and rely upon the Ever-Living, the One who never dies.” (Q 25: 58)

Nothing comes to pass except what He wills.

Allah is never overtaken by extinction. The Exalted says, “Everything will perish save His Face” (Q 28: 88), and He says, “Everyone upon it shall pass away, but the Face of your Lord, full of Majesty and Honor, shall remain” (Q 55: 26–27).

Therefore everlastingness is His alone, while the creatures die and will then be resurrected. They were sheer nothingness at first; Allah created them, they will die, and Allah will bring them forth again.

Allah, exalted is He, has neither beginning nor end.

All of this affirms the divine decree (qadar) and the divine will: within His realm nothing occurs—no event, no creature—except what He has willed by His universal will. “His command, when He wills a thing, is only that He says to it, ‘Be!’ and it is.” (Q 36: 82) Accordingly, every good and every evil is subject to Allah’s universal will; nothing escapes it.

This refutes the Qadariyya who deny the decree and claim that the servant himself creates and brings about his own deeds—exalted is Allah far above what they say. Such a view would limit Allah’s power, implying that happenings occur in His creation which He does not will, an attribution of deficiency to Him.

Indeed, everything in the universe, whether good or evil, exists by His will. He creates good for a wise purpose and creates evil for a wise purpose; insofar as He creates it, it is not evil in itself, for it serves a tremendous wisdom and a lofty end: testing and trial, distinguishing the vile from the wholesome, and the recompense for