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Q29

Why would a self-sufficient God create?

The question, at its strongest

"A God who needs nothing has no reason to do anything. If He created out of a lack, He is not self-sufficient; if He created for no reason, creation is arbitrary and my life has no point. And the Quran's own answer — 'I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me' — makes it worse: it sounds like a ruler who wants praise. Worse still, many of the beings He made will suffer, and some will end in Hell. How can that be called generosity?"

Why people ask it

It comes up in crises of meaning — after a loss, in depression, or simply when someone asks "what is the point of me?" It also comes up in philosophy, as a puzzle about how a perfect being can act at all.

Short answer

Muslim theologians agree that God does not create from need: "Allah is the Free of need" (35:15), and "I do not want from them any provision" (51:57). They disagree about how to describe His reasons. The Ashʿari school says God acts by His will and wisdom but not "for a purpose" that would complete Him; the Maturidi school says His acts are never futile and always wise. Either way, the benefit of creation goes to the creatures, not to God. Worship, in this view, is not a payment God collects but the shape of a life turned toward its source — and classical scholars read 51:56 in several ways, the most common being "to command them to worship Me". The hardest part is suffering and Hell: Islam answers with a creation made for testing (67:2), a mercy that "encompasses all things" (7:156) and outweighs anger, and a rule that no one is punished without a message (17:15). That answer is serious, but it does not remove every difficulty.

The full answer

9min read

For the heart and mind

If you are asking because your own life feels pointless, that feeling deserves attention before any argument. Meaning can feel absent even when it is there, especially in grief or depression. If the question comes with hopelessness, thoughts of not wanting to live, or weeks of numbness, speak to a doctor or a counsellor, and tell someone you trust today. In many countries you can call a local crisis line; findahelpline.com lists them by country. Faith and professional help are not rivals.

The Islamic answer is not "you exist to fill God's need". It is closer to "you exist because you were given existence, and you were made able to know the One who gave it". You were wanted, not used.

What the Quran says

God is free of need; people are the ones in need. "O mankind, you are those in need of Allah, while Allah is the Free of need, the Praiseworthy" (35:15). This is from Sura Fatir, a Meccan sura, addressed to all people.

The key verse, and the verse after it. "And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me" (51:56). The next verse removes the idea of need: "I do not want from them any provision, nor do I want them to feed Me" (51:57). Both are from Sura al-Dhariyat, Meccan. The verses before them (51:50–55) call the listener to "flee to Allah" and tell the Prophet (pbuh) to keep reminding people. So the passage is spoken to people who doubt or ignore God, and it ends by denying that God gains anything from them. Ibn Kathir reads 51:56 as: "I, Allah, only created them so that I order them to worship Me, not that I need them", and adds that God "does not need creatures, but rather, they are in need of Him in all conditions".

Creation as a test. "[He] who created death and life to test you [as to] which of you is best in deed" (67:2), from Sura al-Mulk, Meccan. This names a purpose that concerns the creature: the chance to do good.

Human beings as successors. When God tells the angels, "Indeed, I will make upon the earth a successive authority", they ask, "Will You place upon it one who causes corruption therein and sheds blood…?" God answers: "Indeed, I know that which you do not know" (2:30). The verse (Sura al-Baqara, Medinan) admits the cost of making human beings — corruption and bloodshed — and answers it with God's knowledge rather than with a full explanation.

What the Prophet (pbuh) taught

Mercy comes first. The Prophet (pbuh) said: "When Allah completed the creation, He wrote in His Book which is with Him on His Throne, 'My Mercy overpowers My Anger'" (Bukhārī 3194 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound), narrated by Abu Hurayra). This is the hadith most often quoted when Muslims explain what kind of Creator God is.

The "hidden treasure" saying is not a hadith. Many people quote: "I was a hidden treasure; I loved to be known. Hence I created the world so that I would be known" (one of several English versions given by Wikipedia). It has no chain of narrators. According to al-ʿAjluni's Kashf al-Khafaʾ, Ibn Taymiyya said that "it was not said by the Prophet (peace be upon him)" and that it has "neither Sahih (authentic) nor Daʿif (weak) Sanad (chain of narrators)", and that al-Zarkashi, Ibn Hajar, al-Suyuti and others agreed (as reported by al-Feqh). The Hadith Answers team calls it "a fabrication" and says one "should therefore abstain from quoting it", citing al-Maqasid al-Hasana (no. 838) and other works. It is popular because it puts into one sentence an idea many Sufis hold: that God created so that He would be known and loved (Wikipedia). Its meaning may be defended on other grounds, but it must not be presented as the Prophet's (pbuh) words.

How scholars have understood it

What 51:56 means: several readings, not one. According to the IslamWeb fatwa:

  • Mujahid (d. c. 722, a leading Successor in tafsir), by a chain it calls authentic, said the verse means "to command and forbid them". This is reported as his known opinion.
  • Ibn Jurayj (d. 767), as reported by Ibn Abi Hatim and cited by Ibn Taymiyya in Darʾ Taʿaruḍ al-ʿAql wa-l-Naql, said: "It means, except to know Me."
  • ʿAli ibn Abi Talib (ra), as reported by Ibn Taymiyya in Majmuʿ al-Fatawa: "except to command them to worship Me and call them to My worship". The grammarian al-Zajjaj chose the "command" reading too.
  • Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) listed seven readings and preferred: the worship the messengers taught, so the verse means God created them to command them to worship Him alone. He rejected reading "worship" as mere inborn knowledge of God.
  • Ibn ʿAbbas (ra), via ʿAli ibn Abi Talha, as quoted by Ibn Kathir: "So that they worship Me, willingly or unwillingly."

So "to know Me" is a real classical reading, but it belongs to Ibn Jurayj, not (as often said) to Mujahid, and it is not the majority reading. It is not a modern softening either. The readings can fit together: worship that the messengers taught includes knowing God, since one cannot turn to Someone one does not know.

Does God act "for a purpose"? The Ashʿari–Maturidi debate. Kalam (Islamic rational theology) asked whether God's acts have purposes (taʿlīl al-afʿāl, "giving reasons for God's acts"). Three positions:

  • The Muʿtazila (an early rationalist school) interpreted God's acts by "the principles of ṣalāḥ and aṣlaḥ" (the good and the best), "prioritising human benefit" (Kuyucu, 2026).
  • The Ashʿaris (the largest Sunni theological school, after al-Ashʿari, d. 936) accept that God's acts are wise, but define wisdom not as benefit but as conformity with God's knowledge and will. They hold that attributing a purpose (gharaḍ) to God would imply need, so they prefer to speak of God's will (irāda). They also argued that if benefit were the rule, God would have had to create humans directly in Paradise without any trial (Gültekin, 2025, as summarised in the abstract).
  • The Maturidis (the other main Sunni school, after al-Maturidi, d. 944) "affirm the non-futility of divine acts without reducing them to rational necessity" (Kuyucu, 2026).

Why it matters. The Ashʿari position protects God's self-sufficiency: nothing outside God moves Him. The Maturidi position protects the sense that creation has meaning: nothing God does is pointless. A reader who fears that creation is "arbitrary" is closer to the Maturidi worry; a reader who fears that God "needed" us is closer to the Ashʿari one. Both schools deny that God gains anything, and both deny that creation is futile. Ibn al-Qayyim's Shifāʾ al-ʿAlīl defends God's wise purposes at length, but it has not yet been consulted.

The reasoning

An argument in five steps.

  1. A being who lacks nothing cannot create to gain something. So if God creates, the point of creating is not in what God receives.
  2. Then the point must lie in what is given: existence, life, the ability to know and to choose. Giving without gaining is what we call generosity.
  3. Generosity toward beings who can understand includes letting them know the giver. That is why a self-sufficient God can still call people to know and worship Him: the call is for their sake (51:57; Ibn Kathir).
  4. Worship, in this sense, is not God's income. It is the creature's right relation to reality — gratitude to the source of everything it has. A person who never thanks anyone is not more free; he is less in touch with what is true.
  5. So a self-sufficient God creating is not a contradiction. It is what one would expect if God is good: goodness can give without needing.

Does "goodness shares itself" make creation necessary? If goodness must share itself, then God had to create, and creation would be necessary — which would make God dependent on the world in a new way. Muslim theologians of all schools rejected this: God creates freely, by His will (Ashʿari) and wisdom (Maturidi). The phrase "goodness naturally shares itself" is best read as describing why creation fits God's goodness, not why He was forced to create. Limit: philosophers dispute whether "free but fitting" is a stable middle position; this page does not settle that.

The strongest objection, and the reply

"Commanding worship shows a need for praise." Reply: the Quran denies that God gains anything (51:57; 35:15), and Ibn Kathir reads 51:56 in that light. A doctor who tells a patient to take medicine does not need the patient to recover; the command is for the patient. Limit: the analogy breaks where the Quran also threatens punishment for refusing, which a doctor does not do.

"If God gains nothing from my worship, why punish its absence?" Reply: in the Quran, punishment follows wrongdoing and rejecting a message one has truly received, not failing to "pay" God: "never would We punish until We sent a messenger" (17:15), and "whoever wills — let him believe; and whoever wills — let him disbelieve" (18:29). Refusing worship, in this view, is refusing the truth about oneself, and the harm falls on the one who refuses ("whoever errs only errs against it", 17:15). Limit: many readers still find eternal punishment for unbelief hard to reconcile with this, and the site's page on eternal Hell takes up the question at length.

"If God creates from generosity, why create beings who will suffer, or go to Hell? Is that generous?" Reply: the Islamic answer has three parts. First, a world with real choice and testing (67:2) is a world where harm is possible; the angels themselves raised this objection, and God answered that He knows what they do not (2:30). The Ashʿari argument that God could have created humans directly in Paradise — and chose not to — shows that the tradition saw this question clearly (Gültekin, 2025). Second, mercy is the governing attribute: "My mercy encompasses all things" (7:156), and "My Mercy overpowers My Anger" (Bukhārī 3194 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound)). Third, no one is punished without a message (17:15), and judgment of any person belongs to God. Limit: this is not a full explanation. It asks for trust that God's knowledge includes reasons we cannot see — the same move as "I know that which you do not know" (2:30). For someone who does not already trust God, that may not satisfy.

The range of views

  • Ashʿaris — God acts by will and wisdom, not for a purpose that would complete Him (Gültekin; Kuyucu).
  • Maturidis — God's acts are never futile; wisdom without rational necessity (Kuyucu).
  • Muʿtazila — God acts for the good of creatures (ṣalāḥ/aṣlaḥ) (Kuyucu).
  • On 51:56 — "to command them to worship Me" (ʿAli, Mujahid, al-Zajjaj, Ibn Taymiyya); "to know Me" (Ibn Jurayj); "willingly or unwillingly" (Ibn ʿAbbas, via Ibn Kathir).
  • Sufi thought — creation so that God might be known and loved, often expressed through the "hidden treasure" saying, which has no chain.

Questions readers ask next

What does Islam mean by worship, beyond ritual prayer?

In the classical readings above, worship (ʿibāda) is what the messengers taught: belief, prayer, and obedience to God's commands in daily life. Many scholars describe any good act done for God's sake as worship; that wider sense has not yet been checked in a named source.

What is the "hidden treasure" saying?

"I was a hidden treasure; I loved to be known. Hence I created the world so that I would be known." Hadith experts (Ibn Taymiyya, al-Zarkashi, Ibn Hajar, al-Suyuti and others) say it has no chain and is not from the Prophet (pbuh).

Who are the Ashʿaris and Maturidis?

The two main Sunni schools of theology, named after al-Ashʿari (d. 936) and al-Maturidi (d. 944). On this question, the Ashʿaris stress that God needs nothing; the Maturidis stress that nothing God does is pointless.

Is "worship means knowing God" a real reading?

Yes, from Ibn Jurayj (via Ibn Abi Hatim and Ibn Taymiyya). The more common reading is "to command them to worship Me".

Does God need me?

No. The Quran says the opposite (35:15; 51:57). You need Him, and He gives without needing.

If God knew some would go to Hell, why create them?

This is the hardest form of the question. The tradition answers with a real test (67:2), mercy that outweighs anger (Bukhārī 3194 Ṣaḥīḥ (sound)), no punishment without a message (17:15), and God's knowledge beyond ours (2:30). It does not claim to remove the difficulty entirely.

Key verses

وَمَا خَلَقْتُ ٱلْجِنَّ وَٱلْإِنسَ إِلَّا لِيَعْبُدُونِ۝٥٦

wamā khalaqtu l-jina wal-insa illā liyaʿbudūni

And I did not create the jinn and mankind except to worship Me.

51:56

Translation: Saheeh International

Sources

  1. Saheeh International, via the Tanzil text — 51:56, 51:57, 35:15, 67:2, 2:30, 7:156, 21:107, 17:15, 18:29.
  2. Ibn Kathir, Tafsir (abridged English), on 51:56–58, https://surahquran.com/tafsir-english-aya-56-sora-51.html.
  3. IslamWeb fatwa 426097, "True Meaning of Verse {And I Did Not Create the Jinn and Mankind Except to Worship Me}", https://islamweb.net/en/printfatwa.php?id=426097 — reports the views of Mujahid, Ibn Jurayj, ʿAli, al-Zajjaj and Ibn Taymiyya with their sources.
  4. Hadith Answers (Mawlana Suhail Motala, checked by Mawlana Haroon Abasoomar), "Hadith qudsi: I was an unknown treasure", https://hadithanswers.com/hadith-qudsi-i-was-an-unknown-treasure/.
  5. Al-Feqh, "The Hadith: 'Allah said, I was an unknown treasure…'", https://www.al-feqh.com/en/the-hadith-allah-said-i-was-an-unknown-treasure-but-i-wanted-to-be-known — reports al-ʿAjluni's Kashf al-Khafaʾ.
  6. "A Hidden Treasure", Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hidden_Treasure — the wording of the saying and its use in Sufi thought.
  7. Muhammed Bilal Gültekin, "Mütekaddimîn Dönemi Eşʿarî Kelamında İlâhî Hikmet", Kader 23:2 (2025), pp. 441–470, https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/kaderdergi/article/1636319 — abstract.
  8. Mehmet Kuyucu, "Classical Theological Schools and the Conception of Divine Wisdom (Ḥikma)", Tefsir Araştırmaları Dergisi 10:1 (2026), pp. 1–19, https://dergipark.org.tr/en/pub/tader/article/1860014 — abstract.
  9. Sahih al-Bukhari 3194 (sunnah.com), https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3194.
  10. Ibn al-Qayyim, Shifāʾ al-ʿalīl (Ar.)
  11. Ṭabāṭabāʾī, al-Mīzān (Per.)
  12. Elmalılı (Tr.)
  13. Steger (2006)