. His main concern was to maintain God's total omnipotence and at the same time allow men a degree of responsibility for their actions. Al-Ash'ari rejected the assertion of the Mu'tazilah theological school, of which he had been a member, that man has the power to will an act or its opposite. He maintained rather that man has the power to will only the act, not the opposite. Man does not initiate anything; he merely acquires what God has created. Thus man's responsibility comes from his decision as to which actions he should acquire. Because of its limiting of man's scope and its emphasis on God's omnipotence, the kasb doctrine was regarded by many Muslim theologians as being indistinguishable from pure predetermination. Despite the efforts of al-Ash'ari and his followers (the Ash'ariyah) to clarify kasb, it remained one of the most vague theories in Islamic theology, as the proverb adaqq min kasb al-Ash'ari (more subtle than the kasb of al-Ash'ari) indicates.