If Allah Is All-Wise, Why Was Evil Created?

“If Allah truly exists, why did He create murderers, corruptors, and rapists?” This is a question often raised by those who are doubtful and seek to challenge a person’s faith in God. In anglophone discourse, this type of question is also known as the problem of evil.

This problem arises because of an apparent contradiction between Allah’s attributes as absolutely perfect, all-compassionate, and all-powerful, and the existence of rampant evil in the world. How could a God so wise create unjust people who bring misery to the world and then punish them in Hell, when He should already know the future of those oppressors and has the power to stop them?

If we examine the matter more carefully, this question is actually a kind of loaded question, namely a question that contains several assumptions which are not necessarily true or accepted by the person being questioned. In the chain of objections surrounding the “problem of evil,” we find that the questioner assumes that all evil occurring in the world is God’s responsibility, because He knew beforehand what would happen, yet still created the perpetrators and their evil acts.

However, we do not agree with that assumption. It is indeed true that Allah knows and creates the ظلم of His servants, but the creation of every act actually corresponds to the servant’s own choice (kasb). Allah’s prior knowledge of an act before it occurs does not compel a servant’s free will to choose it. Thus, the evil act of a human being is in fact his own responsibility. A more detailed discussion of the problem of kasb can be found in the author’s article, “Understanding the Concept of Free Will in Islamic Theology.”

Yet a follow-up question is quickly raised. If that is the case, would it not have been better for Allah not to create human beings at all, so that evil and suffering would never exist in the first place?

This kind of reasoning, once again, is based on assumptions that are actually mistaken. The first mistaken assumption is that Allah, as God, is somehow obliged to eliminate every possible form of evil. The second is the assumption that “good” and “evil” are moral categories that also apply to God’s acts in the same way they apply to human acts.

First, we do not agree that Allah is obligated to do what we regard as ideal. For if Allah were required to do something, then He would not possess absolute will and could be compelled to submit to something outside Himself. Shaykh al-Bājūrī explains:

ليس عليه تعالى واجب من فعل أو ترك، ألنه تعالى فاعل بالاختيار، ولو وجب عليه فعل أو ترك لما كان مختارًا، لأن المختار هو الذي إن شاء فعل وإن شاء ترك

Meaning: “There is no obligation upon Allah Most High to do or refrain from anything, because He acts by free choice. If He were obliged to do or refrain from something, then He would not be one who chooses freely, for one who chooses freely is one who does something if He wills and leaves it if He wills.”
(Shaykh Ibrāhīm al-Bājūrī, Tuḥfat al-Murīd Sharḥ Jawharat al-Tawḥīd, Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyyah, 1424 AH / 2004 CE, p. 123)

The existence of compulsion over Allah’s acts is of course impossible, because everything other than Allah exists only by His will and creation. How, then, could something whose existence depends on Allah compel Him to do or refrain from anything? That is utterly inconceivable.

This leads to the next question: if Allah is free to do all things, including creating evil in the world, would that not make Allah an evil God as well?

As stated earlier, this question emerges from a misunderstanding of the concepts of “good” and “bad,” as though they were independent of divine intervention. In reality, God, as the source of created existence, is also the source of values. Therefore, concepts such as good, bad, pure, evil, praiseworthy, blameworthy, and so on do not possess intrinsic essence within themselves; rather, they are the result of God’s own determination. In this regard, Shaykh al-Būṭī writes:

فإذا ثبت أنه لا واسطة بين الله وخلق أي شيء مما تعلقت إرادته بخلقه، وأن كل الموجودات بما فيها من تكيف وأعراض إنما هو بخلق مباشر من الله، فقد ثبت إذًا أن الأشياء لا تنطوي انطواءً ذاتيًا على شيء من الحسن والقبح، أي لا يمكن أن تكون متسمة بحسن أو قبح متأصلين فيها بالطبع لا بالخلق

Meaning: “If it is established that there is no intermediary between Allah and the creation of anything that His will relates to creating, and that all existents, including their forms and qualities, are only by Allah’s direct creation, then it is established that things do not inherently contain goodness or badness within themselves. That is, things cannot be described as possessing goodness or badness intrinsically by nature rather than by creation.”
(Shaykh Saʿīd Ramaḍān al-Būṭī, Kubrā al-Yaqīniyyāt al-Kawniyyah, Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1417 AH / 1997 CE, p. 149)

To make this easier to understand, try considering why something is regarded as good or bad, and where that reason comes from. For example, honesty is considered good and lying is considered bad. Why? There may be many reasons, ranging from the consequences of honesty and lying for individuals or society, to the reward or punishment given in the Hereafter, to the inclination of the human heart toward the goodness of honesty and the badness of lying.

From these reasons, it becomes clear that all of this occurs because of the pattern of life Allah has created in this world. Allah could have made the human heart incline to judge honesty as bad and lying as good. Likewise, Allah has the power to create a mode of life in which honesty and lying have no moral value at all because their benefit has disappeared. We regard lying as bad because it gives false information that may lead us to make wrong decisions. We regard honesty as good because with correct information we can choose the right action to fulfill our needs. But if Allah had created a mode of life in which human beings could fulfill their needs directly without having to consider information, would honesty and lying still have value at all?

In sum, good and evil are in fact moral values created by Allah in order to test human actions. Therefore, to use those moral values as a standard by which to judge Allah’s wisdom is a reversal of logic. والله أعلم.