Understanding Iblis and his rebellion
One of the most important themes addressed in the Quran is the story of Iblis. He is mentioned 11 times by name, 9 times relating to his refusal against Allah’s command to prostrate himself before Adam.
Allah (swt) says in the Quran (7:11–17):
Surely We created you, then shaped you, then said to the angels, “Prostrate before Adam,” so they all did — but not Iblîs, who refused to prostrate with the others.
Allah asked, “What prevented you from prostrating when I commanded you?” He replied, “I am better than he is: You created me from fire and him from clay.”
Allah said, “Then get down from Paradise! It is not for you to be arrogant here. So get out! You are truly one of the disgraced.”
He appealed, “Then delay my end until the Day of their resurrection.”
Allah said, “You are delayed until the appointed Day˺.”
He said, “For leaving me to stray I will lie in ambush for them on Your Straight Path.
I will approach them from their front, their back, their right, their left, and then You will find most of them ungrateful.”
In the traditional mainstream understanding of these passages, Iblis was a victim of his own vanity and pride, and for that very reason defied God’s command to prostrate himself before Adam. Iblis was therefore, guilty of self-inflicted degradation and banished from heaven. He vows to misguide humanity until the very end. But is this dualistic understanding all there is to the Islamic understanding of Iblis?
In the paper Ahmad Ghazali’s Satan, published in 2019 in Theological Studies, this notion is expanded on with reference to Ahmad Ghazali’s understanding. And what emerges is a dense and complex understanding of Satan.
“The demand to bow down in worship before a created being, someone other than God, is in fact a direct slap in the face to the most sacred command of mystical monotheism. Strictly speaking, the refusal to prostrate oneself before a being other than God must have seemed to them an act of genuine monotheistic adoration of God. In this way, Satan now becomes, so to speak, more monotheistic than God himself, unless God wants something other than what he ordered.
Satan’s refusal to bow down with all the other angels before God’s creation in human form signifies that Satan alone manifests the purest devotion to God’s oneness. He will not compromise his adherence to this monotheistic ideal even if God himself commands him to. Satan the disobedient thus becomes the improbable champion of tawhid, the unwavering conviction that God is eternally and essentially one and alone to be worshipped. Satan practises pure worship of God contrary to the explicit command of God. He becomes cursed for his disobedience to God’s command, which, however, was really an act of exclusive adoration as God had otherwise demanded (Ritter 2003:555). Therefore, his disobedience was because of his love and single-heartedness (see Ghazali 2013:75). Ghazali was the classical representative of Satan’s rehabilitation, who dared to say: ‘who does not learn tauhid from Satan, is an infidel’ (Ibn al-Jawzi 1986:221) — a remark that infuriated the orthodox but found an echo in many later Sufi writings (Schimmel 1975:194)”
In Ghazali’s conceptualisation, Shaitan is obedient to the Divine Will, yet disobedient to the Divine Command. And it seems he was not the only scholar to have presented this kind of view. Sufi teachers like Hallaj presented “the story of Satan as a predestined scenario in which Satan plays the role of a tragic and jealous lover of Allah who, unable to perceive the Divine Image in Adam, was compelled to disobey the divine mandate to bow down to him.”
“Satan, as a lover of God, was confronted with a tragic dilemma. Either he must dishonour the ‘Beloved’ (God) by bowing down to something lesser, or he must disobey him and accept the banishment and condemnation. Satan was faced with a predicament presenting a choice between God’s will and his command. The myth of Satan in an allusive and paradoxical way explains the demands of a total lover for God above even the obedience to God set forth in his commands. This love was an affliction (bala’) –affliction in love. This affliction was not merely the trial that the lover — here Satan — had to endure; it was the ‘jewel of God’s treasury’.”
“For Ghazali, as for Hallaj before him, Satan is perfect in testifying to unity. His refusal to bow to Adam results not from arrogance, but from the purest and most sincere love of God. He is, therefore, a model for those who follow the path of love.”
What is more, having a curse placed on him, Shaitan is distinguished from all of God’s creation. It has also given him dominion in the material world.
“Having the curse placed on him has not been completely without benefit for Satan. Because of it, he has acquired a long life and a position of power over the whole world (cf. Koran 1983, XVII, 62 ‘Verily, if You allow me to live until the Final Day, I will surely force his [Adam’s] descendants to be under my power except for a few’). And he stands continually at God’s door.
Being cursed also appears to be a distinction which is intended on God’s part and not just perceived as such by Satan. Only outwardly does it have the character of an unmasking to conceal the real intimacy. Satan himself wants this distinction, the curse. He wants to possess something special which distinguishes him from all the other angels and creatures.
By inviting the wrath of God, Iblis becomes the object of an expression of God’s will aimed especially at him. “”Indeed, the beloved, when he punishes the lover, confers distinction on him by being attentive to him, whereas he may be utterly indifferent towards others. Bad treatment, after all, amounts to establishing a relationship. If the archer wishes to hit you with his arrow, he must turn his face towards you completely. To hit you he must focus his mind on you completely.”
Iblis is therefore seen to be only playing the role that has been assigned to him by Almighty God.
The paper ends with the question: But there is still a question, if he was a true lover, why he did not completely succumb to God’s command and refused to prostrate before Adam?
Many explanations have been put forth in scholarship for this refusal. One reason is that Iblis (made of smokeless fire) compared himself to Adam (made of clay) and stressed that he was superior: “I am better than him” says Iblis in the Quran. This interpretation suggests that Iblis overlooked the divine spark God bestowed upon Adam. By focusing on the empty vessel — form — and physicality or materiality of Adam, he failed to see the deeper hikmah (wisdom) of God’s creation and how every creation is intimately tied to the Divine order.
Fate and free will
So did Iblis choose his fate, or was it chosen for him? Or both?
Was he exercising his agency when he chose not to prostrate, and if so, why not?
Or did God intend to make an example of him, to show how vices like pride and even inflexibility (his fixation on the Oneness of God and not His hukum) can lead to the downfall of even the most observant of believers?
We have agency and responsibility
One thing is certain, Iblis has no control over devout servants of Allah in this realm.
‘As for my servants’, says the Qur’an, ‘you shall have no power over them’ (17: 65). Thus all that Satan can do is to cause people to err, to make people cherish false illusions, to tempt, and to invite people towards their dark egocentricity by holding out to them immense pleasure and material benefits.
He has no power to coerce, however. And this is important to understand, especially in the context of insan being a khalifa (God’s viceroy) in the world.
Accordingly, the Qur’an makes it quite plain elsewhere that on the Day of Judgement, Iblis would address the men who had followed him in the following words: ‘I had no power over you except to call you; but you listened to me: then reproach me not, but reproach your own selves’ (14: 22).
And during this difficult reckoning, human beings will betray themselves:
“On this Day We will seal their mouths, their hands will speak to Us, and their feet will testify to what they used to commit.” (36: 65)
“When they reach it, their ears, eyes, and skin will testify against what they used to do. They will ask their skin ˹furiously˺, “Why have you testified against us?” It will say, “We have been made to speak by Allah, Who causes all things to speak. He is the One Who˺ created you the first time, and to Him you were bound to return.” (41: 20–21)
On Tawheed
I heard a naqshibandi shaikh say recently that Iblis did not deny God’s existence, he did not question tawheed. He just could not come to terms with why he was not favoured.
He could not see the divinity in all things, including in God’s creation. There is a lot of wisdom in this rendering: if we want to truly believe in God, we must honour all his creation, show humility about our own intellect, our nature, and our devotion, and affirm that divinity — His imprint — is in all things around us.
In the words of Charles Le Gai Eaton in ‘Islam and the Destiny of Man’:
“God gave to Adam and to his descendants the gift of intelligence, asking in return, not for blind praise, but for a lucid and joyful understanding of the nature of all things and their source.”
