To the Platonist-radical monotheist, whatever exists, inasmuch as it does exist, is an emanation of the divine. All being can reflect, to one degree or another, the splendor of God. The more brilliantly He shows up in it, the higher its ontological status, and accordingly its value. Evil is ontological weakness, a lack, non-being. To the extent that a thing is whole or good or sound or fulfilled, it is a mode of the divine Being. And thus it is that Hayy’s soul itself is “breathed” into him by God, that is to say the endowment of his fitra is a mode of the divine, and man is made “in the image
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