Divine Decree — Two Meanings of Making — Good and Evil

تقدیر — جعل کے دو معنی — خیر و شر

Divine Decree (Taqdir) encompasses Qadā' (the Divine Judgment or ruling) and Qadar (the Divine Measure or apportionment). Everything that occurs in creation — every event, every created thing's nature and trajectory — is encompassed by Divine Knowledge and Decree from eternity. Nothing falls outside the scope of Divine Decree.

Two Meanings of 'Making' (Ja'l): The word ja'l (making, bringing about) has two senses in this context: (1) The manifestation of the 'ayn thābita (fixed archetype) of a thing from the sacred Divine overflow (fayḍ muqaddas) — this is a kind of eternal 'making' within the Divine Knowledge, prior to any external existence. (2) The bringing of a thing into actual external existence — the act by which Allah says 'Be!' (Kun) and the thing comes to be in the external world.

Good and Evil (Khayr wa Sharr): Being (wujūd), as such, is purely good — there is no evil in existence itself. Evil is always relative and privative (adami): it consists in absence, deficiency, or privation of some good. Absolute evil does not exist; what we call 'evil' is always the absence or diminishment of a good, relative to a particular perspective or need. Allah Most High is the source of all being and all good; evil as such is not created by Allah but is the relative shadow cast by the finitude and limitation of contingent things.