The Essence of Islam – Volume II — Page 473
The Purpose of Creation 473. His attributes of retribution and bounty might be recognized. After death, He will raise up mankind again so that He might be recognized as All-Powerful. His purpose in all His wonderful works is that He should be recognized. Thus, by the creation of the world and by the system of recompense, what is desired is the understanding of God, which is the essence of worship. This proves that God Almighty Himself demands that His creatures should attain His understanding, the perfect reality of which is known through worship. As a beauteous one on account of the perfection of his beauty desires to display it, so God Almighty, Who possesses to perfection the reality of beauty, desires that His excellence should be disclosed to people. This proves that God Almighty demands worship which is the basis and means of recognition from His servants and His supremacy attends to the destruction of one who opposes His desire and denies His worship and turns away from it. If you reflect over the world and observe carefully that which God. Almighty has hitherto meted out to rebels and nonbelievers and that which He has always done to the faithless ones and the wrong-doers, you would realize that without doubt it is an established verity that God. Almighty, by the demand of His Being, loves goodness and hates evil and is at enmity with it. He desires that people should discard vice and should adopt goodness, and though goodness or evil, which man practices, does not in any way interfere with God's kingdom, yet that is. His demand. It is thus obvious that if God Almighty had not created the souls, He would have no right to demand from any soul why it did not render to Him that perfect worship that is due to one's Creator. [Surmah Chashm Āryā, Rūḥānī Khazā'in, vol. 2, pp. 263-268]