Ask A Question About Islam And Muslims

18 Questions

Allah, The Glorious, created human beings  and granted them the ability to be good if they want, or to be bad if they insist on doing bad. In Quran ( We Have guided the human being to the right path, to chose whether to be grateful or disgraceful) Sura Al-Insan, Verse 3.

Allah (SWT) gives all human beings the option to choose their faith and deeds, after guiding them to the Truth. They will meet the results of their option in this life and hereafter.
No doubt that Allah knows who will be grateful and who will be disgraceful, but His knowledge does not make Him cancel the existence of those who will be bad, or stop their creation,  because it will be against justice to punish the sinners to be before committing the sin.

Evil people prove the qualities of good people and with out bad people, it will be difficult to identify the good persons.

Wassalam.
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Bismillah

Thank you for your question. The problem of evil is an issue that has been discussed extensively in philosophy of religion but unfortunately the issue is primarily framed in a way that emphasises certain Attributes of God based on the Christian tradition. There is also much confusion on the relation of God and time as well as on what knowledge actually is in relation to God.
 

In summary evil people are such through their own choice and it would be unjust for God to sentence them to eternal punishment without them actually choosing evil.

May you always be successful 

Bismillah

Thank you for your question. Humans are created with a predisposition for good as well as evil. Their good is in their natural disposition (fitrah) and their evil stems from their commanding self (al-nafs al-ammarah). It is only through the disposition towards evil that the choice to follow what is right has value. Through the purification of the self, humans unveil the truth and through struggle they understand its value and nuances. So it is the Wisdom of God that dictates that humans should be endowed with the potential for good and evil and the choice to choose which path to take.

May you always be successful.

According to the Qur'an and hadith, Shaytan is an immaterial entity who affects people through influencing their hearts and minds.

(By "immaterial", I mean that he is not composed of the same physical material as objects around us. The Qur'an and hadith say that humans are composed of earth, jinn of fire, and angels of light. The prevalent understanding from the Qur'an is that Shaytan is a jinn, although there is a minority view that he was created as an angel. So he is made of something, he is just not made of the same physical substances that we interact with.)

Qur'an 6:122 speaks of shayateen (those who serve the interests of Shaytan) who are humans and jinn. This indicates that human beings themselves can carry out the will of Shaytan without him actually being present in physical form. It also indicates that, when it comes to Shaytan and shayateen, there is a real division between human and non-human beings and it is not metaphorical.

In any case, from that, it is clear that Shaytan does not need to be here in human form to do the job. A commander who can send a footsoldier does not need to show up himself.

In fact, human beings do not even need Shaytan to cause evil! We have the capacity for immense good and immense evil on our own. 

There are some rare cases in the Qur'an where immaterial entities briefly appear as humans, such as when the angel Gabriel appears to the Virgin Mary, but it is not the norm.

Also, Allah protects the believers from Shaytan. 

So while there are some humans that I might identify as Shaytan (no names here!), the Qur'an lends itself to a more literal interpretation of Shaytan as a wholly non-human being rather than as a someone who is a human or walks around in human form.