Why Does Allah Create Evil?

Continuing where we left off last week with regards to understanding the decree of allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala we mentioned for the decree of allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala there are four levels we mentioned three of those levels and today tonight's insha allah we are going to conclude with the fourth and final of these four levels so when we say belief in allah subhanahu.

[Arabic recitation]

We mean a particular thing when the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam was asked when jibreel asked him tell me about iman what is it the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam he said that you believe in allah there's a very particular meaning to that belief in allah it's not just belief in his existence it's not just belief that allah is the only creator this is not this is not what was intended by this statement when he said belief in allah it entailed that and much more right he says belief in that you believe in allah that you believe in the angels and the revelations and the messengers and the day of resurrection and that you believe in decree the good of it and the bad of it a very specific thing there was intended for there's an addition to this narration that you believe in the decree the good of it the bad of it the sweet of it and the sour of it that addition of sweet and sour is an addition which is inauthentic it did not come from the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam however its meaning is correct because some things that happens to us we would describe them as being very sour and some things that happen we would describe them as being very sweet however it's a very important principle that i'd to articulate tonight take this principle into mind take it into your heart hold it understand it.

[Silence]

This is a very important principle and that is that not every statement which is true or correct or good or tasteful or well worded is good enough to be the words of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam the words of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam they have very specific conditions for us to ascribe it to the prophet muhammad some narrations are clearly false wrong other narrations their meanings are very correct and accurate but they're inauthentic the statement itself may be true but it doesn't mean that it's the statement of the prophet muhammad.

[Silence]

The.

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And so there are narrations which are authentic there are narrations which are acceptable there are narrations which are weak and there are narrations which are lies they are categorically incorrect and we had mentioned and i had promised to mention one narration and this goes back to the second level of al-qaeda but i didn't have a cha i forgot last week it slipped my mind to mention it which it would have been more appropriate to mention it during the second part which is el kitaba narration that is floating around that is positively in incorrect and is a fabrication against the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam and its meaning is incorrect too i mean some narrations and this is not for everyone this is only for the scholars of hadith certain narrations they may see it and immediately know that this could not be the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam's words be this is for the scholars of hadith this is not for tom dick and harry every one of us to pick up a book and then sit here and flip through it a novel and start to say that sounds good and that sounds kind of fishy and that sounds kind of weird to me le this is very dangerous and this has become a common theme lately no what we're talking about are the scholars of hadith who have the authority to discuss the authenticity of the words of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam as opposed to the inauthentic words that are not his and so in one of these narrations i'll mention it in arabic and then i'll translate it i want to preface this very much that this narration is inauthentic it is not an authentic narration as a matter of fact it is positively a lie from a shaitaan and.

[Silence]

Is.

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Foreign.

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Be.

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Foreign.

[Silence]

And so in this narration this is a fabricated narration it's mentioned that jibreel saw that there was a man who was very fervent in his worship of allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala and that this man was constantly praying and fasting and he was so devout so jibreel asked permission from allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to look at the preserved tablet to see if this man was going to be of the people of paradise automatically from this statement alone we know that this narration is a fabrication because the preserved tablet is something that only allah subhanahu wa ta'ala is privy to.

[Arabic recitation]

So as the story goes and the story is false it is not a true story that jibril went and found that this man was condemned to hell in the preserved tablet meaning in his future he was hell-bound and so he asked permission to go and tell this man and allah wa ta'ala allegedly gave him permission so jibreel went to the man and said look you're working really hard you're praying and you're fasting and you're doing all this stuff you should just enjoy your life while you still are alive because i looked into the preserved tablets and you're supposed to go to hell anyways so all of this is for nothing so jibril is basically encouraging this man to go and be a criminal with the rest of his life because what's the point anyways so this man he said well if that's what allah subhanahu wa ta'ala has condemned me to then it is his choice and he went back and did not change his worship of allah in any way and so jibreel allegedly allegedly this is a fake narration this is not real it shows you the difference between a real narration and a fake narration went back to the preserved tablet and found that allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala had changed it to that this man would be of the people of paradise right this narration is clearly a fabrication for many many reasons but one of the main reasons is that this individual his outcome in the hereafter was changed in the preserved tablet it is referred to in the quran as preserved meaning nothing changes in it it's preserved if we keep changing things in it what why would we call it the preserved tablet and so the point of this statement is that the statement of allah that allah erases what he chooses and affirms what he chooses and with him resides the mother and the reference of all of the book this is a reference to anes meaning that allah may change one ruling and replace it with another ruling that is more appropriate for the time and place etcetera and nasa abrogation translated to abrogation in english now i mentioned this story now it's a little bit late in the game because we're way past where this story would have been relevant but i was reminded to mention it so there it is the fabricated narrations are many many many fabricated narrations they are by the thousands right and none of them are contained in bukhari a muslim none of them are contained in the six books of hadith none of them are contained in malik or muslim ahmed none of them are contained in these famous well-known books of the scholars of hadith these narrations which are fabrications are found in very obscure books and works of i want to make that clear because we have this new wave now we have this new agenda which is people will read a book of hadith and start to pick and choose and decide that that narration sounds really weird to me i don't think that's authentic as if the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam is something that is open to debate and as if scholarship of almost 1500 years 15 centuries has not already dealt with these issues and hashed them out it's very important that we take this into consideration because this is this is one of the more disturbing trends that are happening with the younger generations today and even the older generations as well you have certain people right now or the whatever he is gets on the national television in egypt or in jordan or in any other country and starts to dissect narrations of sahih al-bukhari or muslim and try to prove that these are fabricated narrations these people are criminals and the people that put them up are criminals as well these narrations are not have not been placed there by fools and they have not been preserved by fools these p these people these scholars of.

[Silence]

These individuals specialized in the science of hadith and they specialized in the science of hadith so much so that they could dissect the narration and know it know the narrations of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam just you and i know our own names right if i were to say to you right now what would happen everybody would raise his hand and say wait you missed a verse correct you missed that this is how they this is this is the depth of their knowledge with regards to the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam so the books of hadith are sacred they are not open for debate they are not something that have been misplaced and mishandled and just opened for anybody to play around with the sunnah of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam has guardians from the very very very beginning from the first word he spoke as a prophet what was the first word he spoke as a prophet.

[Silence]

He said i don't know how to read. the highest of companionship meaning that this was his choice just to remain in this earth or to go to the higher companionship of allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala so we have from the very beginning in the middle of the desert in a cave by himself until the last word he ever spoke all of that which is in between has been preserved by the companions of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam meticulously with extreme attention to detail so much so that a letter a single letter cannot make its way into a hadith without it being noticed so this is something that is a little bit off topic but it is a trend that i'm seeing a lot of today people will pick up the muslims muslim men and muslim women and one of the main reasons for this is that they have been conditioned to look for certain things and reject certain things right so we are taught in our society that men should be a particular way women should be a particular way this meaning is wrong this meaning is correct and and then we look into the sunnah of the prophet alaihi and we see that there's contradictions with what we've been taught in movies and media and what we've been inoculated with and so we start to try to harmonize and when we have that cognitive dissonance occur we start to disregard parts of the sun of the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam this is extremely dangerous and the correct opinion that even allah wrote an entire book that there is not a single narration in muslim imam ahmed which is fabricated its conditions are much much much more lenient than books sahih al-bukhari muslim these are books that are untouchable they are beyond reproach right and this goes back to what we mentioned before and that is the way of the scholars the way of a a true scholar is when you do not understand something you say amen we believe in it all of it has come to us from our lord.

[Silence]

So last week we discussed the third level of the third level of the decree of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala we said the first level is the second level we discussed that in depth the third level that allah knew all that is to be wrote all of that in the preserved tablet and that willed for all of that which was written in the preserved tablet to be he willed it subhanahu the fourth which we will discuss today is is creation that after he willed for it to be he created it subhanahu wata'ala he brought it into existence and kept it in existence right that is as allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala has said allah has created everything meaning everything that is created it's been created by allah wa'ta'ala whether it is good or it is bad whether it is good or pure or it is evil everything has been created by allah subhanahu wa ta'ala there is nothing that is a creation that has been created by other than allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala but here is where we're going to discuss the difference between the beliefs of sunnah and the beliefs of with regards to this issue some people will say well what are you trying to say are you saying that allah subhanahu wa ta'ala created evil too that allah subhanahu wa ta'ala created evil he created zinna he created murder he created any of these things and all of these things are creations of allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala yet the difference is not in whether or not he created these things or not rather it is why he has created these things.

[Silence]

There is a difference between allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's legislative will what he desires and there is a difference between allah subhanahu wa ta'ala's what is actually happening and what he wills to occur for a wisdom and i'll give an example of that the scholars of islam they refer to this as hobbus he for example if we take two things here let's say we take a glass of cold water and a tablet of aspirin okay a glass of cold water a tablet of aspirin a glass of cold water is enjoyable in itself we will drink the water not just because it keeps us alive but because it in itself is tasty and good and nourishing and we love it itself it itself is the ends it's the means and the ends correct now when we look at something like aspirin which is taken originally from the aspen tree it is notorious for being one of the most bitter things you could ever taste right aspirin is extremely bitter it doesn't taste good it's very unpleasant to take it causes acid in the stomach it causes ulcers if a person takes it too much it thins the blood it does all of these things right all of these adverse effects to aspirin but we still produce aspirin don't we we produce it as human beings and we buy it and we take it all the time why because when you have a headache it alleviates your headache or whatever other reason a person may take it for fever or for whatever so we don't love the aspirin itself we don't love it in the same way that we love the cold water we love it because the results that come about can only come about through that bitterness correct this is the difference between good and evil in the creation of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala allah subhanahu wa ta'ala creates good for good sake simply because it is good but in this world evil is created for what reason because there is some wisdom that some some effect that can only come about by way of this evil thing for example he wrote a book on iblis one of his treaties on iblis and he mentioned more than 20 benefits for the existence of iblees.

[Silence]

There is a narration collected by a deremi and hadith.

[Arabic recitation]

Desire that evil exist on this earth he would not have created iblis in the first place he is the one who created iblis but because people will disobey him because people will go against his will because he he has given the human being that choice now between iblis now is either a propelling force for good even though he doesn't want to be and he's not trying to be so the point here is that there are two different types of wills there is a will i will that allah subhanahu wa ta'ala wills this thing for itself and the other is that allah will something for some reason that may come along and that is the meaning of that you believe in the decree of allah the good of it and the bad of it the good of it like what like healthy children and health and smiles and good times and whatever it is right and the bad of it is what volcanoes and hurricanes and and war and murder and all of these things that are bad these are all parts of the bad that the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam was speaking of when he was speaking of belief in a belief in the decree of allah the good of it and the bad of it now it's very important for us to understand that allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala creates good and wills good for good sake and that evil is something which is created for some wisdom that comes from behind it one of the best examples of this that allah explains this to us as much as we can understand is the story of al-khador and musa if we look at the story of al khadr and musa salaam in surah we see that al khadr represents he is symbolic of the seemingly senseless chaos that happens in the earth right he's symbolic of that and that muslim is symbolic of the human being trying to understand that chaos so anaz.

[Silence]

If we look at the first story of that as the prophet sallallahu alaihi wasallam mentioned in the narration of ibn abbas which is collected by imam al-bukhari that al-khabar and musa went along and they rode on a ship and the people of this ship were very nice to them and they let them ride for free because they happened to know al-qaeda what did the do when he got out into the ship he put a hole in it right why would you do that why is it that people that are being nice to us you would go and do something that to them we have the second story and that is that the story of the child that al-khadur killed he finds this innocent child and this innocent child is killed and put to death why would you do something that this seems chaotic it doesn't seem it is something which is which is in line with the wisdom of allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala or the will of allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala and we have in the third story they go to a village the people of the village are very rude to them they push them out and what does do he builds a part of their village for free right a so if we look at these stories we see that it's as if those who are nice to us we reward that niceness with evil and those who are evil to us we reward that evil with good but when when it is explained to us later then we understand right we understand that the hole in the ship that lo that hole had to be made to save the whole ship otherwise they would have lost everything and we understand that that child that was so dear to their parents to his parents that child had he grown up would he and he would have been he would have gone to hell and taken his parents with him right and we see that in the third story the people that were evil and rude to them he actually covered something from them being able to get to it that otherwise wouldn't have been covered now as we said is a real person and musa is a real person but these stories symbolizes the legislation of allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala and what happens in the earth and what seems to be very chaotic but there is a very very deep reason behind it and for this reason the prophet salallahu alaihi wasallam commented and said he said may allah have mercy on musa if he would have been a little bit more patient we would have learned a lot more we would have learned a lot more from al-khadr and so certain things that happen to you in your life i mean how do we if we look at this now and we say how do i apply this to my life how do you apply this to your life right certain things that you see to be painful in your life if you knew what was really happening and if you had true trust in allah subhanahu wa ta'ala you would choose it for to be no other way you might do it to yourself just the people of that boat had they known that their boats would have been seized if it was if it was unharmed they would have put the hole in the boat themselves they themselves would have done it had they known but they didn't know right and so the point here is that when a person accepts the decree of allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala he accepts it not because he knows it or because he understands it but he accepts the decree of allah subhanahu wa ta'ala because it is the decree of allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala and that allah chooses for the person what is best for him not necessarily what he wants not necessarily what he wants an arrow will only become an arrow with friction you have to grind it that's the only way to make it sharp enough to do its job it's unpleasant it's not fun i'd rather be doing other things but that is the way that our world works the way that our world works it's it's a place of friction right the more friction there is the more progress there is the less friction there is the less progress there is and that's why we see in times of war for example statistically statistically speaking when we look at things war we find that the greatest inventions that make our lives easiest happen during war that's when they were made and certain discoveries if you look at something that every single one of us has probably taken in his life and has saved his life something penicillin right penicillin which is an antibiotic how was this discovered it was discovered during war because people were getting shot in their toe and die die from it from infection and so this propelled a lot of progress this is how progress is made in our and our world here these are the four levels of decree of allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala if we understand these four levels of decree then to a degree we will understand what is meant by to believe and decree the good of it and the bad of it we understand now what that means and what is intended by that inshallah we will continue next week it's difficult life is difficult everybody has his struggles in his life but it's important for us as believers to understand that what allah decrees for us is better for us than what we would choose for our own selves and this is the thamara this is one of the many fruits reaped by the person who believes in the decree of allah subhanahu foreign.