if you were born as someone else do you think you still would have ended up as a muslim?
the way im seeing it is that we are products of our environment
Imagine a plant,the seed is your genetics,dirt and weather is your environment and as you mature you become the guardner and you get to choose how to react to your conditions
But do you really get to choose your reactions, or is that also determined by your experiences?
Your "reactions" are a product of your brain's neurochemistry and wiring.That wiring was shaped by your genetics (the seed) and your life experiences (the dirt and weather).
Therefore, your "choice" of how to react is just the inevitable output of a complex system based on your predetermined programming. You are the gardener, but the gardener's every decision is itself a product of the seed, the soil, and the weather that made them.
You’re right that environment and biology shape a lot of who we are. Islam actually agrees about our upbringing influencing us and that our personality and impulses are partly innate or that our experiences change our wiring.
But if we say every choice is 100% predetermined by genetics and environment, then we run into a logical problem. If no one truly chooses anything, then there is no real morality, no real responsibility, no praise, no blame. No should or ought in life.
We couldn’t call anything good or evil, it would all just be cause and effect.
Even the statement “you only believe because of your environment” would apply equally to the person saying it. Their belief in determinism would also just be a product of their environment, not a truth they discovered using reason.
Determinism cancels itself out.
That’s why Islam agrees about influence but says there is a spark of autonomy:
You don’t choose your impulses, but you choose whether to follow them.
You don’t choose the test, but you choose how to respond to it.
Even neuroscientists find that the brain shows conflict signals before decisions. There is a part of us evaluating, resisting, overriding instinct, not just reacting.
In islam God only judges each person based on the knowledge and opportunities they had.
The Qur’an says:
“We never punish until We send a messenger.” (17:15)
Meaning, if someone was never exposed to the truth in a fair way, God won’t hold them accountable like someone who was.
Nobody is set up to fail.
Your analogy is actually close to the Islamic view bro, but it’s missing one thing.
I agree , genetics is the seed and environment is the soil and weather and experience shapes the gardener.
But Islam says:
God gave the gardener the ability to cut a new path, even if the soil is rough.
So actually the struggle itself is evidence of that freedom.