Quotations about:
    culpability

When Allah mixed my clay, He knew full well
My future acts, and could each one foretell;
Without His will no act of mine was wrought;
Is it then just to punish me in hell?

Omar Khayyám (1048-1123) Persian poet, mathematician, philosopher, astronomer [عمر خیام]

Rubáiyát [رباعیات], Cal. # 26 [tr. Whinfield (1883), # 100]
    (Source)

This quatrain is in the Calcutta manuscript, but not the Bodleian.

Alternate translations:

What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke
A conscious Something to resent the yoke
Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain
Of Everlasting Penalties, if broke!
[tr. FitzGerald, 2nd ed. (1868), # 84; # 78 for 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions]

When God built up my body out of clay, he knew beforehand the fruit of all my deeds. It is not in defiance of his will that I a sinner have sinned. Why then for me does nether hell await?
[tr. McCarthy (1879), # 112]

When Allah mixed my clay, He knew full well
My future acts, and could each one foretell;
'Twas he who did my sins predestinate,
Yet thinks it just to punish me in hell.
[tr. Whinfield (1882), # 46]

'Twas Allah who engraved upon my Clay
The Laws I was thereafter to obey,
And will He cast me into Raging Fire,
Because my Actions answer to His Sway?
[tr. Garner (1887), 4.5]

Almighty Potter, on whose wheel of blue
The world is fashioned and is broken too,
Why to the race of men is heaven so dire?
In what, O wheel, have I offended you?
[tr. Le Gallienne (1897)]

God, when He mixed and moulded our being's clay,
Had e'en foreknowledge of all we should do and say;
Without His order no sin of mine was aye;
Then why should He doom me to burn on the Judgment Day?
[tr. Payne (1898), # 190]

God, when he fashioned the clay of my body
Knew by my making what would come from it
(Since) there is no sin of mine without his knowledge
Why should he seek to burn me at the day of resurrection?
[tr. Heron-Allen (1897), "# 26=85" Calcutta]

God, when he fashioned the clay of my body,
Knew by my making what would come of it;
(Since) there is no sin of mine without his order
Why should he seek to burn me at the Day of Resurrection?
[tr. Heron-Allen (1899), #78a, Calcutta]

When God of our existence shaped the clay.
He knew our actions would be as His sway;
Without His mandate was no sin of mine,
Then why doom me to burn on Judgment Day?
[tr. Thompson (1906), # 148]

When, bending low, God moulded me from clay,
Incontrovertibly my life was ordered:
Without his order I abstain from crime.
Why should I burn, then, on His Judgement Day?
[tr. Graves & Ali-Shah (1967), # 82]