Someone asked: On the point about the creator having no imperfections, how does that square with imperfections in the creation? Our eyes are wired back to front, for example, and there are other numerous biological anomalies brought about via natural selection – you may be tempted to argue that these are imperfections by design to challenge our faith or somesuch, but that’s stretching pretty far. I mean where’s the challenge? What divine test does the wiring of our eyes represent?
Answer: Eyes cannot be perfect. If they were wired as you would like, you could say why the wires? If not the wires, you could say why can’t I see smaller things? Why can’t I see further? The possibilities are not limited, but no matter what the specification is, it will still be imperfect, because an eye is something limited, no matter how powerful it is. Your request for perfection therefore, implies that the impossible is possible. It is like a request for a part that is larger than its whole. The question rather becomes: “Why that limit and not another?” and the answer is always, “It is as Allah had willed it. He willed that limit and not another.” This has no bearing on the assertion that Allah Himself is perfect, or on His existence. It might be a test, and it might not, but it certainly seems that you are challenged by it in terms of faith. When Muslims say that Allah is perfect they mean that He has no needs. This means He has no obligations to create someone’s eye with a particular specification, or to test someone or not test him. If you say that He must create different wiring then you are saying that He has needs, which contradicts perfection.
Author: Shaykh Abu Adam al Naruiji
Someone commented here:
http://maniacmuslim.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=18372&pid=937977&st=0&#entry937977
“Everything Allah makes has to be perfect because everything He creates is made exactly the way He wants them to be. Allah creates every single detail exactly the way He wants them to be.
If a person has an extra finger on his right hand for example, it’s just something that looks different, unusual, or weird to us- but we shouldn’t think of it as being “imperfect”. Maybe there’s a good reason why Allah made him like that. “
Of course things come to be as Aļļaah has willed them, but a creation is always limited. The limit is as Aļļaah has willed, and created things differ in their relative level of perfection or imperfection. If someone has a 6th finger it means that Aļļaah has willed for it to be so, but that is not a perfect hand with respect to the normal standard of having 5. Created perfection is different from absolute perfection. Only Aļļaah is attributed with absolute perfection, because He does not have needs. Created perfection, on the other hand, is according to some standard, it is something relative. For example, the highest level of human moral perfection is that of the prophets, everybody else is lesser than that. Likewise, some people are faster runner than other, better looking than others, etc.