79ما أَصابَكَ مِن حَسَنَةٍ فَمِنَ اللَّهِ ۖ وَما أَصابَكَ مِن سَيِّئَةٍ فَمِن نَفسِكَ ۚ وَأَرسَلناكَ لِلنّاسِ رَسولًا ۚ وَكَفىٰ بِاللَّهِ شَهيدًاMuhammad AsadWhatever good happens to thee is from God; and whatever evil befalls thee is from thyself.1 AND WE have sent thee [O Muhammad] as an apostle unto all mankind: and none can bear witness [thereto] as God does.There is no contradiction between this statement and the preceding one that "all is from God". In the world-view of the Qur'an, God is the ultimate source of all happening: consequently, all good that comes to man and all evil that befalls him flows, in the last resort, from God's will. However, not everything that man regards as "evil fortune" is really, in its final effect, evil - for, "it may well be that you hate a thing the while it is good for you, and it may well be that you love a thing the while it is bad for you: and God knows, whereas you do not know" (2:216). Thus, many an apparent "evil" may sometimes be no more than a trial and a God-willed means of spiritual growth through suffering, and need not necessarily be the result of a wrong choice or a wrong deed on the part of the person thus afflicted. It is, therefore, obvious that the "evil" or "evil fortune" of which this verse speaks has a restricted connotation, inasmuch as it refers to evil in the moral sense of the word: that is to say, to suffering resulting from the actions or the behaviour of the person concerned, and this in accordance with the natural law of cause and effect which God has decreed for all His creation, and which the Qur'an describes as "the way of God" (sunnat Allah). For all such suffering man has only himself to blame, since "God does not wrong anyone by as much as at atom's weight" (4:40).