the knowledge and will that set the soul right. For it was created with an innate disposition that calls for knowing and loving Allah, and it has been guided to knowledge and deeds that help it achieve this. All of this comes from Allah’s grace and beneficence. But when the sinful soul found no one to perfect it, and instead encountered devils among mankind and jinn who made evil deeds seem attractive to it, it inclined toward them and committed evil deeds. Its commission of evil thus resulted from a combination of the absence of what benefits it and is best for it, and the presence of those who bewildered it. Absence is not attributed to Allah.

As for those beings, the same applies to them as to the soul: He created them for a wise purpose. Since the absence of that by which the soul acts and is set right is one of the two causes, and since pure evil, containing no good, is sheer nonexistence—and nonexistence is not attributed to Allah, for it is not a thing, whereas Allah is the Creator of all things—evil deeds are attributable to the soul in that its very nature necessarily entails volitional activity which, in the absence of what would set it right, gives rise to those evil deeds.

When a servant acknowledges and affirms that Allah is the Creator of all his deeds, this may take either of two forms. If he acknowledges this in affirmation that Allah creates everything by His power and that His will unfailingly takes effect; in affirmation of His perfect words, which neither the righteous nor the wicked can overstep; and in acknowledgment of his own poverty and need of Allah—that unless He guides him, he is astray; unless He turns to him in mercy, he persists in sin; and unless He forgives him, he is doomed—then he humbles himself before His might and wisdom. Such is the state of