Just in case you are wondering, my alarm did not go off with the lovely call of the adhan this morning. I was not so stupid as to rely upon it alone however, and was awakened instead by the sound of harps: I had set my iphone just in case. So, we’re good to go today, that is unless you count that I actually got a little teary eyed when I realized my search last night and again this morning confirmed: I have lost my little mp3 player, the one with the Qur’anic recitation on it. This is only my third year with that 1GB player which was a gift from my friend Arnold. It’s not all that fancy; that I miss it in the material sense: some unknown maker (coincidently called ZEN!: I love that too.) I think my ear buds probably cost more than the little thing, but oh, how I miss my reading partner. Yeah, sure, I can read the Qur’an without it, and I did; even for approximately the same amount of text. But I get way too distracted into thinking about certain passages without al-Qushayri to keep pace.
So distracted, in fact, I did not return for my little nap. Here I am at the keyboard and it is only 6:45 a.m., much earlier than usual. I just couldn’t get the Qur’anic story of Satan out of my head. And it wasn’t because I was actually reading some part of the Qur’an that was recounting the story but the word istikbar, or arrogance, came up in various forms. I wanted to see how I might elaborate on the issue. Especially after another encounter yesterday with one of my daughters, whose new-age life style has led her to a level of arrogance I can sometimes barely manage to abide by.
I think it is good and necessary for all human beings to continually make choices that they think will improve the quality of their lives: food, clothing, spirituality, geography— whatever it takes. But I am clear that there are no choices that anyone makes which earns them the place better than others who make different choices. So, it is better for not better than. I mean, do what makes you better for yourself, but do not confuse it with something that makes you better than another self; which is istikbar.
The story of Satan goes like this: when the prototype (or first) human, Adam, was created out of an atom of dust (tin, pronounced “teen”) the unseen creatures were ordered to bow to him. There was a reason for this, but I’ll have to share that at another point. Now the unseen creatures were both angels, made of light, and jinn, made of smokeless fire. This is important because in Islamic cosmology, Angels have no free will: they can only obey Allah. The jinn, like the human creatures, do have free will and can disobey.
This is different from the version of this story in Genesis, where there was “war in heaven” and the war was against God. We don’t have a God in such compromising positions. In the Qur’anic story, Satan disobeys and still knows that God is one. Think about that. It was not disbelief in God’s oneness that was the problem. He (and it’s always a he so I will stick to it) goes to hell knowing the truth of the nature of God. But, here’s the deal: he had a misplaced sense of the value of himself. So when he was asked, why he did not obey the command to bow he said, “I am better than him. You created me from smokeless fire and he was created from (an atom of) dirt.”
I am better than him is istikbar. And this word occurs 40 OR 50 TIMES through out the Qur’an in various forms, not just about Satan but also and mostly about human beings and their arrogance. As happens in the Satan story, istikbar is the cause of disobedience to God. It is the cause of failure to worship God, as one. It is the cause of rejection of the Prophets. It is the cause of disregarding the message of revelation. Most importantly, for my work on gender and justice, it is the cause of oppressing others.
If you think about it, it is pretty obvious. Oppression is an act of aggression against others’ rights to be themselves, to be different, to make other choices; particularly if they are different from the ones with the power to oppress. Istikbar says: I am better than you because I am this race; I am of this sex; I am this sexual orientation; I am this nationality; I am this religion; I am in this social economic class; I am any category of a number of things: including food consumption. Because I am this or that, then I am better than you.
Sure oppression, or zulm, as it’s referred to in the Qur’an, also requires power: the power to exploit the differences as such, but even that is interesting in the way it is discussed in the Qur’an. For one thing, in the Qur’anic stories of Satan (or shaytan as the Arabic pronunciation goes, sometimes also in the plural!) has no power. This is important. I don’t know how many of you are of the age or race to remember the black television comedian Flip Wilson, who used to dress up as a woman in one of his routines, whose most famous line was, “the devil made me do it!” We have no concept of blaming the devil in Islamic epistemology, theology, cosmology and eschatology. Satan has not power. The Qur’an is emphatic about that.
We, human creatures have limited power, in the form of free will, for example. We give our power over to satanic objectives, but we are 100% self-responsible for this. Satan has tricks. We can fall under the spell of these tricks—but that is our choosing or at least of our failure to exercise our power to resist, or to assert our power to do “good,” the ethical good (not the personal preference good which is therefore “good” to us).
One of the tricks is the power of suggestion (waswasa, to whisper and then withdraw), which the Qur’an clarifies is both satanic and human. Other tricks include fear, greed, lust, ignorance, laziness, you know the drill. The one that comes into this story about Satan refusing to bow to Adam is the one used to trick Adam and his partner out of the garden. The power to seduce us into thinking that by making certain choices we will be better. Not just better than our selves, as in self improvement, but better than others. Better than our equally shared nature as human beings.
This is how it went. In the pre-existence on earth, in a place of bliss, called firdaws, or paradise, when the primordial parents had no needs and no wants, Satan (this was already after the istikbar thing, but I’ll have to explain how he got there another time) suggests to them (the Qur’an always uses the dual form here. So it is important to note: we have no notion that Satan tempted Eve, in the form of a snake, and then Eve tempted Adam: some kind of innocent male subjectivity). Nope, it is he (always male so I will stick to that) tempted them two. Lovely form this dual in Arabic, removes a lot of random gender arrogance if you ask me.
He does not tempt them (twain) by saying, “oh look what a lovely fruit tree” (the very one they had already been warned NOT to approach). He does not say, “I bet the fruit on that tree is just the bees’ knees”. He doesn’t say, “never mind, God is not looking, just this once let’s see what it tastes like.” He invites them to become better than themselves, to transcend their nature as human beings: to become immortal.
And just for a single moment, they “forget” their promise to God not to approach the tree, and they taste of its fruit. Perhaps they were hoping for this immortality, this transcendence of the very nature shared with all human beings, and BOOM! All hell breaks loose, in a manner of speaking.
I have recounted this story here without all the details, so I hope I can fill them in some time before I complete my hajj but I just wanted to include one other interesting aspect of this story, thinking as I am about yesterday’s blog on forgiveness. When Satan was caught disobeying God, he asked for something and he got it: he asked for a reprieve. He asked not to be punished, at the same moment, not to be cast into hell, as it were, but to be permitted to go to the earth, with the human creatures. He then promised he would corrupt them all. And he was politely told, “You (will) have no power over my righteous servants”.
When Adam and Eve (Hawa’ although her name does not occur any where in the Qur’anic text) were caught in their act of disobedience, they also asked for something and it was also granted. They asked for forgiveness. In Qur’anic cosmology, being on the earth was not a punishment, not a fall from grace, it was destiny. That is because when that prototype human was created Allah had already promised us our sojourn on the earth. It was encoded in our primordial blueprint. Allah had said to those unseen creatures, the angels, “Inni Jaa’ilun fi-l-ard Khalifah: Indeed, I will create on the earth an agent, a khalifah”.
I owe you an entry about what it means to be a khalifah in Islam, and maybe I will do it tomorrow, if no other interesting things befall me that I end up writing about instead. But the short version of it I hope you have followed: while we are responsible for our selves and called upon to do good actions, we are never called to go beyond the nature of our shared reality as a human being. We must make good choices, which is what makes us human. Our choices are at best for our own betterment and growth not to catapult us way out of the league of other humans exercising other choices. That would simply be arrogant.
