31 - Why Did God Create Evil?

One of the deepest questions human beings ask, whether they come from religious backgrounds or have rejected religion altogether, is whether God created evil, and if He did, what that implies about His nature and His justice in a world so visibly scarred by suffering. The question is not abstract, nor should it be treated as such, because it is born out of lived experience, out of crime against the innocent, oppression of whole populations, the exploitation of children, and the quiet knowledge that many of the worst harms in history were not accidents but organised, sustained, and protected by power. Any answer that attempts to soften this reality, or spiritualise it away, deserves to be rejected.

The Qur’an does not deny the existence of evil, nor does it attempt to excuse it by wrapping it in theology, and it certainly does not present God as a detached architect unconcerned with what unfolds within creation. Instead, it makes a distinction that modern thinking often refuses to make, which is the difference between creating evil as a thing, and creating a world in which moral freedom is real enough for evil to occur. Evil, in the Qur’anic framing, is not a substance competing with God, nor a force that exists independently, but a condition that arises when will operates without alignment, when intelligence moves without restraint, and when power is exercised without remembrance.

This is why Surah al-Falaq (Surah 113 of the Qur'an) instructs human beings to seek refuge in the Lord of the dawn from the evil of what He created, not because creation itself is corrupt, but because everything that exists carries the potential for harm when misused. Darkness can conceal, speech can bind, desire can turn into envy, and knowledge can become domination, none of which are evil by nature, yet all of which can be turned toward destruction. The Qur’an does not pretend otherwise, and it does not shield the believer from the discomfort of living in a world where risk is built into freedom.

This understanding becomes clearer when we step outside the flattened narratives of later theology and return to the Qur’anic account of existence before Adam. The Qur’an tells us that beings existed prior to humanity who were capable of corruption and bloodshed, beings of fire with intelligence, agency, and mobility, but without the inner anchoring that would later be given to Adam. These pre-Adamites were not ignorant brutes, but conscious actors whose will was fast, inventive, and expansive, yet unmoored from humility, which explains why the angels responded to Adam’s creation not with confusion but with concern. Evil did not begin with humanity, nor did it originate in flesh, but in will detached from submission.

Adamite humanity enters this moral landscape differently, created from clay, grounded, slow, limited, yet infused with what the Qur’an describes as a divine breath, a spark that enables reflection, remorse, remembrance, and return. This spark does not eliminate the possibility of evil, but it creates the capacity to resist it, which is precisely why human beings are tested rather than managed. Evil is therefore not embedded in Adamite nature, but risk is, and without that risk there would be no moral meaning to obedience, compassion, courage, or restraint.

The figure of Iblis (Lucifer) clarifies this further, because he does not deny God, nor does he act out of ignorance, but out of refusal, and when he is granted respite, it is not a reward but a condition of the test itself. His role is not to create evil, but to invite misalignment, to whisper, embellish, rationalise, and accelerate the misuse of freedom. Iblis has no authority to compel, only to deceive, which is why the Qur’an insists that his power collapses wherever awareness and remembrance remain intact.

Understanding this framework does not permit indifference to suffering, nor does it ask human beings to withdraw into spiritual quietism while injustice unfolds. On the contrary, when we encounter suffering in the world, whether as individual crimes against the innocent or as systemic violence inflicted upon entire populations, the correct response is to feel it, to recognise it, and to react in ways that refuse normalisation. Protest, public witness, writing, speaking, refusing silence, and even simple acknowledgement are not futile gestures, but signs of Adamite hearts still fuelled by the spark, hearts that recoil instinctively when confronted with cruelty.

This response matters because evil depends not only on malice, but on indifference, and when suffering is ignored or explained away, it metastasises. The Qur’an does not instruct believers to become numb observers of injustice, nor does it allow outrage to become performative or selective. It calls human beings to stand with the oppressed, to resist false narratives, and to refuse the moral anaesthesia that power systems depend upon, whether those systems operate through ideology, empire, finance, or distorted religion. Zionism, and its many tentacles, is one such system that must be called out for the suffering it produces and justifies, but it is not the only one, and moral clarity collapses the moment critique becomes tribal rather than principled.

At the same time, the Qur’an insists on a truth that modern consciousness finds difficult to accept, which is that this life is not the final court. Without the afterlife, suffering would indeed be intolerable and absurd, because countless lives would end without redress, and the most powerful perpetrators would escape accountability through wealth, secrecy, and institutional protection. The Qur’an refuses this conclusion and anchors justice beyond the reach of human courts, insisting that no pain is lost, no injustice forgotten, and no cry unheard, even when every earthly system fails.

This belief is not a psychological escape, but a moral necessity, because without it the human mind is asked to carry injustices it was never designed to resolve. Consider the suffering of children caught in systems of abuse, exploitation, and violence that span borders and evade prosecution, or entire populations subjected to siege, displacement, and erasure while the world debates semantics. Without the certainty that such suffering is answered beyond this life, despair hardens into nihilism, and outrage curdles into madness. The Qur’anic promise of the hereafter does not erase pain, but it prevents pain from becoming meaningless.

Divine justice, in this view, is not vengeance but exposure and restoration, where nothing remains hidden and no power can purchase immunity. Those who suffer without defence will find ease, dignity, and recompense beyond the distortions of earthly hierarchy, while those who perpetrate evil, whether they are pre-Adamites, hybrids, or Adamites who have extinguished their own spark, will encounter accountability that cannot be evaded by influence or denial. This is not sentiment; it is structural coherence, because a moral universe that ends in silence is not moral at all.

To ask whether God created evil, then, is to misframe the problem. God created a world in which alignment matters, in which freedom is real enough to be abused, and in which truth can be chosen rather than imposed. Evil is what emerges when will severs itself from remembrance, when power refuses humility, and when systems institutionalise inversion while blaming God for the outcomes. God is not the author of cruelty, but He is the author of a test whose purpose is to expose what human beings and the systems they build truly serve.

This is why the Qur’an refuses both apathy and despair. It demands that suffering be witnessed and resisted now, and that justice be trusted later, not because human action is irrelevant, but because God’s plan is larger than any system that claims permanence. Every empire that presents itself as inevitable collapses, every ideology that sanctifies power is exposed, and every structure that feeds on suffering is temporary, no matter how advanced or entrenched it appears.

God’s plan does not excuse evil, but it outlasts it, and that truth is the only thing that allows human beings to confront injustice without surrendering either their conscience or their sanity. To ignore suffering is to betray the spark, but to believe that suffering has the final word is to misunderstand reality itself. Between these two errors stands a difficult path that demands courage, clarity, and trust, the path of resisting evil wherever it manifests while knowing that no scheme, no domination, and no inverted order can ultimately outrun divine justice.