Second Question
Why are devils created? Allah the Most High created Satan and evil; what is the wisdom in it? Isn’t the creation of evil, evil, and the creation of bad, bad?
The Answer: Allah forbid, the creation of evil is not evil, the acquisition of (kesb) or desire for evil, is evil. For creation and bringing into existence look to all the consequences, whereas such a desire looks to a particular result, since it is a particular relation.
For example, there are thousands of consequences of rain falling, and all of them are good. If due to misuse of their wills some people receive harm from the rain, they cannot say that the creation of rain is not mercy or that it is evil. For it is evil for them due to their mischoice and inclinations. Also, there are numerous benefits in the creation of fire and all of them are good. But if some people are harmed by fire due to their misuse of it and their wills, they cannot say that the creation of fire is evil; because it was not only created to burn them. Rather, they made a wrong choice and thrust their hands into the fire while cooking the food, and made that servant inimical to themselves.
In Short: A lesser evil is acceptable for a greater good. If an evil which will lead to a greater good is abandoned so that a lesser evil should not occur, a greater evil will have been perpetrated. For example, there are certainly some minor material and physical harms and evils in sending soldiers to fight a jihad, but the jihad leads to a greater good whereby Islam is saved from being conquered by infidels. If the jihad is abandoned due to those lesser evils, the greater evil will come after the greater good has gone, and that is absolute wrong. Another example: to amputate a finger which is infected with gangrene and has to be amputated is good and right, although it is apparently an evil. For if it is not amputated, the hand will be amputated and that would be a greater evil.
Thus, the creation and bringing into existence of evils, harms, tribulations, satans, and harmful things, is not evil and bad, for they are created for the many important results they yield. For example, satans have not been set to pester the angels, and the angels cannot progress; their degrees are fixed and deficient. However, in the world of humanity the degrees of progress and decline are infinite. There is an extremely long distance through which to progress, from the Nimrod’s and Pharaoh’s as far as the veracious saints and the prophets.
Thus, because of the creation of satans and the mystery of man’s accountability and the sending of prophets, an arena of trial and examination and striving and competition has been opened so that coal‑like base spirits may be differentiated and separated out from diamond-like elevated spirits. If there had been no striving and competition, the potentialities in the mine of humanity, resembling diamonds and coal, would have remained equal. The spirit of Abu Bakr the Veracious at the highest of the high would have remained on a par with Abu Jahl at the lowest of the low.
This means that since the creation of satans and evils looks to vast, universal results, it is not evil or bad. The evils and instances of bad that arise from abuses and the particular causes known as man’s acquisition pertain to his voluntary actions not to divine creation.
If You Ask The majority of humanity become unbelievers due to the existence of Satan; they embrace unbelief and suffer harm, despite the sending of prophets. If, according to the rule “The majority has the say,” the majority suffers evil as a result, then the creation of evil is evil and it may even be said that the sending of prophets is not a mercy. Isn’t that so?
The Answer: Quantity has no importance in relation to quality. The true majority looks to quality.
For example, if a date‑palm has a hundred seeds and they are not planted in the earth and watered and so do not undergo a chemical reaction and manifest the struggle for life, they remain a hundred seeds worth virtually nothing. But if they are watered and are subject to the struggle for life, and then eighty out of the hundred rot due to their faulty make-up, but twenty become fruit-bearing trees, can you say that watering them was evil because most of them rotted? Of course you cannot say that, for the twenty have become twenty thousand. A person who loses eighty and gains twenty thousand suffers no loss, so it cannot be evil.
Another example: a peahen lays one hundred eggs and they are worth five hundred kurush. If the hen sits on the hundred eggs and eighty go bad and twenty hatch into peacocks, can it be said that the loss was high and the affair, evil; that it was bad to put the broody hen on the eggs and an evil occurred? No, it was not thus, it was good. For the peacock species and egg family lost eighty eggs worth four hundred kurush, but gained twenty peacocks worth eighty liras.
Thus, through the sending of prophets and the mystery of man’s accountability, and through striving and fighting with satans, in return for the hundreds of thousands of prophets and millions of saints and thousands of millions of purified scholars they have gained, who are like the suns, moons, and stars of the world of humanity, mankind has lost the unbelievers and dissemblers, who are numerous in regard to quantity, insignificant in regard to quality, and like pernicious beasts.