have a praiseworthy outcome, and it may be evil for one group while proving beneficial for another. Picture this: Allah sends a heavy downpour that destroys one man’s crops, yet the same rain revives the land and an entire community profits from it. For those who benefit it is good; for the one who suffers it is bad. Thus, from one angle it is good, from another it is evil.

Second: even the evil that Allah decrees for an individual is, in reality, good. If he endures it with patience and hopes for reward from Allah, he will earn recompense many times greater than the harm he experienced. It might even become the cause of his reform and of his realizing how immense Allah’s favor upon him truly is, so the ultimate result is praiseworthy. It is related that one devout woman injured her finger—or her hand—so it bled. She remained patient, thanked Allah, and said, “The sweetness of its reward has made me forget the bitterness of the pain.”

Moreover, evil is not found in Allah’s act itself but in the things He brings into existence. Created entities can carry both good and evil; the act of creating them is pure good. Hence Allah says: “Say, ‘I seek refuge with the Lord of daybreak from the evil of what He has created’” (Surah al-Falaq 113:1–2). The evil, then, lies in the created things, not in the divine act, for Allah’s action is good.

For proof, imagine you have a patient and the only cure is to cauterize him with fire. You burn him; the fire undoubtedly hurts, yet your deed is not evil but good for the patient because you seek a salutary end through that cautery. Likewise, when Allah brings about disliked matters or things that contain harm, they are—relative to His action and His bringing them into existence—pure good,