is the very doctrine of the Qadariyyah. Ibn al-Qayyim, by contrast—may Allah have mercy on him—affirmed that Allah, Exalted is He, is the Creator of both good and evil, and then declared the Lord’s actions transcendent of any description of “evil,” for the Most High puts every thing only in the place that befits it. That is justice on His part and, in His regard, not evil at all. This is the position of the people of truth.

Had Shaykh al-Albānī said, “Evil is not ascribed to Allah because, with respect to Him, none of His actions are evil,” he would have been safe from objection, and his words would have accorded with the statement of Ibn al-Qayyim—Allah knows best.

Yet al-Albānī’s phrase “and evil is not attributable to You” became objectionable precisely because it severed the link and traced nothing whatsoever back to Allah, so that one could neither say that He creates evil nor that He brings evil upon any of His creatures.

That is exactly the view of the Qadariyyah, whereas Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamā‘ah are unanimously agreed that Allah, Exalted is He, is the Creator of evil just as He is the Creator of good, and that He deals with whomever He wills in goodness and with whomever He wills in evil. Both matters are attributed to Him in terms of creation and bringing into existence, as He says: “We test you with evil and with good as a trial” (Qurʼān 21:35), and in the other verses cited earlier.

The people of the Sunnah and the Community refrain from explicitly attributing evil to Allah only as a matter of decorum in wording, not because the connection is broken altogether. Whoever reflects on what Shaykh al-Albānī established in the body of his discourse will harbor no doubt about the soundness of his creed concerning predestination; what occurred at the beginning and the end of his statement is merely a slip of expression, and it is rare for any human being to be entirely free from error.