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Who Is Satan in Islam_ _ Iblis Explained · Abide Meditation App

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  Speaker 1: He's called the lurking, whisperer, the accursed One, the father
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  Speaker 1: of bitterness. In Islamic tradition, the devil is a bit
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  Speaker 1: different from how he's conceptualized in Christianity. He's not a
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  Speaker 1: fallen angel waging war on heaven, nor does he compete
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  Speaker 1: with God for dominion over humanity. Instead, he plays a
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  Speaker 1: more insidious role, tempting, deceiving, and challenging humanity from the shadows.
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  Speaker 1: Over the centuries, scholars, mystics, and theologians have wrestled with
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  Speaker 1: what he stands for and what lessens his story holds.
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  Speaker 1: One of the names of this figure is Aschaitan, that is,
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  Speaker 1: the devil, the Satan. He's also known as Aladu, literally
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  Speaker 1: the adversary, which you may know is a translation of
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  Speaker 1: the Hebrew word satan as well. But the Koran gives
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  Speaker 1: him a specific name, Eblise. So who is Oblise really?
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  Speaker 1: Where did he come from? And what exactly is his deal?
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  Speaker 1: Why is he so obsessed with leading people astray? Now?
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  Speaker 1: Islamic tradition is incredibly diverse. There are, after all, almost
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  Speaker 1: two billion Muslims today, but it's a fairly universal blank
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  Speaker 1: belief that Oblise is a corrupting force, seducing the sinful
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  Speaker 1: and luring them into Gehenna or hell. He induces impious
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  Speaker 1: behavior in those he can deceive, particularly pride, envy, lust, gluttony, greed,
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  Speaker 1: and hatred. According to tradition, he can be invisible or
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  Speaker 1: take any human form except for that of the prophet Muhammed.
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  Speaker 1: He can manifest in dreams or enter people's bodies like
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  Speaker 1: a disease. He's also said to distract people during prayer,
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  Speaker 1: making them forget if they've already prayed, or jumble their
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  Speaker 1: words so the prayer doesn't count. One of his signature
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  Speaker 1: moves is whispering sinful suggestions in the ears of anyone
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  Speaker 1: who will listen. In fact, there's even an Arabic word
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  Speaker 1: for his whispers was Wassa, which even sounds like a whisper.
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  Speaker 1: One Hideth, attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, illustrates the extremes
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  Speaker 1: to which oblise will go to disrupt prayer. The story
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  Speaker 1: goes that a man was mentioned to the prophet who
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  Speaker 1: had accidentally slept through the morning prayer. The prophet said
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  Speaker 1: Satan urinated in his ears. In other words, missing prayer
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  Speaker 1: was not just seen as oversleeping it was framed as
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  Speaker 1: the result of Satanic interference. Just to be clear, most
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  Speaker 1: Muslims understand the prophet was speaking metaphorically. Here. Eblis also
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  Speaker 1: commands lesser devils known as shayatin, but these devils are
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  Speaker 1: not the pop culture red skinned, horned creatures with pitchforks.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, the Koran is explicit that shayatin can be
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  Speaker 1: human or gin, which are supernatural beings that can be
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  Speaker 1: good or evil. So devils are not believed to be
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  Speaker 1: separate entities in the Islamic tradition. Rather, their opposition to
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  Speaker 1: Islam is what makes humans or gin devilish. Openly condemning
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  Speaker 1: and rejecting ablise is an important signifier of faith for
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  Speaker 1: many Muslims. One way they do that is through the Tawu,
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  Speaker 1: a short prayer is said before reading the Koran or
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  Speaker 1: starting an important task. It goes, I seek refuge in
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  Speaker 1: God from the accursed devil. Another example happens during the
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  Speaker 1: Hodge pilgrimage, which every Muslim is expected to do at
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  Speaker 1: least once in their life if they're able. One of
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  Speaker 1: the rituals conducted during this pilgrimage is the stoning of
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  Speaker 1: the devil, which involves literally throwing stones at a series
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  Speaker 1: of walls in the valley of Mina. This commemorates the
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  Speaker 1: story about the prophet Abraham. According to Islamic tradition, when
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  Speaker 1: Abraham was preparing his son Ishmael to be sacrificed, to
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  Speaker 1: talk him out of it, but Abraham resisted. Each time
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  Speaker 1: Eblize showed up, Abraham threw stones at him until he
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  Speaker 1: disappeared into the earth. As with Christian tradition, Eblise is
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  Speaker 1: identified as the one who tempted Adam and Eve out
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  Speaker 1: of paradise, though in Islamic tradition he doesn't show up
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  Speaker 1: as a serpent. For example, check out this fourteenth century
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  Speaker 1: drawing of Adam and Eve in the Garden, which depicts
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  Speaker 1: Eblise as an old man. That human like depiction actually
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  Speaker 1: lines up with how many Muslims understand Ablise more broadly.
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  Speaker 1: Unlike in Christianity, where Satan is often described as a
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  Speaker 1: fallen angel, most Muslims today believe Eblise was never an
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  Speaker 1: angel at all. Instead, he's usually seen as one of
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  Speaker 1: the Gin, which, as I mentioned already, is a different
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  Speaker 1: being altogether. More on them in a bit. It's also
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  Speaker 1: important to note that Eblise is not seen as the
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  Speaker 1: ultimate source of evil in Islam. While he tries to
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  Speaker 1: trick mortals into committing evil acts, he's not their cause.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, the story of his fall from grace told
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  Speaker 1: in the Koran, implies that he gets God's permission to
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  Speaker 1: tempt humanity. The story in the Koran goes like this.
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  Speaker 1: When God created Adam from clay and breathed the life
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  Speaker 1: into him, he called together the angels and told them
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  Speaker 1: to bow to this new human. Ablice refused, and when
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  Speaker 1: God asked him why, he replied, since he's made a
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  Speaker 1: fire and Adam is made from clay, he is superior
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  Speaker 1: to Adam and will not bow. For that defiance, God
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  Speaker 1: expelled Ablise and placed a curse on him, but before
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  Speaker 1: he left, Eblice asked for a delay in his punishment.
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  Speaker 1: He wanted to be allowed to roam the earth until
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  Speaker 1: the day of resurrection, when all souls are judged and
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  Speaker 1: either sent to Paradise or to Hell. God agrees, and
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  Speaker 1: that's when Ablist declares his intention to deceive and corrupt
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  Speaker 1: mortals except for God's chosen servants. God allows the plan
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  Speaker 1: and tells Eblice that those who follow him will join
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  Speaker 1: him in Hell. There's a lot to unpack from the story. First,
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  Speaker 1: notice that his disobedience before God is not the sort
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  Speaker 1: of militarized rebellion that say John Milton describes and Paradise Lost,
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  Speaker 1: where Satan leads an armed insurrection against Heaven. Instead, it's
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  Speaker 1: a simple refusal, a refusal to follow God's commandment to
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  Speaker 1: bow before Adam. You might be asking why were the
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  Speaker 1: angels supposed to bow to Adam in the first place. Well,
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  Speaker 1: the Koran doesn't say outright, and Muslims have debated this
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  Speaker 1: for centuries. His defiance before God is not implied to
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  Speaker 1: reflect any attempt to compete with God. Instead, it seems
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  Speaker 1: to reflect his arrogance or stubbornness. Nor does Oblise hide
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  Speaker 1: his intentions to lead mortals astray. In fact, God specifically
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  Speaker 1: postpones his punishment so that he'll be able to do so.
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  Speaker 1: This is a vitally important idea often articulated in the Koran.
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  Speaker 1: Evil exists not because God can't stop it, but because
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  Speaker 1: he explicitly allows it. See for example, Sarah six, verse
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  Speaker 1: one twelve, which reads, and thus we have made for
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  Speaker 1: every prophet and enemy, devils from mankind and jin inspiring
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  Speaker 1: to one another decorative speech in delusion. But if your
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  Speaker 1: Lord had willed, they would not have done it. So
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  Speaker 1: Eblise is not conceptualized as God's arch enemy, nor does
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  Speaker 1: he have any pretensions about being equal to God. But
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  Speaker 1: despite these differences, the Islamic concept of Oblise is closely
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  Speaker 1: connected to the character of the Satan in the Hebrew
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  Speaker 1: Bible and Christianity's notion of the devil. In fact, many
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  Speaker 1: scholars believe that the name Oblise, which does not appear
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  Speaker 1: in any known source prior to the rise of Islam,
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  Speaker 1: may actually derive from the Greek word diabolos, which is
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  Speaker 1: the root of the English word devil and diabolical, and
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  Speaker 1: which itself is a direct translation of the Hebrew word Satan.
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  Speaker 1: Though it's unclear exactly how Diabolos might have morphed into Eblis,
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  Speaker 1: the phonetic shift is unusual and still very much debated.
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  Speaker 1: Other theories link the name to Arabic roots meaning despair
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  Speaker 1: or confusion. Although the story of Satan refusing to bow
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  Speaker 1: down before Adam does not appear in most Christian sources,
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  Speaker 1: remarkably similar versions do show up in some pre Islamic texts.
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  Speaker 1: One example is the Syriac Christian Book of the Cave
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  Speaker 1: of Treasures, which scholars date before the Koran. In that text,
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  Speaker 1: God presents Adam in a glorious manner to the angels,
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  Speaker 1: who are then commanded to bow themselves before him. And
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  Speaker 1: when the prince of the lower order of angels saw
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  Speaker 1: what great majesty had been bestowed upon Adam, he was
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  Speaker 1: jealous of him from that day on, and he did
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  Speaker 1: not wish to worship him. And he said to his hosts,
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  Speaker 1: you shall not worship him, and you shall not praise
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  Speaker 1: him with the angels. It is more seemly that you
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  Speaker 1: should worship me, because I am fire and spirit, and
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  Speaker 1: not that I should worship a thing of dust. According
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  Speaker 1: to the text, for this offense, God expels him from heaven.
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  Speaker 1: A similar story appears in a fourth century Coptic text
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  Speaker 1: from Egypt. The Archbishop Timothy of Alexandria describes God placing
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  Speaker 1: a crown on Adam's head and a scepter in his hand,
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  Speaker 1: and then commanding the angels to worship him, but Satan refuses,
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  Speaker 1: since he was a being of great pride. He drew
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  Speaker 1: himself up in a shameless manner and said, it is
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  Speaker 1: more seemly that this human should come and worship me,
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  Speaker 1: for I existed before he came into being. According to
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  Speaker 1: this version, God orders the other angels to strip Satan
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  Speaker 1: naked and torture him as humiliation for his pride before
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  Speaker 1: casting him out of heaven. So the Charonic account of
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  Speaker 1: Eblis's fall from grace is strikingly similar to several apocryphal
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  Speaker 1: Christian texts. These texts were circulating throughout the Near East
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  Speaker 1: in late antiquity, and they portray Satan as a being
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  Speaker 1: overcome with pride who refuses about Adam and as a result,
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  Speaker 1: is punished by God. Their echoes in the chronic story
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  Speaker 1: suggest a shared conceptual framework and highlight how the Koran
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  Speaker 1: engages with adapts and reinterprets earlier Near Eastern traditions and
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  Speaker 1: situates them within its own theological framework. Now, as I
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  Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, most modern Muslims agree that Eblise was never
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  Speaker 1: an angel, but rather one of the Gin. Today, angels
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  Speaker 1: in Gin are understood as distinct supernatural beings. Angels are
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  Speaker 1: God's obedient servants, often described as lacking free will. Gin,
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  Speaker 1: on the other hand, are unpredictable. They have free will
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  Speaker 1: and can be either good or evil. The Quran quotes
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  Speaker 1: a group of Gin saying among us are Muslims literally
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  Speaker 1: those who submit to God, and among us are the unjust.
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  Speaker 1: So like humans, Gin exists in both righteous and wicked forms.
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  Speaker 1: They live alongside humanity, but can remain invisible or take
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  Speaker 1: various shapes, including appearing as humans. However, while most modern
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  Speaker 1: Muslims except that Eblise was a Gin, early Islamic thought
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  Speaker 1: was not so uniform. In fact, the idea that he
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  Speaker 1: was an angel had notable support in Islam's first several centuries.
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  Speaker 1: In the early tenth century, one of the most famous
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  Speaker 1: early Muslim theologians, Altubari, not only affirmed that Eblise was
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  Speaker 1: an angel, but he also cited a number of traditions
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  Speaker 1: claiming that he was once a kind of angelic general.
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  Speaker 1: According to these reports, Eblize led heavenly armies against a
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  Speaker 1: group of Gin who had departed from Paradise and made
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  Speaker 1: their home on Earth, where they were spreading corruption. After
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  Speaker 1: defeating them, Ablice grew proud of his own power, and
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  Speaker 1: this arrogance ultimately led to his defiance of God in
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  Speaker 1: refusal to bow before Adam. What's really interesting, though, is
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  Speaker 1: some of these traditions at Altabari sites give the name
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  Speaker 1: of Ablise. Before his fall, he was once called Azazel.
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  Speaker 1: This sounds a lot like Azazel, which is the name
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  Speaker 1: of a fallen angel linked with a group of angels
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  Speaker 1: called the Watchers. In the first Book of Enoch, the
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  Speaker 1: Watchers teach mankind, the art of warfare, and sorcery, among
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  Speaker 1: other things. So it seems that by the early tenth century,
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  Speaker 1: traditions echoing the Book of Enoch had entered elite Muslim discourse,
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  Speaker 1: shaping interpretations of Eblis's backstory. These parallels suggest a broader
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  Speaker 1: cross pollination between Jewish, Christian and early Islamic thought. Now
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  Speaker 1: you might be asking, how is it possible that Muslims
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  Speaker 1: could disagree about whether Eblise was an angel or a gin.
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  Speaker 1: Didn't I just say that his fall for grace is
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  Speaker 1: told multiple times in the Koran? Well, yes it is,
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  Speaker 1: but what the Koran has to say about his origins
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  Speaker 1: is complicated. Sometimes it seems to endorse the idea that
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  Speaker 1: he's an angel Sura fifteen, verse thirty one. So the
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  Speaker 1: angels prostrated all of them entirely except Eblise. At other
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  Speaker 1: points it implies that he's a Gin. Sara seven, verse
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  Speaker 1: twelve says you created me from fire, while Sara fifteen
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  Speaker 1: twenty seven says the Gin were created from scorching fire.
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  Speaker 1: And then there's one verse that seems to support both
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  Speaker 1: sides at the same time, Sura eighteen, verse fifty We
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  Speaker 1: said to the angels, prostrate to Adam, and they prostrated,
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  Speaker 1: except for Eblise. He was of the Gin and departed
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  Speaker 1: from the command of his lord. So what's going on here?
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  Speaker 1: The first half of the verse seems to include him
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  Speaker 1: as part of the angels, the second seems to state
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  Speaker 1: clearly that he's one of the Gin, and proponents of
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  Speaker 1: Eblise being a Gin will point to that phrase he
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  Speaker 1: was of the Gin. Matters settled, right, They'll correctly observe
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  Speaker 1: that the prior phrase doesn't clearly state that he was
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  Speaker 1: one of the angels. Like consider this phrase, the headmaster
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  Speaker 1: told the students to raise their hands. Everyone did accept
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  Speaker 1: the teacher. Clearly, the teacher here is not considered one
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  Speaker 1: of the students, just as Oblise may not be one
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  Speaker 1: of the angels. According to this interpretation, he's understood to
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  Speaker 1: be one of the pious Gin who once held a
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  Speaker 1: seat on the heavenly Council without himself being angelic. According
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  Speaker 1: to one version of this, Eblise was captured by the
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  Speaker 1: angels during an earlier heavenly war, and while he was
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  Speaker 1: still young, was raised among the angels. But although he
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  Speaker 1: was grouped with the angels and shared their company, he
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  Speaker 1: remained fundamentally different, a Gin, not an angel. But proponents
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  Speaker 1: of Oblise being an angel will suggest a different reading
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  Speaker 1: of the phrase he was of the Gin see The
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  Speaker 1: Arabic word for paradise is juenda, and some of the
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  Speaker 1: most famous early musumtheologians, including the tenth century jurist Alasheri,
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  Speaker 1: plausibly argued that the passage didn't mean that Eblise was
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  Speaker 1: one of the Gin, but that he was of Juenda,
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  Speaker 1: of heavenly origin, as opposed to Adam, who was constructed
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  Speaker 1: of earthly clay. So who's right. Well, if we're going
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  Speaker 1: with modern consensus, then Eblise is one of the Gin,
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  Speaker 1: not an angel. But what if both sides were right?
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  Speaker 1: Some early Islamic sources suggest that angels and Gin were
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  Speaker 1: not always seen as SEPs. In fact, some traditions cited
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  Speaker 1: by Altabari in the ninth century described the Gin as
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  Speaker 1: a type of angel, writing, Ablise belonged to a tribal
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  Speaker 1: group of angels called Gin. Among the angels, it was
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  Speaker 1: they who were created from fire. Another says the angels
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  Speaker 1: who were the gatekeepers of paradise were called Gin. Conversely,
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  Speaker 1: the ninth century scholar Al Jahes argued the opposite. He
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  Speaker 1: classified Jin into three types, evil Gin known as Shayatin,
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  Speaker 1: powerful Gin as efrits, and completely pure Gin as angels.
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  Speaker 1: This is all to say that in the first few
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  Speaker 1: centuries of Islam's history, at least some Muslims seem to
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  Speaker 1: have embraced the possibility that Eblise was both an angel
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  Speaker 1: and of the Gin. But it's not an idea that's
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  Speaker 1: widely accepted today. For nearly fourteen hundred years, muslimistics, intellectuals,
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  Speaker 1: and artists have offered novel and sometimes striking interpretations of
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  Speaker 1: Eblis's story. For example, the early sufimistic Monsur al Hallaje
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  Speaker 1: saw Eblise's fall as a tragedy, not a tale of arrogance,
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  Speaker 1: but of devotion. In his view, Eblise refused to bowed
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  Speaker 1: Adam not out of prime but out of love for God.
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  Speaker 1: See A central tenet of Islam is absolute monotheism. Only
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  Speaker 1: God is divine and only God may be worshiped. But
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  Speaker 1: according to al hallaj, Eblise's devotion to God was so
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  Speaker 1: profound that he was unwilling to bow before anyone else,
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  Speaker 1: even if that meant defying God's commandment and being expelled
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  Speaker 1: from heaven. And that last part is critical. It's not
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  Speaker 1: that al Hallaje believed that his punishment was undeserved or
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  Speaker 1: in any way unjust, only that it was the price
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  Speaker 1: of his devotion. Al Holaje's depiction of Eblise as the
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  Speaker 1: tragic ultimate monotheist paved the way for later mystics. Mystics
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  Speaker 1: such as Ain Alkudah Alhamadani proposed that Eblise and his
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  Speaker 1: devils can be understood as servants of God and an
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  Speaker 1: extension of his will. By clearly delineating God's faithful from
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  Speaker 1: the sinful, they are actually performing a sacred service to
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  Speaker 1: the divine. Now, to be clear, these are pretty fringe ideas,
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  Speaker 1: and both al Hallaje and Alhamadani were actually executed for heterodoxy,
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  Speaker 1: but they testified to the rich diversity of mystical interpretations
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  Speaker 1: that the story of Oblise hasn't speed among Muslim intellectuals
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  Speaker 1: throughout the medieval period and beyond, the story of His
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  Speaker 1: fall has been a way to explore both the nature
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  Speaker 1: of free will and theodicy, the problem of the existence
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  Speaker 1: of evil. In the first two centuries of Islam, a
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  Speaker 1: group called the Job Rights allegedly asked a thorny philosophical question.
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  Speaker 1: If God is the source of all actions and nothing
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  Speaker 1: happens without his will or permission, does that mean he
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  Speaker 1: compelled Eblise to disobey? Now our understanding of the job
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  Speaker 1: Rights comes mostly from their critics, which makes it tricky
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  Speaker 1: to pin down what exactly they believed, but in any case,
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  Speaker 1: Islamic orthodoxy ultimately rejected their framing of the issue and
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  Speaker 1: embraced the doctrine that sufficient free will exists that God
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  Speaker 1: can justly punish Eblase for his actions. The fact that
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  Speaker 1: God permits sinful behavior doesn't excuse the sinner, who still
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  Speaker 1: bears responsibility for choosing to act sinfully. Moving away from
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  Speaker 1: the domain of intellectual elites, Muslim folklore often embraced the
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  Speaker 1: idea that Satan and his devils can inspire great works
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  Speaker 1: of art. One of the most celebrated poets of early Islam,
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  Speaker 1: Abu Nowas often invoked Eblise as his muse, especially in
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  Speaker 1: versus celebrating wine, revelry and forbidden love. When my beloved
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  Speaker 1: shunned me and I received no word from him, I
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  Speaker 1: called upon Eblise and complained to him, shedding tears of desolation.
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  Speaker 1: Obey your uncle, Eblise. To do so is your religious
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  Speaker 1: duty and perfect your unbelief. Commit no minor sin. If
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  Speaker 1: you must sin, make it a great one. Eblis is
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  Speaker 1: also remembered as a master musician, someone who strikes deals
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  Speaker 1: and grants otherworldly skill to performers. In the thousand and
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  Speaker 1: one Nights, for example, several legends feature Ibrahim al Masili,
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  Speaker 1: a master musician who's said to have studied under Iblise himself.
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  Speaker 1: The connection between devils and the performing arts in Arab
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  Speaker 1: folklore is very old, similar to the Greek conception of daimones,
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  Speaker 1: which were ambiguous, intermediary spirits who could inspire people. Pre
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  Speaker 1: Islamic Arabs understood jin or shayatin to be the inspiration
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  Speaker 1: behind creative works, and the Koran repeatedly emphasizes that Muhammad
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  Speaker 1: is not a poet and that its verses are not
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  Speaker 1: mere poetry. Sarah thirty six, Verse sixty nine says, and
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  Speaker 1: we did not give him knowledge of poetry, or is
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  Speaker 1: it befitting for him? It is not but a message
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  Speaker 1: and a clear Koran. Verses like this are widely understood
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  Speaker 1: to imply that in the prophet's day, poetry was linked
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: to the influence of malign spirits, so it was necessary
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: to distinguish between divine revelation and demonic inspiration. Today Eblise
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: remains a symbol of corruption, temptation, and sin, but as
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: with all religious figures, interpretations vary, and for over a
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: thousand years, Ablize has embodied the tension between free will
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: and divine commandments, arrogance and devotion, rebellion and servitude. And
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: while he may be one of the most infamous supernatural
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: beings in the Islamic tradition, he's far from the only one.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: As we've talked about, Eblise is one of the gin,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: which are not fallen angels, but something else, entirely invisible,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: unpredictable beings capable of both inspiring poetry and fear. I
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: recently interviewed one of the leading experts of Gin, the
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Islamic studies scholar doctor Ali Alomi, and We talked all
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: about jin their origins, their role in Islamic cosmology, and
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: how they were shaped by pre Islamic Arabian belief It's
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: a fascinating deep dive into a category of being that
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: doesn't fit neatly into a binary of evil versus good.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: And you can watch the full interview right now over
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: on Nebula. In fact, all of my videos go up
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• 17:14
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  Speaker 1: like my ongoing series Sacred Spaces, where I document my
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: visits to religious and archaeological sites around the world, reflecting
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: on their history, their meaning, and the experience of being
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: there in person. And if you're new, here to religion
• 17:29
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  Speaker 1: cancel everyday annoyances and improv actors defend them like they're
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  Speaker 1: defending a sacred tradition. It's weirdly perfect. And if you
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• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Thanks to everyone