Surah 39:36–37:
Is not Allah sufficient for His servant? And they threaten you with those other than Him. And he whom Allah leaves astray—for him there is no guide. And he whom Allah guides—for him there is no misguider. Is not Allah Exalted in Might and Owner of Retribution?
When you look at the wider Quranic canon, Surah 39:36–37 represents just one side of a deeply confused, tri-partite explanation for why evil, sin, and disbelief exist in the world. Depending on the rhetorical need of the moment, the Quran cycles through three mutually exclusive authors of evil:
As stated in Surah 39:36-37 and reinforced by Surah, 4:78:
"...And if evil befalls them, they say, 'This is from you.' Say, 'All things are from Allah.' So what is with those people that they can hardly understand any statement?"
Directly contradicting the verse above, the very next verse (Surah 4:79) shifts the blame entirely to mankind:
"What comes to you of good is from Allah, but what comes to you of evil, is from yourself..."
In dozens of other passages, a third party is introduced as the true architect of misguidance. For example, in Surah 4:119–120, Satan vows to misguide humanity, and the text validates this threat:
"[Satan said], 'And I will mislead them, and I will arouse in them [sinful] desires...' ... Satan promises them and arouses desire in them. But Satan does not promise them except delusion."
This is a glaring structural contradiction. You cannot logically claim that all misguidance is an unalterable divine monopoly (39:36-37), while simultaneously claiming that evil originates entirely from human deficiency (4:79), while also claiming that it is driven by a rogue cosmic rebel named Iblis (4:119).
The text shifts the target to maximize immediate emotional impact: it invokes absolute divine determinism to comfort Muhammad when he is rejected, but switches to human accountability when it wants to threaten sinners with hellfire.
The sheer irreconcilable weight of this contradiction is exactly what caused the early Muslim world to structurally fracture into warring theological schools during the Abbasid era