The Process of Creation
A Qur'anic Perspective
by
Dr Israr Ahmad
9. The Rebellion of Iblees and the Reason Thereof
The mentioned seven places where Allah (swt) commanded the angels to bow down to
Adam (pbuh), contain the assertion “except Iblees” followed by a number of slightly
varying pseudo-explanations given by Satan himself. For example, we read in the
verse 34 of Surah Al-Baqarah:
“… they bowed down except Iblees; he refused
and was haughty, he was one of those who reject Faith.”
Verse
61 of Surah Al-Isra contains a more explicit reason of Satan’s refusal
to bow down to Adam (pbuh). It reads:
“…they
bowed down except Iblees. He said: Shall I bow down to one whom Thou didst
create from clay?”
A
legitimate question arises here as to how a commandment of Allah (swt) addressed to
the angels covered Azazeel who belonged to the created beings specified as jinns?
The exegetes answer this question by opining that Allah’s order covered both
angels and jinns but since angels were in majority, only they were
addressed explicitly. Another reason already mentioned in this treatise was
that Azazeel had joined the lower ranks of angels on account of his
extraordinary, yet haughty, services and devotion to the Lord. On that account,
he was bound to comply with the command of bowing down to Adam (pbuh). As mentioned
earlier, the important question to be explored here is as to why Iblees refused
to obey Allah’s commandment. The verse of Surah Al-Baqarah does not
state any reason for the non-compliance. Verse 12 of Surah Al-A`raf
however does give a reason for Satan’s disobedience:
“He
said: I am better than he; Thou didst create me from fire and him from clay.”
[7:12]
And
in Surah Al-Hijr, we read:
“(Iblees)
said: I am not one to prostrate myself to man, who Thou create from sounding clay,
from mud moulded into shape.”
Verse
12 of Surah Saad repeats verbatim the statement given in Surah Al-A`raf.
The upshot of all the above mentioned
verses is that the real cause of Iblees’s refusal to obey Allah’s command was
that, spiritually blinded, he was only aware of the animal/bodily part of Adam (pbuh) and, being made out of clay and mud, it certainly was inferior to jinns
whose source or material of creation is fire --- a decidedly superior element
to clay and mud. Being himself a creation of a`alam-e-khalq, he was
quite familiar with the animal (physical) or apparently visible part of Adam (pbuh)
(as it also pertained to the same a'alam-e-khalq), but he knew nothing
about the sphere of amr (a`alam-e-amr) and, therefore, was quite
in oblivion about the supreme dignity of the spiritual part of Adam (pbuh) --- his
soul. And as already explained above, Allah’s “breathing into him of My spirit”
made Adam (pbuh) the highest and noblest created being and only that justified his
appointment as the Lord’s vicegerent and representative on earth. And it was on
account of the spiritual soul --- the Divine spark in Adam (pbuh) --- that all the
angels were commanded to prostrate and bow down before him.
In
philosophical parlance, it can be said that Adam (pbuh) was an ontologically composite
being --- consisting of an animal part which pertained to the realm of Khalq
and a spiritual element or soul that belonged to the realm of Amr. And
it is in this perspective that we can rightly understand verse 75 of Surah Sa`d
in which Allah (swt) says that He created Adam (pbuh) with ‘His two hands’ (yadayya),
insinuating the fact that Adam (pbuh) is a composite being of material/ physical
body and a spiritual soul. The eminent Persian sage-poet Sadi has portrayed
this very truth in a couplet which can be roughly translated as:
Man
is a strange compound of substances.
He has both an angelic part and a
completely animal part.
Here
the emphasis is on three points:
1. The
breathing of Allah’s spirit into man, i.e. the addition of substantial entity
and faculty of metaphysical knowledge and will, which if rightly used, would
give man superiority over other creatures.
2. The
origin of evil is arrogance and jealousy on the part of Satan who, spiritually
blinded, saw only the lower side of man (the clay) and failed to see the higher
side, his faculty brought in by the spirit of Allah.
3. That
evil only touches those who yield to it, and has no power over Allah’s sincere
servants, purified by His grace.
The root cause of the contemporary godless, materialistic and satanic global
civilization is the view that human beings are nothing but evolved animals. And
this viewpoint has been given tremendous support and theoretical backing by
Darwin’s evolutionary theory and its attendant social, moral and political
implications. Just like Azazeel, modern civilization and mainstream dominant
thought has also an eye only for the physical/material part of man, remaining
in total oblivion of the metaphysical/spiritual component. This lopsided and
one-eyed perception of the reality of man --- a consequence of scientism in
contemporary epistemology --- has led to the present worldwide Dajjali (anti-christ
driven) civilization.
This materialistic philosophy has not remained confined
to the academic circles and the intellegencia; rather it has trickled down to
the common populace of both the West and the East. So much so that even a large
majority of Muslim intellectuals and some leaders of Islamic revivalist
movements also reject the view that the soul is a separate and ontologically
distinct element of human beings. Renouncing the view of soul (presented above
in detail) as a divine and spiritual ontological component of man, they
identify the spirit or soul with earthly life alone, an essence of the realm of
Al-khalq. And this, of course, is a highly misguided opinion, a travesty
of truth, explicitly and unambiguously presented by the Qur`an. We can only
regret this grave error committed by Muslim scholars and exegetes under the
influence of materialistic and secularized Western scientistic thought.
to be continued . . . .
