Allah Ta'ala was a Hidden Treasure and He loved to be known/recognized, as the famous Hadith-Qudsi tells us. In 'Fihi ma fihi', Imam Jalaluddin Rumi, may Allah be Merciful to him, explained this to the effect that it is as if Allah was saying "I created the whole universe, and the goal of all of it is to make Myself manifest, sometimes through gentleness (lutf) and sometimes through severity (qahr)."

 This pair of Divine Attributes (lutf and qahr) reverberates throughout the universe, but you will note that gentleness always has the upper hand over severity, because, as the sound hadith has it," Allah's mercy takes precedence over His wrath ".

 But just as light cannot be perceived without darkness, and just as presence cannot be grasped without absence, so also mercy demands wrath, gentleness uses severity for its own purposes, and roses surround their beauty with thorns.

The interplay of gentleness and severity appears in the contrasting qualities of light and fire, angels and devils, Intellect and ego, Adam and Iblis, Saints and unbelievers, joy and heartache, spring and autumn, intoxication and sobriety... Only love an harmonize all opposites and complementary qualities and make them one... the literal sense of Tawheed. A basic implication of Tawheed, as we know in Islam, is that everything comes from One and returns to the One.

All activity and rest, strife and war, peace and harmony, are forms displaying the Hidden Treasure. This implies that Allah Ta'ala is the source of all we see. Given the precedence of mercy over wrath, however, all that appears as evil is in fact serving a greater good that is beyond most people's Ken. Evil cannot be eliminated from the universe, because that would dislocate the created realm. This, in a way, is why Allah appointed 2 Sheriffs to keep the world in order - - Remembrance of Him (Zikr) and heedlessness (Ghaflat).

 You will not know evil until you know good, there can be no right path without wrong paths, no pleasure without pain, no mercy without wrath.

In understanding and noting all these, we must endeavor to always work towards seeking Allah's Pleasure and gentleness.