and beneficent, for which He—glory be to Him, Most High—deserves praise, even if His servants do not understand. He—glory be to Him—created man and created his soul with a natural impulse to act, one that inevitably involves some evil, out of consummate wisdom and boundless mercy.

If it is asked, “Why, then, did He not create it differently?” the answer is: “That would have been a creation other than man, and the wise purpose He brought about through creating man would not have been achieved.” This was the angels’ question when they said:

“Will You place upon it one who causes corruption therein and sheds blood?”

How could individual human beings know what even the angels did not know? The human soul was created as Allah Most High says:

“Indeed, man was created anxious: distressed when evil touches him, and withholding when good touches him.”

And He Most High says:

“Man was created hasty.”

Thus, the soul was created with a constitution that necessarily gives rise to what has arisen from it, out of great wisdom and all-embracing mercy. This, then, was goodness and mercy, even though it involved relative evil, as explained earlier. This addresses the matter in terms of its ultimate purpose, although evil is not attributed to Allah.

As for the second aspect, that of the cause: this evil arose only because of the absence of