Texts of Islam

The Prophets, Their Lives and Their Stories: Adam: Angels...

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This is an Islamic theological commentary — an exegetical and devotional text in the tradition of Quranic tafsir (interpretation) — working through the story of Iblis's (Satan's) refusal to prostrate before Adam as recounted across multiple Quranic verses. The text traces a detailed narrative of the exchange between God and Iblis: Iblis's pride-driven refusal, his argument that fire is superior to clay, and the lengthy negotiation in which God grants him power over humanity (access to their bloodstreams, ability to take any form, homes in their chests) in compensation for his millennia of prior worship. A key interpretive move explains Iblis's four-directional assault on humanity — "from before them, from behind them, from their right, from their left" — as corresponding to four specific spiritual corruptions: complacency about judgment, miserliness, corrupted doctrine, and love of worldly pleasure. The work takes a distinctly Shia Muslim perspective, drawing heavily on sayings attributed to Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Imam Al-Sadiq, and explicitly endorsing the Imami position that Iblis was a Jinn rather than an Angel, while engaging seriously with the minority view that he was angelic. A recurring argumentative thrust is that Iblis's sin was the first act of analogical reasoning gone wrong — judging by material origin rather than by God's sovereign will — and that this error of proud comparison is the root of all subsequent disbelief.

The Prophets, Their Lives and Their Stories: Adam: Angels...

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