Introduction

The problem of evil, and the relation between the owner and the owned, remains one of the deepest philosophical and theological dilemmas the human mind has faced, for it is directly bound up with questioning the order of the cosmos, the concept of justice, and the purpose of human existence. This article treats this dilemma from its material and metaphysical sides, surveying the cosmic philosophical theses and dismantling the contemporary doubts about the deeds of the oppressors and the sufferings of the innocent.

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1. The Problem of Evil in Greek and Western Philosophy

The problem was founded in Western thought as a rigorous “logical dilemma,” formulated by the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341–270 BCE) (Epicurus) in what became known as “the Epicurean dilemma,” which he confined to the famous dichotomy: if God is omnipotent and all-good, then why does evil exist? The later Western and Greek responses split into main tendencies.

1. The Neoplatonic School

In his Enneads, the Greek philosopher Plotinus (c. 204–270 CE) (Plotinus) presented his famous thesis that evil is a privative matter.

The idea here is that evil is not an existential being created in its own right, but the absence of the perfection or light befitting a thing. Just as darkness is not an independent substance but the absence of light, so evil is the absence of good or its deficiency.

2. The Philosophy of Optimism and Theodicy

In his famous work Essays on Theodicy (Theodicy), the German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716 CE) (Gottfried Leibniz) formulated the theory of “the best of all possible worlds.”

Leibniz argued that God, by His all-encompassing knowledge, chose from among infinitely many possible worlds this particular world, because it is the world in which natural laws and human free will are balanced with the highest efficiency. The existence of some evils and hardships in it is an existential and structural necessity for reaching a greater good that could not be realized in a world entirely free of challenges.

3. The Materialist and Critical Tendency

On the other side, philosophers such as the Scot David Hume (1711–1776 CE) (David Hume) in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and the contemporary J. L. Mackie (1917–1981 CE) (J. L. Mackie) in his paper “Evil and Omnipotence,” adopted a sharp view holding that the actual existence of natural evils such as earthquakes and diseases, and moral evils such as injustice, contradicts logically the idea of a God with absolute attributes, taking pain as evidence of the absurdity of nature or the absence of a wise Maker.

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2. The Approach of the Muslim Philosophers

The Muslim philosophers — such as Ibn Sina (370–428 AH / 980–1037 CE) (Avicenna), al-Farabi (260–339 AH / 872–950 CE) (Al-Farabi), and Mulla Sadra (979–1050 AH / 1571–1640 CE) (Mulla Sadra) — received this thesis and deepened it through the tools of Islamic metaphysics, dividing evil analytically into two dimensions.

1. Essential Evil and Accidental Evil

Essential evil, or privative evil, is the absence of the perfection befitting the nature of a thing — such as ignorance, which is the absence of knowledge, or blindness, which is the absence of sight. This requires no maker or creator, because nothingness is not created.

As for accidental evil, or relative evil, it is an existential matter that is good in itself but leads to harm for another upon mutual material collision.

An example is the snake and its venom: the venom is in itself a substance of survival for the snake and a weapon by which it defends itself; it is a good for it and part of its existential perfection. But when it mixes with human blood it becomes an accidental evil, because it corrupts the constitution of the human body.

Another example is the lion and the gazelle: the lion’s hunting and devouring of the gazelle represents a necessary existential link. This act is a relative evil for the gazelle because it ends its biological life and causes it pain, but it is a good for the lion because it is the means of its survival and strength, and a good for the general ecological order that prevents the excessive multiplication of herbivores — a multiplication that could destroy the plant cover and cause the gazelles themselves to die of hunger. Evil here is not an original substance, but the product of the clash of partial interests in the world of matter.

2. The Predominance of Good Over Evil in the World of Matter

In his al-Shifa’: al-Ilahiyyat, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) advanced the rule of cosmic balance: good in the world of matter is the origin and the predominant thing, while evils and deficiencies are rare and incidental. Health is the norm and illness is an accident; order is the origin and earthquakes are the exception.

Accordingly, abandoning the creation of much good in order to avoid a little evil is itself a great evil that conflicts with divine wisdom.

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3. Elaborating the Philosophical Responses

The school of Transcendent Philosophy brought about a qualitative leap in dismantling the problem of evil, and the efforts of Mulla Sadra (979–1050 AH / 1571–1640 CE) (Mulla Sadra), Allamah Tabataba’i (1321–1402 AH / 1904–1981 CE) (Allamah Tabataba’i), and the martyr Murtada Mutahhari (1338–1399 AH / 1920–1979 CE) (Murtada Mutahhari) came together to offer a comprehensive reading that moves the dilemma from its narrow, partial horizon to the horizon of total existence.

1. The Existential Response and the Law of Transformation in Mulla Sadra

Mulla Sadra (Mulla Sadra) clarified in his The Four Intellectual Journeys (al-Asfar) that this world is a world of matter, motion, and renewal, and that the cosmos is governed by the law of ascending transformation, by which matter is perfected from deficiency to perfection through the ranks of existence:

“Dust transforms into plant, and plant transforms into animal.”

The word “transforms” here means ascending change and conversion. Dust, an inanimate thing with no sensation, absorbs the elements to be transformed, by God’s command, into living cells in a plant that grows and feeds. Then the animal comes and eats the plant, so it is chemically broken down in its digestive system and transformed into blood cells and nerves that possess sensation, voluntary motion, pain, and pleasure.

For dust to transform into a plant, it must lose its former form and break down. For a plant to transform into an animal, it must be eaten and digested — which appears outwardly as an evil. So change and death in the world of matter are two essential conditions for the birth of a higher life; the lower beings sacrifice their present existence to become part of higher beings, and death here is not sheer nothingness but a gateway of material and existential perfection.

2. The Response of the Holistic View in Allamah Tabataba’i

Allamah Tabataba’i (Allamah Tabataba’i) clarified in his commentary al-Mizan fi Tafsir al-Qur’an an important philosophical and Quranic principle: the human being falls into the illusion of “the problem of evil” when he looks at matters from a narrow, partial angle and measures them by the standard of temporary personal benefit and a limited position, heedless of the organic interconnection of the total cosmic order and the interest of the whole that surpasses the interest of the part.

Applying this principle, we may look at earthquakes and volcanoes. A person sees them as a destructive evil because they demolish houses and end lives in a particular geographic spot. But the holistic reading, based on the ways of nature, reveals that they function as a geological safety valve for the earth: they release the immense pressure trapped in its interior, bring out precious minerals and fertile volcanic soil, and contribute to shaping the terrain, the islands, and the land. So the partial evil here can be a formative condition for preserving the greatest total good of the planetary order.

3. The Educational and Perfective Response in the Martyr Mutahhari

In his philosophical work Divine Justice, the martyr Murtada Mutahhari (Murtada Mutahhari) dismantled the existential function of pain, holding that deficiencies and calamities are among the drivers of the perfection of beings.

Were there no illness, the value of health would not be known and the science of medicine would not have developed. Were there no ignorance, the human being would not move to seek knowledge. Were there no hardships, human energies would be extinguished, and patience, courage, and self-sacrifice would not appear. Calamities, in this sense, are a crucible for the spirit that smelts the human soul to draw out its dross and keep its pure essence.

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4. Dismantling the Moral Doubts

The great doubt arises here: if God is just and powerful, then why does He not prevent wars, massacres, the injustice of tyrants, and the killing of innocent children? Shia philosophical and theological thought dismantles this dilemma through interlocking rules.

1. The Balance of Moral Responsibility

A philosophical and doctrinal distinction must be made between existential bestowal and legislative obligation. By His legislative will, God categorically forbade injustice and threatened killers with punishment. By His existential will, He created the human being and granted him the root of power and freedom of choice.

This granted power is a good in itself, but the human being is the one who directs it — through his deficiency and poor choice — toward evil, injustice, and wars. The killer and the oppressor is the direct doer of the crime by his freedom, and the attribution of the ugly act returns to him by choice, not to God, blessed and exalted.

2. The Philosophy of the Absence of Immediate Intervention

Some demand a continuous divine intervention to stop the hand of the oppressor by an overpowering force before the crime occurs. The philosophical response here is that a direct, miraculous divine intervention to prevent every moral evil would mean the complete abolition of free will and the nullification of the test.

If the oppressor knew that his hand would be paralyzed existentially and compulsorily the moment he thought of injustice, choice would be nullified and he would turn into an obedient one by coercion and compulsion. And with the nullification of choice, the divine obligation falls away, the purpose of creating the human being as a being distinguished by reason and freedom is voided, and Paradise and Hell, reward and punishment, become meaningless for beings driven by force.

3. The Gracious Intervention and the Deferred Support

The absence of immediate intervention does not mean neglect; God intervenes according to specific ways.

Intervention to preserve the very foundation of the message is the function of the miracle; God intervenes miraculously to break the natural ways — as in making the fire cool and safe upon Abraham, or splitting the sea for Moses — when the fate of the monotheistic message, as a path of guidance for humanity, is threatened with total extinction. The miracle is granted to preserve the religion, not as an absolute personal protection; and so Zakariyya and Yahya were killed, and Husayn (4–61 AH / 626–680 CE) (AS) was martyred, because the very foundation of the message and the survival of the religion was preserved through their blood and their pure human sacrifices.

There is also the intervention of respite and retribution: God leaves the oppressor to proceed in his tyranny until the proof against him is complete, then He seizes him in this world through the fall of tyrants and states, or in the hereafter through the absolute reckoning.

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5. The Rule of Compensations and Absolute Ownership

Shia doctrinal thought — as it appears in al-Shaykh al-Mufid (336–413 AH / 948–1022 CE) (Al-Shaykh al-Mufid) and Khwaja Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (597–672 AH / 1201–1274 CE) (Nasir al-Din al-Tusi) — is distinguished by solving the dilemma of the sufferings of the innocent and of children through two rational axes.

1. The Rule of Compensations

The child killed in a war, or the wronged one who perishes under the weight of torture without receiving any support in this world — wise divine justice requires that they be compensated in the abode of the hereafter with a great recompense of everlasting bliss and comprehensive honor that erases all the pains of this transient world.

This compensation is not a mere favor, but a right of justice by which the Creator mends the deficiencies that befell the servant in the material abode of testing.

2. The Reality of Ownership and the Denial of Prior Entitlement

The origin of the human objection sometimes springs from an inner illusion in which a person feels that he owns his life or his children with an independent ownership. But the philosophical truth affirms that existential ownership belongs to God alone; the servant and what he owns are the property of the Master.

The human being came into being from nothing, and the blessings he has are deposits to be reclaimed. The wise Owner’s disposal of His own property, by reclaiming or diminishing it, is not called injustice in the logic of reason, but wise governance — especially when it is followed by the more ample recompense of the hereafter.

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6. The Problem of Evil and Justice in the Infallible Text

The preceding rational philosophical vision agrees with and complements the Quranic and narrated texts.

1. In the Noble Quran

The the Quran presents trial as a cosmic law:

“And We test you with evil and with good as a trial, and to Us you will be returned.” (Al-Anbiya: 35)

It denies injustice of God, and attributes corruption to the earning of human beings:

“Indeed, Allah does not wrong even the weight of an atom.” (Al-Nisa: 40)

“Corruption has appeared on land and sea because of what the hands of people have earned.” (Al-Rum: 41)

It also affirms that the delay of punishment is not heedlessness, but respite for a wisdom:

“And never think that Allah is unaware of what the wrongdoers do. He only delays them for a Day when eyes will stare in horror.” (Ibrahim: 42)

2. In the Prophetic Sunnah and the School of the Ahl al-Bayt

It is reported from the Prophet (PBUH):

“The most severely tried of people are the prophets, then the next best and the next best…”

In this there is a link between trial and perfection.

The Commander of the Faithful Imam Ali (AS) (23 BH–40 AH / 599–661 CE) (AS) said, in a comprehensive statement from Nahj al-Balagha:

“Divine unity is that you do not imagine Him, and justice is that you do not accuse Him.”

Imam al-Sadiq (83–148 AH / 702–765 CE) (AS) sets down, in his counsel to Unwan al-Basri, the rule of denying independent ownership:

“That the servant should not see for himself, in what God has granted him, any ownership — for servants do not possess ownership… And when the servant delegates the governance of himself to his Governor, the calamities of this world become easy for him.”

This system is manifest in the words of Lady Zaynab bint Ali (5–62 AH / 626–682 CE) (AS) in Kufa, when Ibn Ziyad (28–67 AH / 648–686 CE) asked her mockingly, “How did you see what God did with your brother?”, and she answered with the certainty of divine unity and its depth:

“I saw nothing but beauty. These are a people for whom God had decreed killing, so they went forth to their resting places; and God will gather you and them, so you will be called to account and disputed with.”

She (AS) distinguished between the ugliness of the human crime issuing from the oppressor by his choice, and the beauty of the divine act that smelted the saints and raised them to the station of martyrdom and immortality, mending the transient worldly deficiency with the recompense of the hereafter.

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Summary and Conclusion

Dismantling the problem of evil clarifies a decisive shift from the narrow, materialist logical impasse — which confines existence to the limits of this worldly life — to the comprehensive monotheistic existential system.

In the Shia vision, influenced by the school of Transcendent Philosophy, the concept of divine justice is completed together with the reality of the absolute ownership of the Creator, the freedom of human choice whose preservation requires the absence of continuous coercive intervention, and the law of the recompenses of the hereafter — so that pain, trial, and accidental evil become an instrument of distinction, smelting, and moral perfection within a cosmic order in which the final predominance is written for good and for absolute beauty.