How can one reconcile between these beliefs...

How can one reconcile between these beliefs: the belief that God is aware of the best order of the world and causes it and is satisfied with it, on the one hand, and that evils are real, on the other hand? The above questions are commonly expressed by Muslim philosophers appealing to the notion of Divine decree ( al-qadha al-ilahi ) and predetermination ( al-taqdir al-ilahi ).

We should notice that in Muslim philosophers' worldview, the existence of any actual being or the occurrence of any actual event, in the whole universe and in all times, is decided and appointed by Divine eternal decree. In other words, God, as the ultimate (or more accurately, the unique real) efficient cause, necessitates the existence and the occurrence of all actual beings and events. Moreover, all the characteristics and properties of God's creatures are eternally predetermined by God.

Thus, if evils are to be real entities, their very realization must be according to the Divine decree and their characteristics must be according to His predetermination.

Therefore, the main question could be expressed as: How do evils come to be according to Divine decree and predetermination?6 We find most Muslim Philosophers deal with the problem of evil under a main title which contains terms such as "Divine providence", "Divine decree" and "Divine predetermination".7 We may then count the above version of the problem as the main version for Islamic philosophers. Let us call it "the problem of evil and Divine providence".

The general attempt to solve this problem has been manifested in the attempt to show that evils, in contrast to the goods, are decided and predetermined by God only accidentally and not essentially (I shall return to this solution later). There are, however, some less important versions of the problem that have been formulated in a much less detailed way of which we rarely cannot find more than some implicit allusions.

One of these subordinate versions relates to the problem of the creator of evils. According to Islamic philosophy, and Islamic doctrines in general, God is the most conceivable good and benevolent being. So, how could it be the case that such a God creates evils (pains, sufferings, harms and so on)? If God does not create the evils, then there must be another being (perhaps a cosmic devil) who is responsible for bringing the evils into existence.