“The argument is that in a world where a God exists and is all loving, all knowing, and all powerful, evil should simply not exist; the fact that it does (and is quite prevalent) points to there either being no God, or no God worth my worship.”

I think the problem of evil can be resolved by a sense of perspective, Islamic perspective. We Muslims believe, as we are told repeatedly in the Qur’an, that life is a test. Preliminary results of that test, ongoing till death, are seen in the here and now. But the final grade and recompense, on a scale and magnitude that simply cannot be compared, is found on the other side, beyond the grave. There is a famous hadith where a man, a good man, who had suffered the worst of sufferings and all injustice in the world, was put in Paradise for a second. He was then brought before his Lord. He was asked, “What do you remember of your life before?”

He answered, “I cannot remember.”

Then a man, an evil man who had perpetrated the worst of evils in the world, and had enjoyed all the delights of the world at his brothers’ expense, he was taken from his life and thrown in Hell for a second. He too was brought before the Lord and asked, “What do you remember of your life before?”

He answered, “I cannot remember.”

There is a further point. For people to fail the test, at least a portion of their failing deeds, evil deeds, will involve others as recipients of those deeds. In other words, evil people need innocent people for them to write their reply, for them to give their failing answer to the test of life. And likewise, the innocent, in their struggle to cope with the evil in the world, the evil that others do, are tested in the trial of bringing out the best in response, and thereby drawing closer to God. Everywhere, everything is a test. Some of it may seem horrific, and it is, on this side, but as the hadith implies, what comes in eternity effaces all before it, is incomparably just, and makes all before it justified. Nay, more than justified, necessary. Necessary to the test. You may not believe in the Islamic description of reality, the Islamic theodicy, but it is internally consistent and has no problem of evil.

A final observation… Any serious student of reality, of the spiritual journey, is struck over and over by the interplay of duality, of contrasts, mirrors, inversions, and the transcending of duality. In my uninformed opinion as a naive Muslim, the heart of Islam is found in remembrance, in the remembering of the knowledge of who we are, where we were, and where we are going. It is an unimaginably tragically lovely game of hide and seek, of remembering ourselves and that nether reality at the dawn of creation when He asked us all “Am I not your Lord?” and we all answered, “Yes!” And then we were born into forgetfulness. And remembrance, for it is only that which is forgotten, at risk of forgetting, that is remembered. And of course nothing is truly forgotten, only buried. That’s why when you do remember, you have that “Oh yeah!” reaction, that recognition. But see the beauty of the hadith: the ones who are so deeply, so vividly impressed by the experiences of the world, be it good or bad, who for better or for worse are absolutely immersed in the world of sense, what happens to them when they taste eternity? Of the world before, the world we live, they say, “I cannot remember.” How beautiful is that?