Abstract
This article studies Ghazali’s viewpoint regarding Satan or Iblis. Ghazali’s interpretation of Satan is very different from that of traditional ones. Despite the Koran’s negative portrayal of Satan, Ghazali elaborates a new transformative theology of Satan. He defends Satan and considers him as the paragon of lovers in self-sacrifice. According to him, Satan’s refusal to bow down before God’s creation, Adam, signifies that Satan alone manifests the purest devotion to God’s oneness and is thus the unrivalled champion of tawhid . Ghazali’s sympathetic understanding of Satan is a logical outcome of his theory of love. He depicts Satan not only as a sincere worshipper, but also as a true lover. He loves God even though he curses and casts him out. Because of being cursed, he has acquired a long life and a position of power over the whole world.
Highlights
One of the important and interesting issues in Islamic culture is the story of Satan or Iblis,1 his worship and disobedience, his refusal to prostration to Adam, his rejection by God and, his hostility to Adam’s children until the Day of Resurrection
Some of the Sufis are not in agreement with a positive portrayal of Satan, and their viewpoint on him is much more in tune with Islamic orthodoxy, but a number of them, who believe in the unity of existence, consider Satan’s refusal to bow before Adam as full devotion to God alone; they depict him as an example of a true lover of God and a teacher of monotheism (El-Zein 2017:44)
Satan is in one sense the ultimate lover of God
Summary
One of the important and interesting issues in Islamic culture is the story of Satan or Iblis, his worship and disobedience, his refusal to prostration to Adam, his rejection by God and, his hostility to Adam’s children until the Day of Resurrection. At the same time, in his Majalis and in several excerpts from his sermons preserved in the biographical tradition, he portrays Satan as the greatest lover and the foremost of God’s servants in testifying to unity (tawhid) According to this strange and touching theory, he is represented as the great lover who did not want to worship anything other than God and refused to prostrate, obedient to the Divine Will, yet disobedient to the Divine Command (Schimmel 1993:208). How are these two opposite viewpoints brought together by Ghazali and how he explains the rest of the Koran’s negative descriptions of Satan. Ghazali has great sympathy for Satan and believes that he was a martyr and his martyrdom was a martyrdom of love (Hayes 2003:163)
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