If Allah is all-powerful He must be responsible for suffering. Muslims believe that Allah is the all-powerful creator (Qur’an 6:102-3), so He could have created any world He wanted to. This world contains suffering, so it must be part of His plan. The Qur’an seems to support predestination in places, such as “Misfortunes can only happen with God’s permission” 64:11 and Sunni Muslims see Qadr (predestination) as one of their 6 articles of faith. This suggests that Allah must be responsible for suffering in the world as much as He is responsible for the good things in this world. If Allah is all-powerful, there is no other explanation. Further, many Muslims would not see suffering as inconsistent with the nature of Allah. The Ash’arites (and today most Sunni Muslims) accepted that Allah’s supreme power meant that he determines the outcomes of peoples’ lives, even the suffering that they experience; human beings cannot know the mind of God, but must trust that Allah is just (Al Adl) and that He must have a good reason for allowing suffering, even if we don’t understand what it is.

Yet, as the Mu’tazilites argued in the 8th-10th centuries, unless human beings are really free, there is no way that they can be held responsible for their actions or justly punished. As Muslims believe that God holds people accountable for what they do, in this life and the next and that Allah is just, they must also believe that human beings have free will. Qur’an 13:11 “God does not change the condition of human beings unless they change what is in themselves” supports the belief that human beings are free and responsible, which suggests that suffering is the result of free human actions – either directly or indirectly as just punishment from Allah. Yet, while this Mu’tazilite position (which many Shia Muslims share through their belief in Bada’ and Adalat/divine justice) seems to make more sense of the belief in judgement, heaven and hell than the Ash’arite position (which many Sunni Muslims share through their belief in Qadr) the idea that Allah created human beings free in the sense that He is not responsible for the results of their actions is problematic. Leaving aside the multiple references in the Qur’an to predestination already explained, Muslims believe that Allah is Omniscient and knows the outcomes of peoples’ lives before they are born, which suggests that human freedom is an illusion. There is a contradiction here: If Allah is Omnipotent and Beneficent (wanting “ease and not hardship” for human beings, as the Qur’an confirms) then He cannot have chosen to create such extreme suffering… and yet suffering exists, which suggests that Allah must have created suffering as part of His divine plan.

In conclusion, an all-powerful Allah must be responsible for suffering.