“I am at Your service and ever ready to obey You. All good is in Your hands, and evil is not ascribed to You. Blessed and exalted are You, our Lord.”

This is because evil may consist either in something existent or in an absence. The latter may be the absence of an entity, of one of its attributes of perfection, or of one of its acts. Examples include the absence of life, knowledge, hearing, sight, speech, reason, or righteous deeds in their various forms: knowing Allah, loving Him, worshipping Him, trusting in Him, turning to Him, hoping in Him, fearing Him, obeying His commands, avoiding His prohibitions, and other praiseworthy inward and outward words and deeds. All these are good things, whereas their absence constitutes evils and ills.

Yet this absence is not a thing at all, such that it should have a maker and an agent and thus be attributed to Allah. Rather, it is inseparable from the soul—which is the very essence of the human being—both before and after its creation. Before its creation, the soul is nonexistent, which necessarily entails this absence. After its creation—having been created weak and deficient—it has deficiency, weakness, and incapacity, all of which consist in absence. This absence is therefore attributed to the soul in the same way that the absence of an effect is attributed to the absence of its cause and of that which would bring it about. In another respect, it may also be attributed to the presence of something that precludes it, as we shall explain, if Allah Most High wills.

The crux of the matter is that these evils and ills, which consist in absence, are not existent things such that Allah should be their Creator; for Allah is the Creator of all things.