Free will (qadar) and predestination (jabr) have constituted other areas of controversy among Sunnis. The Qadariyyah school (not to be confused with Qadiriyya) regarded everything that comes to pass in this world including men's actions as entirely independent of fate. The Jabriyyah school, on the contrary, regarded every such event and action as having been determined by fate. Fatalists as they were, the Jabriyyah provided no possibility for man to act as a free being but rather turned him practically into an inanimate object.

The majority of Sunnis, however, take a middle-of-the-road course in this question. They believe that all happenings and all human actions are the results of both divine and human wills acting in a delicate balance. They insist that the general run of Muslims should place their full faith in the sahābah (companions) and follow implicitly the path marked out by them in this as in other matters, because in the appreciation and understanding of religion and its principles it is not possible to excel the sahābah.