…use your reason?’ (Yā Sīn 36:62); ‘They found their fathers astray, and they rush headlong in their tracks’ (al-Ṣāffāt 37:69-70), and other verses that carry the same meaning.

Evil whose cause lies in an existent reality

As for the existent entity that occasions a particular evil—such as the pains that arise from forbidden acts, whether disbelief, which is denial or arrogant refusal, or transgression, which is committing what Allah has prohibited, and the like—this is what merits blame and punishment. The same applies to consuming harmful food or engaging in violent motions that bring about pain. Such existence can never be a pure, perfect existence, for pure, perfect existence yields nothing but good. Just as sheer non-existence cannot give rise to existence, so too this is no more than a deficient existence, whether the deficiency lies in the cause or in the recipient. Thus the cause of denial is the absence of recognizing and affirming the truth, and the cause of that absence is the lack of its prerequisites: thorough reflection and attentive listening to the signs and proofs of the Truth.

The failure to reflect and listen stems either from a total lack of motive—mere non-existence—or from the presence of an impediment, such as pride or envy within the soul: ‘Surely Allah does not love every proud, boastful one’ (al-Ḥadīd 57:23). Pride is a false image whose root is the soul’s poverty for the truth; it therefore substitutes it with a vain illusion.

Envy likewise arises from the absence of the blessing that would enable the envier to be the equal—or superior—of the one envied…