*continued* …only because it is severed from being ascribed and related to Him. Ibn al-Qayyim explains: “Allah, exalted be He, is the Creator of good and evil, yet the evil lies only in some of His creatures, not in His creating or acting. Hence He is far above injustice, whose reality is to place a thing where it does not belong; He places things only in their proper places, and that is sheer good. Evil is to put something where it does not belong; once it is put in its proper place it is no longer evil, so it is clear that evil is not to be ascribed to Him.… If you ask, ‘Why did He create it if it is evil?’ I answer: He created it for its own sake, and His act of creating is good, not evil, for creation and action subsist in Him, whereas evil can neither subsist in nor be attributed to Him. Whatever evil appears in the creature is due to its being cut off from attribution to Him, while creation and action are ascribed to Him and are therefore good.” A detailed examination of this crucial topic is found in his Shifa al-Alil fi Masaʾil al-Qadaʾ wa-l-Qadar wa-l-Taʿlil, pp. 178–206. (1) This contradicts those who claim that the wording applies only to the night prayer, such as Abu Dawud al-Tayalisi in his Musnad, no. 23. Ibn al-Qayyim likewise states in Zad al-Maʿad, 1/72: “The sound report is that he used to say this opening supplication only during qiyam al-layl.” I reply: as shown earlier in the hadith documentation, the report comes in two forms: (a) “When he stood for prayer …,” unqualified; and (b) “… the obligatory prayer ….” One may argue that the second qualifies the first—especially since, when left absolute, the word “prayer” normally means the obligatory prayer, as al-Sanʿani and others note (1/278). Alternatively, as al-Nawawi states in al-Majmuʿ, 3/315, the first wording is broader and therefore covers both the obligatory and the supererogatory prayers. Hence there is no evidence for restricting it to the voluntary night prayer—particularly since, as mentioned above,