Lord of the Worlds

The first sura makes two great affirmations of the sovereignty of God, God is “Lord of the Worlds” and he is “Master of the Day of Judgment.” We can begin with a survey of the worlds of which God is Lord. Muslim commentators often take these to be the worlds of humans, jinn, and angels. The obvious point is that nothing exists, visible or invisible, known or unknown to us, that is outside the scope of God’s Lordship. As a Christian, I agree. Yet what the Qur’an says about these “worlds” and their inhabitants seems a strange mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar.  

The strangest world is that of the Jinn, who are neither human nor angelic, but a distinct created order. 

Belief in Jinn (singular Jinni) is an enormously important in shaping religious life in just about every Muslim society. Via spinoffs of A Thousand and One Nights like the Aladdin stories, Genies have also been successfully exported to Western popular culture.  While often wildly exaggerated, these popular beliefs about Jinn are firmly rooted in the Qur’an, where the Jinn are described as a distinct order of being, neither human nor angelic, and created from fire (7:12, 15:27, 38:76, 55:15). They are intelligent and moral creatures that can be either good or evil (72:14), can be preached to and seem to have their own prophets (6:130), and will be judged (55). Though invisible to humans, the Jinn interact with and interpenetrate the world of humans and animals. Solomon, famously, was able to harness their labor for his building projects, and they can do extraordinary feats (27:39). But evil Jinn opposed every prophet (6:112), and the pre-Islamic Arabs worshipped them (6:128) and sought their help (72:6).  Some Christians will be inclined to identify Jinn with the demons encountered in the New Testament, especially in the Gospels; a better comparison might be to the invisible world of faeries, goblins or gnomes of European folklore.

The story of one particular Jinni, Iblis, which is repeated several times in the Qur’an, is an especially helpful illustration of the scope of God’s sovereignty.

When God decided to create man He announced his plans to the angels. They were dismayed. Why would God place a creature on earth who would create mischief and shed blood? Despite these objections God created Adam from clay and taught him the names of all things. Then he showed his creations to the angels, and said, “Now tell me the names of these if you speak truly.” They replied “We only know what you have taught us.” (2:31-32) But Adam was able to tell them all the names. Then God commanded his angels, “Bow down to Adam.” And they bowed, except Iblis, (2:34) who said to God, “I will never bow to a mortal who you created from dried clay, formed from dark mud.” (15:33) and he defied God’s command.

In the face of God’s wrath, Iblis begged for respite from destruction, and his request was granted. He then stated his intention:  “O my Lord! Because Thou has put me in the wrong, I will make wrong fair-seeming to them on the earth and I will put them all in the wrong—except thy servants among them, sincere and purified.” In return, God granted specific authorization, but with limitations:  “Lead to destruction whichever of them you can with your voice; muster your cavalry and infantry against them, share their wealth and their children with them, and make promises to them–Satan promises nothing but delusion–but you will have no authority over My [true] servants: Your Lord can take care of them well enough.” (17:64-65) In this role as tempter of humans, Iblis is given a more generic name, Shayṭān, Satan, and he immediately begins to carry out this new commission, tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden: “Then Satan whispered to them, to reveal to them that which was hidden from them of their shameful parts.  He said, ‘Your Lord has only prohibited you from this tree lest you become angels. Or lest you become immortals.’  And he swore to them, ‘Truly, I am for you a sincere adviser.’  So he led them by a delusion . . .” (7:20-22). 

Christians will see the obvious points of connection with Genesis—the naming of the animals, God’s creation of Adam from earth, the role of the Devil as Satan the tempter, the famous forbidden tree, the promise of immortality, and the shame that follows rebellion. But the sometimes subtle differences are also important. Rather than Adam naming the animals, God teaches the names to him; God seems to exempt his sincere servants from Satan’s temptation; and God quickly forgives Adam, though he is not restored to the garden. The most intriguing departure from the Genesis account is story of the angels and the rebellion of Iblis. Earlier generations of Christians and Jews would not have found this story so strange. Jews passed on the tradition about God’s command to the angels to bow before Adam. So did Syriac speaking Christians.  In the Syriac Christian version of the story, the bowing of the Angels has a clear theological point—it anticipates the future when every knee will bow before Christ, the new Adam.

The Qur’an’s version has its own, strikingly different point. When God says bow, the angels must bow, whether they like the idea or not. Iblis may rebel, but he can never escape God’s will, and even in his rebellion, he will continue to address God as Lord. God’s absolute authority overshadows all the action, and all other actors. Satan’s authority in relation to humans is explicitly given by God, and God exercises complete freedom to show mercy or condemn. The assertion of God’s complete sovereignty over evil and the devil will not seem completely strange to readers of the bible. The heavenly court scene in the first chapter of Job, for example, when Satan requires explicit divine authority to test the godly Job, seems to make a similar point, and God tells us in Isaiah “I form light and create darkness; I make well-being and create calamity; I am the LORD, who does all these things” (45:7). But the Qur’an seems more direct and unambiguous than the Bible in asserting God’s active determination of everything, good and evil, without exception. We see this especially in pairs of divine names that affirm opposites: He honors and humiliates; he grants and withholds; he offers help and causes distress; he guides and he leads astray. God, in the end, is responsible for all that is. It is not surprising that the creed of the dominant brand of Islamic theology affirmed, unambiguously, “that good and evil both come from God.”