Almighty God sends calamities and inflicts tribulations; is this not tyrannical towards the innocent in particular, and animals even?

T h e A n s w e r : God forbid, the sovereignty is His. He holds sway over His possessions as He wishes. Moreover, a skilful craftsman makes you a model in return for a wage and dresses you in a bejewelled garment that he has most artistically fashioned. Then in order to display his art and skill, he shortens it and lengthens it, measures it and trims it, and he makes you sit down and stand up. Are you able to say to him: "You have made the garment which made me beautiful ugly. You have caused me trouble, making me sit down and stand up." Of course, you cannot say that. If you did say it, you would be crazy.

In just the same way, the All-Glorious Maker has clothed you in a most artistically wrought being bejewelled with faculties like the eye, the ear, and the tongue. In order to display the embroideries of various of His Names, He makes you ill, He afflicts you with tribulations, He makes you hungry, He fills you, He makes you thirsty; He makes you revolve in states like these. In order to strengthen the essence of life and display the manifestation of His Names, He makes you journey in numerous such conditions. If you say: "Why do you inflict these calamities on me?", as is indicated in the comparison, a hundred instances of wisdom will silence you. In any event, calm, repose, idleness, monotony, and arrest from action are forms of non-existence, and harm. Action and change are existence and good. Life find its perfection through action, it progresses by means of tribulations. Life manifests various actions through the manifestation of the Divine Names, it is purified, finds strength, it unfolds and expands, it becomes a mobile pen to write its own appointed course; it performs its duty, and acquires the right to receive reward in the Hereafter.