What to Do When God Betrays You
In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate Once again I find myself musing about Satan. He is a striking, almost pathetic figure: a djinn (immaterial being) who was foremost in worship turned bitter and vengeful upon witnessing God's love for man. I wonder what his feelings towards God were. What drove his anger? Jealousy? Perhaps he wished to know what it would be like to be loved as a man by God, a wish that could never be granted without becoming himself one of the hateful humans. But is it really jealousy that drove his anger? Here we have a complex web of emotions: anger, jealousy, spite, perhaps even self-hatred. How can it be disentangled to make sense of Satan's experiences sympathetically ? By this, I do not mean to agree or condone his motivations, but to understand them as though we were in his place. In the Holy Qur'an, the following story is reported of Iblis or Satan's fall from grace (7:11-18, tr. Abdel-Haleem): We created you, We ...
