Why is there suffering if God is all-good and all-powerful?

The question, at its strongest

If God can do anything, He could prevent suffering. If God is perfectly good, He would want to. Yet suffering is everywhere, and much of it seems to serve no purpose anyone can see: a child dying of cancer; a fawn caught in a forest fire, dying slowly and terribly (the philosopher William Rowe's example); millions of years of animal pain; an earthquake that kills thousands in a minute. A good person who could easily stop a murder and did not would be doing wrong — so why does God not stop it? In its strongest modern form, the argument does not say that God and suffering are logically impossible together. It says that this much suffering, and suffering of this kind, makes a good and all-powerful God unlikely.

Why people ask it

Philosophers treat it as a potentially serious argument against belief in God. But for most people it does not arrive as an argument. It arrives at a hospital bed, at a grave, or in the news after a disaster.

Short answer

Islam does not deny that suffering is real or that it hurts: the Prophet (pbuh) wept when his young son died. The Quran calls this life a test, in hardship and in ease (67:2; 21:35), and it promises that the account is not closed at death: wrongdoers are given time, not ignored (14:42), and justice is completed after death, even between animals. Muslim scholars give real but partial reasons for suffering: it can wipe away sins, it tests patience as ease tests gratitude, and it is never a sign that the sufferer is worse than others. Much of God's wisdom is hidden from us, as the story of Moses (pbuh) and al-Khidr shows (18:65–82). These reasons answer the claim that God and suffering cannot both exist; they do not explain every single case. For what remains, the Quran asks for trust in a God the Prophet (pbuh) described as more merciful than a mother to her child — and it asks us to relieve suffering, not only to explain it.

The full answer

14min read

For the heart and mind

If you are grieving. Tears are not a failure of faith. When his infant son Ibrahim was dying, the Prophet (pbuh) wept and said: "The eyes are shedding tears and the heart is grieved, and we will not say except what pleases our Lord. O Ibrahim! Indeed we are grieved by your separation" Bukhārī 1303 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound). You may bring your grief to God in raw words, as the prophets did: Jacob (pbuh) said, "I only complain of my suffering and my grief to Allah" (12:86); Job (pbuh) called out, "Indeed, adversity has touched me, and you are the Most Merciful of the merciful" (21:83). The sentence "Indeed we belong to Allah, and indeed to Him we will return" (2:156) is not a demand to feel fine; it is a place to stand.

"Is this a punishment?" No one can know that about a particular person. Asked who is tried most severely, the Prophet (pbuh) said: "The Prophets, then those nearest to them, then those nearest to them" Tirmidhī 2398 Ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ — al-Albānī. He spoke of pain as something that wipes sins away, not as a verdict (see below). Research points the same way: people who read their suffering as a merciful trial and seek religious support tend to cope better, and those who feel that God is punishing them tend to cope worse (Pargament, Koenig and Perez, 2000); across 49 studies, the pattern generally held (Ano and Vasconcelles, 2005). These studies show a link, not a cause — and what helps people cope is not, by itself, evidence that a belief is true.

If someone hurt you. Suffering that a person causes is that person's wrong, not God's judgement on you. "Never think that Allah is unaware of what the wrongdoers do. He only delays them for a Day when eyes will stare [in horror]" (14:42). Your safety comes first, and the support on this page can help.

Relieving suffering is part of the answer. "The merciful are shown mercy by the Most Merciful. Be merciful on the earth, and you will be shown mercy from the One above the heavens" Tirmidhī 1924 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound) — al-Albānī. Sitting with someone, bringing food, paying for treatment and staying after the funeral are not small things.

What the Quran says

Life is a test, in hardship and in ease. God "created death and life to test you [as to] which of you is best in deed" (67:2). "We test you with evil and with good as trial; and to Us you will be returned" (21:35). Ibn Kathir explains the second verse: God tests people "sometimes with difficulties and sometimes with ease, to see who will give thanks and who will be ungrateful, who will have patience and who will despair." The test is not only pain: wealth and comfort are a test too.

Loss is expected, and it is met with a sentence. "And We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and a loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient, who, when disaster strikes them, say, 'Indeed we belong to Allah, and indeed to Him we will return.'" (2:155–156). God promises them "blessings from their Lord and mercy" (2:157). "Allah does not charge a soul except [with that within] its capacity" (2:286), and "indeed, with hardship [will be] ease" — said twice (94:5–6).

Some reasons are hidden. In Sura al-Kahf (18:65–82), Moses (pbuh) — a prophet — travels with al-Khidr, "a servant from among Our servants to whom we had given mercy from us and had taught him from Us a [certain] knowledge" (18:65). Al-Khidr damages a boat, kills a boy and repairs a wall in a town that refused them food. Moses (pbuh) protests each time. Then the reasons are shown. The boat belonged to poor people, and a king ahead "seized every [good] ship by force" (18:79); the damage saved it. The wall hid a treasure belonging to two orphans (18:82). Al-Khidr ends: "I did it not of my own accord" (18:82).

The hardest part: the boy. Al-Khidr says: "As for the boy, his parents were believers, and we feared that he would overburden them by transgression and disbelief. So we intended that their Lord should substitute for them one better than him in purity and nearer to mercy" (18:80–81). The Prophet (pbuh) said the boy "was a non-believer by his very nature and had he survived he would have involved his parents in defiance and unbelief" Muslim 2662 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound). The early commentator Qatada, quoted by Ibn Kathir, said the parents "rejoiced when he was born and grieved for him when he was killed". This is the hardest part of the story to read, and it should not be hidden. Two things keep it from being misused. It gives no one else permission: the Quran forbids killing any soul "except by right" (17:33), and al-Khidr acted by God's command, not his own. And its lesson is about knowledge no human has — what a life will become. Moses (pbuh), standing in the middle of the events, could not see their reasons; that is the story's point. If you have lost a child, this story is not about your child: it tells of one event, done by God's command, that no human can repeat or judge.

The hard verse: "for what your hands have earned". "And whatever strikes you of disaster — it is for what your hands have earned; but He pardons much" (42:30). Ibn Kathir reads it plainly: disasters come because of sins, and God forgives much. Al-Qurtubi reports that, for most scholars, the verse concerns believers, while the disbeliever's punishment is deferred to the hereafter; a minority read it as addressed to the disbelievers. On children, he records two views. Some said the verse means punishment for adults, while for children suffering is a reward (mathuba). Others said it is a punishment for adults in themselves, while a child's suffering is a punishment for the child's parents. These are scholars' readings of a general verse, not a judgement on any parent or child: as above, no one can know that about a particular person. He also quotes an early saying, "hours of pain take away hours of sins" (Thabit al-Bunani). The verse speaks of suffering in general; it does not let anyone judge a particular sufferer, since the Prophet (pbuh) said the people tried most severely are the prophets.

Animals are not forgotten. "There is no creature on [or within] the earth or bird that flies with its wings except [that they are] communities like you… Then unto their Lord they will be gathered" (6:38).

What the Prophet (pbuh) taught

Each hadith below shows its grade from the hadith scholars named: ṣaḥīḥ (sound) and ḥasan (good) are accepted as evidence; a weak (ḍaʿīf) report is never used as evidence on this site.

Trial is not a sign of God's displeasure. "If Allah wants to do good to somebody, He afflicts him with trials" Bukhārī 5645 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound). This is said to someone afraid that hardship means God has turned away; it does not make pain good in itself.

Pain is not wasted. "No fatigue, nor disease, nor sorrow, nor sadness, nor hurt, nor distress befalls a Muslim, even if it were the prick he receives from a thorn, but that Allah expiates some of his sins for that" Bukhārī 5641 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound). "Strange are the ways of a believer, for there is good in every affair of his": in ease he gives thanks, in hardship he is patient, and both are good for him Muslim 2999 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound).

God's mercy is greater than a mother's. Seeing a captive woman who had found her lost baby and pressed it to her breast, the Prophet (pbuh) asked whether she would throw her child into a fire, and said: "Allah is more merciful to His slaves than this lady to her son" Bukhārī 5999 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound). God made mercy in a hundred parts, sent one into the world — from it, an animal lifts its hoof from its young — and kept ninety-nine for the Day of Resurrection Muslim 2752 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound).

Justice reaches even animals. "Rights will certainly be restored to those entitled to them on the Day of Resurrection, even the hornless sheep will lay claim upon the horned one" Muslim 2582 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound).

The scale of the next life. The person who had the most miserable life in the world, of the people of Paradise, is dipped once in Paradise and asked whether he ever faced hardship. He says: "By Allah, no, my Lord, never did I face any hardship or experience any distress" Muslim 2807 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound).

Evil is not attributed to God. In the opening supplication of his prayer, the Prophet (pbuh) said: "All good is in Your hands, and evil is not to You" (wa-l-sharru laysa ilayk) Muslim 771 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound). One English translation renders the words "one cannot get nearest to You through evil"; scholars explained them in more than one way.

How scholars have understood it

Who is quoted here. The historian of Islamic thought Eric Ormsby wrote the main study of this debate (Theodicy in Islamic Thought, Princeton, 1984). Much of what follows is from his account and from the scholars' own words.

The schools of theology disagreed about God's reasons. Islam's schools of theology (kalam) gave different answers: the Mu'tazila, an early school, and the Ash'aris and Maturidis, the two main Sunni schools. The Mu'tazila held that God is obliged to do what is best for His creatures (al-aslah, "the optimum"); most Sunni theologians rejected any obligation on God. Many Ash'aris held to what Ormsby calls God's "sovereign unaccountability": God does not owe us reasons, His acts are not to be explained by reasons we can check, and attempts to rationalise them were suspect. Al-Maturidi (d. 944), founder of the Maturidi school, defined God's wisdom as putting each thing in its proper place. Two centuries after al-Ghazali, the Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) criticised the Ash'aris for affirming "will without wisdom, and volition without mercy, love, and approval".

Al-Ghazali (d. 1111): nothing more perfect is possible. In the Ihya', in the book on trust in God, al-Ghazali wrote that everything God apportions — "sustenance, life-span, pleasure and pain" — is "sheer justice, with no injustice in it", and that "there is not in possibility anything whatever more excellent, more perfect, and more complete than it". His reasons are partly about contrast — "For were it not for night, the value of day would be unknown. Were it not for illness, the healthy would not enjoy health" — and partly about cost: amputating a gangrenous hand to save a life is justice, not cruelty. He ends by calling the matter "a vast and deep sea" in which "whole groups of the inept drown". Ormsby notes that the passage is an exhortation to trust in God, not a proof: an 18th-century commentator, al-Zabidi, explained that its purpose is that a person "may not despair over an evil which befalls him". The sentence was fiercely disputed for centuries, because critics thought it limited God's power.

Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 1350): evil is in some created things, not in God's act. Ibn al-Qayyim comments in Shifa' al-'Alil (ch. 21) on the Prophet's (pbuh) words "evil is not to You". He writes that God "is the Creator of good and evil; the evil lies in some of the things He created, not in His creating or His act. His creating, His act, His decree and His measuring-out are all good." Injustice, he explains, is "putting a thing where it does not belong"; God never does that, so whatever He places is in its right place, and in relation to Him it is not evil.

How philosophers argue about it

Two versions of the problem. The logical version (J. L. Mackie, 1955) claims that God and evil are logically incompatible. Alvin Plantinga's work focused on this version. One line of reply is the free-will approach: if a good God could have a reason to permit evil — such as giving creatures real freedom, which they can misuse — then God and evil are not contradictory. The evidential version (William Rowe, from 1979) claims something more modest: that some actual evils, like the fawn in the fire, make God unlikely.

The main replies. Michael Tooley, a philosopher who wrote the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on the problem of evil, lists four kinds of "theodicy" (explanations of why God permits evil): growing in character through hardship (John Hick's "soul-making"); free will in general; in particular, the freedom to do real harm to others; and a world run by stable natural laws, which make action possible but sometimes harm. The Quran's picture of life as a test (67:2; 21:35) is close to the first.

Even believers say the reasons are partial. Some philosophers, such as Richard Swinburne, think a full theodicy can be given. Others are far less hopeful — including Plantinga, who wrote that "most attempts to explain why God permits evil… strike me as tepid, shallow and ultimately frivolous" (1985). This matches the Islamic emphasis on limits: Moses (pbuh) could not see al-Khidr's reasons; al-Ghazali called the question a deep sea.

The strongest objections, and the replies

"A good person who could stop a murder would." Tooley: free will is valuable, but that "does not entail that one should never intervene"; almost everyone thinks failing to prevent heinous evil when one can is seriously wrong. Reply. The comparison treats God as a bystander whose power ends when the crime ends. In the Quran it does not: wrongdoers are delayed, not ignored (14:42, quoted above), and every wrong is answered, down to the hornless sheep (see above). If God stopped every wrong as it began, human choice would no longer be real, and the life the Quran calls a test (67:2) would not be one. Limit. This reply leans on the hereafter. A reader who doubts the hereafter will find Tooley's point still standing.

"Earthquakes and animal pain come from no one's choice." Free will does not explain them. The natural-law reply says regular laws are needed for any effective action, and regular laws sometimes harm. Tooley answers that rare miracles would not make action impossible, and that many great evils could have been prevented without anyone noticing. Reply. The Quran counts loss of "lives and fruits" among the trials (2:155), and promises that animals too "will be gathered" (6:38) and that their wrongs are answered. On earthquakes in particular, see the question on whether disasters are punishment. Limit. This is the weakest point of every theodicy, Islamic or not; the honest answer is partial.

"If God creates everything, are our choices real?" The page uses free will above, and also quotes Ibn al-Qayyim that God is "the Creator of good and evil". The Quran holds both together: "whoever wills — let him believe; and whoever wills — let him disbelieve" (18:29), and "you do not will except that Allah wills" (76:30). How the two fit is a question of its own, answered on the page "If everything is written, how am I free?". Limit. Here it is enough to say that Muslim theology never treated human choice as unreal; the hard work of explaining how is done there.

"If God's reasons are hidden, how can you call Him good?" Reply. Muslims do not call God good from blank trust: they point to what can be seen — the mercy in creation, the one part of a hundred that makes an animal lift its hoof from its young (see above). They then trust the rest, as Moses (pbuh) had to. This is exactly where the schools differed: the strict Ash'ari view stresses God's sovereignty; al-Maturidi and Ibn Taymiyya stress that God acts with wisdom. Limit. Trust that goes beyond what can be seen is still trust.

The range of views

Mu'tazila — God is bound to do what is best for His creatures (al-aslah, "the optimum") (Ormsby).
Ash'aris — God's acts are not to be explained by reasons human beings can audit ("sovereign unaccountability", Ormsby).
Al-Maturidi — God's wisdom is the proper placement of things (Ormsby).
Al-Ghazali — this order is the best possible; trust is the right response (Ihya'; Ormsby).
Ibn Taymiyya — God acts with wisdom; the Ash'aris "affirm will without wisdom" (Ormsby).
Ibn al-Qayyim — evil is in some created things, never in God's act (Shifa' al-'Alil, ch. 21).
Philosophical critics (Tooley; Rowe) — the amount and kind of suffering make God unlikely.

Questions readers ask next

What is the difference between the "logical" and the "evidential" problem?

The logical problem says God and evil cannot both exist; the evidential problem says that the evils we see make God unlikely. See "How philosophers argue about it".

Why would infants and animals suffer, if they cannot be tested?

The tradition does not say they are being tested in the same way. Al-Qurtubi records the view that for children suffering is a reward. For animals, the Prophet (pbuh) said wrongs will be set right even between them, and the Quran says they too "will be gathered" (6:38). This is a promise about what comes after, not an explanation of every case now.

Is it weak faith to be angry with God after a loss?

The prophets voiced their pain to God (12:86; 21:83), and the Prophet (pbuh) wept and said "the heart is grieved". What the tradition guards against is turning away from God, not feeling pain in front of Him.

Did al-Ghazali really say this is the best possible world? Who disagreed?

Yes: in the Ihya', in the book on trust in God (Ormsby, ch. 1). Critics over several centuries objected that it seemed to limit God's power to create something better, and that it echoed the Mu'tazili "optimum"; his defenders replied that the passage is a call to trust, not a limit on God.

Has "good" lost its ordinary meaning if whatever God does is good by definition?

Ormsby reports that other schools, the Hanbalis among them, criticised the Ash'aris for neglecting God's wisdom; Ibn Taymiyya said they "affirm will without wisdom". For al-Maturidi and Ibn Taymiyya, God acts with wisdom, so "good" stays tied to reasons, even where we cannot see them.

Key verses

ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ ٱلْمَوْتَ وَٱلْحَيَوٰةَ لِيَبْلُوَكُمْ أَيُّكُمْ أَحْسَنُ عَمَلًا ۚ وَهُوَ ٱلْعَزِيزُ ٱلْغَفُورُ۝٢

Transliteration: alladhī khalaqa l-mawta wal-ḥayata liyabluwakum ayyukum aḥsanu ʿamalan wahuwa l-ʿazīzu l-ghafūru

[He] who created death and life to test you [as to] which of you is best in deed - and He is the Exalted in Might, the Forgiving -

67:2

Translation: Saheeh International

Every soul will taste death. And We test you with evil and with good as trial; and to Us you will be returned. 21:35

Arabic text and transliteration

كُلُّ نَفْسٍ ذَآئِقَةُ ٱلْمَوْتِ ۗ وَنَبْلُوكُم بِٱلشَّرِّ وَٱلْخَيْرِ فِتْنَةً ۖ وَإِلَيْنَا تُرْجَعُونَ

kullu nafsin dhāiqatu l-mawti wanablūkum bil-shari wal-khayri fit'natan wa-ilaynā tur'jaʿūna
And We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and a loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient, Who, when disaster strikes them, say, "Indeed we belong to Allah, and indeed to Him we will return." Those are the ones upon whom are blessings from their Lord and mercy. And it is those who are the [rightly] guided. 2:155–157

Arabic text and transliteration

وَلَنَبْلُوَنَّكُم بِشَىْءٍ مِّنَ ٱلْخَوْفِ وَٱلْجُوعِ وَنَقْصٍ مِّنَ ٱلْأَمْوَٰلِ وَٱلْأَنفُسِ وَٱلثَّمَرَٰتِ ۗ وَبَشِّرِ ٱلصَّٰبِرِينَ ۝ ٱلَّذِينَ إِذَآ أَصَٰبَتْهُم مُّصِيبَةٌ قَالُوٓا۟ إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّآ إِلَيْهِ رَٰجِعُونَ ۝ أُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ عَلَيْهِمْ صَلَوَٰتٌ مِّن رَّبِّهِمْ وَرَحْمَةٌ ۖ وَأُو۟لَٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلْمُهْتَدُونَ

walanabluwannakum bishayin mina l-khawfi wal-jūʿi wanaqṣin mina l-amwāli wal-anfusi wal-thamarāti wabashiri l-ṣābirīna · alladhīna idhā aṣābathum muṣībatun qālū innā lillahi wa-innā ilayhi rājiʿūna · ulāika ʿalayhim ṣalawātun min rabbihim waraḥmatun wa-ulāika humu l-muh'tadūna
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]. 14:42

Arabic text and transliteration

وَلَا تَحْسَبَنَّ ٱللَّهَ غَٰفِلًا عَمَّا يَعْمَلُ ٱلظَّٰلِمُونَ ۚ إِنَّمَا يُؤَخِّرُهُمْ لِيَوْمٍ تَشْخَصُ فِيهِ ٱلْأَبْصَٰرُ

walā taḥsabanna l-laha ghāfilan ʿammā yaʿmalu l-ẓālimūna innamā yu-akhiruhum liyawmin tashkhaṣu fīhi l-abṣāru
As for the ship, it belonged to poor people working at sea. So I intended to cause defect in it as there was after them a king who seized every [good] ship by force. 18:79

Arabic text and transliteration

أَمَّا ٱلسَّفِينَةُ فَكَانَتْ لِمَسَٰكِينَ يَعْمَلُونَ فِى ٱلْبَحْرِ فَأَرَدتُّ أَنْ أَعِيبَهَا وَكَانَ وَرَآءَهُم مَّلِكٌ يَأْخُذُ كُلَّ سَفِينَةٍ غَصْبًا

ammā l-safīnatu fakānat limasākīna yaʿmalūna fī l-baḥri fa-aradttu an aʿībahā wakāna warāahum malikun yakhudhu kulla safīnatin ghaṣban
And as for the boy, his parents were believers, and we feared that he would overburden them by transgression and disbelief. So we intended that their Lord should substitute for them one better than him in purity and nearer to mercy. And as for the wall, it belonged to two orphan boys in the city, and there was beneath it a treasure for them, and their father had been righteous. So your Lord intended that they reach maturity and extract their treasure, as a mercy from your Lord. And I did it not of my own accord. That is the interpretation of that about which you could not have patience." 18:80–82

Arabic text and transliteration

وَأَمَّا ٱلْغُلَٰمُ فَكَانَ أَبَوَاهُ مُؤْمِنَيْنِ فَخَشِينَآ أَن يُرْهِقَهُمَا طُغْيَٰنًا وَكُفْرًا ۝ فَأَرَدْنَآ أَن يُبْدِلَهُمَا رَبُّهُمَا خَيْرًا مِّنْهُ زَكَوٰةً وَأَقْرَبَ رُحْمًا ۝ وَأَمَّا ٱلْجِدَارُ فَكَانَ لِغُلَٰمَيْنِ يَتِيمَيْنِ فِى ٱلْمَدِينَةِ وَكَانَ تَحْتَهُۥ كَنزٌ لَّهُمَا وَكَانَ أَبُوهُمَا صَٰلِحًا فَأَرَادَ رَبُّكَ أَن يَبْلُغَآ أَشُدَّهُمَا وَيَسْتَخْرِجَا كَنزَهُمَا رَحْمَةً مِّن رَّبِّكَ ۚ وَمَا فَعَلْتُهُۥ عَنْ أَمْرِى ۚ ذَٰلِكَ تَأْوِيلُ مَا لَمْ تَسْطِع عَّلَيْهِ صَبْرًا

wa-ammā l-ghulāmu fakāna abawāhu mu'minayni fakhashīnā an yur'hiqahumā ṭugh'yānan wakuf'ran · fa-aradnā an yub'dilahumā rabbuhumā khayran min'hu zakatan wa-aqraba ruḥ'man · wa-ammā l-jidāru fakāna lighulāmayni yatīmayni fī l-madīnati wakāna taḥtahu kanzun lahumā wakāna abūhumā ṣāliḥan fa-arāda rabbuka an yablughā ashuddahumā wayastakhrijā kanzahumā raḥmatan min rabbika wamā faʿaltuhu ʿan amrī dhālika tawīlu mā lam tasṭiʿ ʿalayhi ṣabran
And whatever strikes you of disaster - it is for what your hands have earned; but He pardons much. 42:30

Arabic text and transliteration

وَمَآ أَصَٰبَكُم مِّن مُّصِيبَةٍ فَبِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيْدِيكُمْ وَيَعْفُوا۟ عَن كَثِيرٍ

wamā aṣābakum min muṣībatin fabimā kasabat aydīkum wayaʿfū ʿan kathīrin
And there is no creature on [or within] the earth or bird that flies with its wings except [that they are] communities like you. We have not neglected in the Register a thing. Then unto their Lord they will be gathered. 6:38

Arabic text and transliteration

وَمَا مِن دَآبَّةٍ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ وَلَا طَٰٓئِرٍ يَطِيرُ بِجَنَاحَيْهِ إِلَّآ أُمَمٌ أَمْثَالُكُم ۚ مَّا فَرَّطْنَا فِى ٱلْكِتَٰبِ مِن شَىْءٍ ۚ ثُمَّ إِلَىٰ رَبِّهِمْ يُحْشَرُونَ

wamā min dābbatin fī l-arḍi walā ṭāirin yaṭīru bijanāḥayhi illā umamun amthālukum mā farraṭnā fī l-kitābi min shayin thumma ilā rabbihim yuḥ'sharūna
For indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. Indeed, with hardship [will be] ease. 94:5–6

Arabic text and transliteration

فَإِنَّ مَعَ ٱلْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا ۝ إِنَّ مَعَ ٱلْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا

fa-inna maʿa l-ʿus'ri yus'ran · inna maʿa l-ʿus'ri yus'ran

Sources

The Quran: 2:155–157, 2:286, 6:38, 12:86, 14:42, 17:33, 18:65–82 (incl. 18:65, 18:80–81), 21:35, 21:83, 42:30, 67:2, 94:5–6 (Tanzil; Saheeh International).
Ibn Kathir, Tafsir (abridged English, Quran.com): on 2:155, 2:216, 18:79, 18:80, 18:82, 21:35, 42:30, 6:38.
al-Qurtubi, al-Jami' li-Ahkam al-Qur'an (Arabic, Quran.com): on 42:30 — whom the verse concerns; the views about adults and children; Thabit al-Bunani's saying.
The Quran, also 18:29 and 76:30 (free will and God's will).
Hadith (text and grading from the hadith collections' data): Bukhari 1303, 5641, 5645, 5999; Muslim 771, 2582, 2662, 2752, 2807, 2999; Tirmidhi 1924, 2398.
al-Ghazali, Ihya' 'Ulum al-Din, Book of Unity and Trust in God, the passage translated in Eric L. Ormsby, Theodicy in Islamic Thought: The Dispute over al-Ghazali's "Best of All Possible Worlds" (Princeton University Press, 1984), ch. 1, pp. 32–47 (open chapter: https://www.themathesontrust.org/papers/islam/Ormsby-Theodicy_1-Perfection.pdf), including p. 47 on al-Maturidi, the Ash'aris and Ibn Taymiyya.
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1292–1350), Shifa' al-'Alil fi Masa'il al-Qada' wa'l-Qadar wa'l-Hikma wa'l-Ta'lil, chapter 21 (Arabic text, Wikisource), on the Prophet's (pbuh) words "and evil is not to You".
Michael Tooley, "The Problem of Evil", Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (substantive revision 2015), https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/ — the logical and evidential versions; Mackie (1955); Plantinga; Rowe's fawn; the four kinds of theodicy and Tooley's objections to them; Plantinga (1985) and Swinburne (1988) quoted on theodicy.
K. I. Pargament, H. G. Koenig, L. M. Perez, "The many methods of religious coping: development and initial validation of the RCOPE", Journal of Clinical Psychology 56(4):519–543 (2000), abstract (PubMed 10775045).
G. G. Ano, E. B. Vasconcelles, "Religious coping and psychological adjustment to stress: a meta-analysis", Journal of Clinical Psychology 61(4):461–480 (2005), abstract (PubMed 15503316).