Like most other Muslims, the Cirebonese conceive human destiny, good or bad, desirable or undesirable, as essentially determined by God. In other words, something happens because God wills it. This belief is, in fact, embedded in the sixth decree of the Islamic faith: belief in Qadla, or predetermination, and Qadar, or fixed human destiny. In more popular terms both Qadla and Qadar are referred to by a single term Takdir, meaning Divine decree or predestination. Classic examples used to argue for the existence of predestination, as Pak Shofie put it, are that we cannot decide where and when we are born; we cannot choose who shall become our mother and our father; we can neither choose nor decide to become male or female, tall or short, good-looking or bad-looking; we cannot choose or decide how, where, and when we shall die. Given these things, Pak Shofie said, we must just accept what we are. Someone may want to die because of a miserable life or because they cannot bear a long painful illness, but still they keep living. On the other hand, most people want to live longer and do many things to try to achieve that, but nevertheless might die suddenly. Because death is predestined, suicide is regarded as an act against predestination, which, therefore, is heavily condemned, promising severe punishment in Hell.^[41]

Following from this principle of predestination is the view, held also by the Cirebonese, that insists that mankind's fortune or misfortune is the result of ‘the will of God’ (Kresane Gusti Allah). Sudika (38 years), a newspaper-agent, explains:

This view clearly reflects the uncompromising Cirebonese belief in the power and omnipotence of God, especially regarding human fate. Theoretically, this sense of dependency on God's will, according to Goldziher, tipped the scales in favour of denying the freedom of the will, so that virtue and vice, and reward and punishment are exclusively predestined by God; humans have no role to play.^[43] In practice, however, further explanations enunciated by Sudika do not fully fit this standard because, beside predestination, there is also an obligation of ikhtiar (effort). Not only is ikhtiar necessary because God obliges mankind to do so, but it is also necessary for their own sake because ikhtiar is a precondition for the realisation of God's Mercy, Beneficence and Bounty. In this regard Sudika further explained:

Setting aside the theological arguments, Cirebonese ideas seem to conform to the common Javanese belief indicated by Suparlan that one's fate has really been determined from the time when the person was in the mother's womb.^[45] According to this Cirebonese idea of human creation, the designation of one's fate (including one's livelihood, death, actions, fortune and misfortune), occurs when the process of creation is at the stage of alam arwah; that is, when the foetus is about four months old and when God sends Gabriel to blow a soul into it, after which time the young foetus starts to become animated. This fate, according to Suparlan (1991:7) is influenced by the combination of the mother's and father's power which form the foetus, by the soul which animates the foetus, by the extent to which the soul fits the foetus, by the mother's power and activities; by the conditions of the womb, by the efforts and attainment of the foetus during its stay in the womb; and by the time and place of birth. In addition, Suparlan also claims that fate can still be changed, within certain limitations, through one's acts and relations with one's surroundings. A simple example is of someone who is fortunate, born to well-to-do parents and, thus, likely to grow well and healthy but who is then unfortunate because his parents do not realise it when he falls into his friend's temptations. Instead of becoming a good and successful man, he becomes a delinquent, and is sent to jail. Converse examples may be cited. The main point is that fate, to some extent, may change through an individual's “efforts” and through using certain powers and capacities bestowed by  God. In this context Sudika added that since no one knows with certainty one's own fate, or what God will actually decide, the making of ikhtiar (efforts) is absolutely necessary”. In other words, we only know something is predestined, takdir, either after our own “efforts” have been carried out or after being assured that the thing under consideration is beyond the capacity of humans to control. Sudika illustrates this with the following example:

Ordinary people of Cirebon seem to be wiser in treating the contradiction between “predestination” and “free will”. Some intellectuals put the questions of free will and predestination at two poles that bear inherent tensions. By contrast, the ordinary people consider them simultaneously as tied up together in the sphere of rukun. Pak Shofie had this to say on the subject: