Surah Al Isra: Shaytan's First Stratagem | Divine Reminders with Mufti Abdul Wahab Waheed

Surah Al-Isra: Shaytan's First Stratagem

We will speak about a specific passage in Surah Bani Israel — and this is what I want to discuss today.

The Beauty of Surah Al-Isra, Al-Kahf, and Maryam

In Surah Al-Isra, Allah begins it talking about the journey of Mi'raj — a miracle. In my opinion, when I look at surahs that come together, what are the most beautiful surahs that come in threes? Personally, these three that are coming back to back to back are one of my favorites: Surah Al-Isra, Surah Al-Kahf, and Surah Maryam. They come one, two, three — all three of them together. Every surah is beautiful, but just the poetic eloquence of these surahs that we can understand, we can identify them. And then Surah Al-Rahman, Surah Al-Waqi'ah, and Surah Al-Hadid — they're also very beautiful.

So in Surah Al-Isra, Allah does speak about the beautiful journey of Mi'raj, which many of you have heard before. Allah also speaks about the importance of respecting our parents, which also we've heard many a time before:

That after believing in Allah, the most important thing for us to do is take care of our parents.

Iblis Refuses to Prostrate and Makes His Vow

And then there is one passage in this surah which generally people don't speak about, and I wanted to speak about this passage. It is when Allah created Adam and he told the angels and Iblis to do sajdah, and the only one that did not do sajdah was Iblis. So now Allah turns towards him and says: why aren't you doing sajdah? And he responds by saying:

"If You allow me to live to the Day of Judgment, I will divert and I will destroy all of the descendants." لَأَحْتَنِكَنَّ means: I will destroy all of the descendants of Adam — meaning us. "I will make sure that they cannot consistently worship. That's the goal of my life. If You allow me to live to the Day of Judgment."

And Allah accepts that and says: go ahead.

Whoever follows you will be in Jahannam.

Shaytan's Stratagem: Incitement Through Belonging

And then this is what interests me — that Iblis refers to some of the main tricks that he uses, or that he will use. And Allah says to him:

Allah says to him: "Go ahead and incite — attract these people." Through what? Through your voice. Meaning: incite them through the idea of having a group with them. Incite them with the concept that they feel a sense of belonging with any form of an association. That they want to be with these people. They want to be accepted by this society. They want to be accepted by this community. Incite them through that. Make that one of your tricks. Go ahead and use it.

This will be one of your tricks: you turn people away from Me because they want to be accepted by other people. They want to be accepted by society.

The Story of the Tribe That Came With Conditions

And then Allah continues this passage and talks about one of the stories that had to do with the Prophet ﷺ. And truthfully, if there was an ayah that perhaps the Prophet ﷺ could have kept aside and not exposed, it would have been this ayah — because it speaks about a challenge that he dealt with.

There was a tribe of people that came to the Prophet ﷺ from the outskirts of Medina. This is pre-Badr, so you understand that the Prophet ﷺ — they're weak, there are not many Muslims. And the Prophet ﷺ is always haris — he's always very, very eager — in making people enter Islam. That's all he cares about: how can people be saved from the fire of Jahannam?

When a Jewish man's janazah was being taken in front of him, he started to cry. And the sahabas around him said: "Ya Rasulullah, why are you crying when this man is not even a Muslim?" And the Prophet ﷺ said: "Has not one more person slipped from my hands and entered the fire of Jahannam? And I should not cry? Of course I will cry."

So the Prophet ﷺ cared for people. His goal was not to become a person that prays and studies and limits that to himself, but rather his goal was: how can his connection to Allah have a ripple effect throughout society? And that should also be our goal.

The Three Conditions

So when these people came to him and said: "Ya Rasulullah, O Muhammad ﷺ, we're ready to accept Islam — but under some conditions." The Prophet ﷺ said: "Go ahead, what are your conditions?"

Condition one: Alla nasjud wa narka' — "We will not pray salat. We'll become Muslims, but we won't pray salat." Like I can imagine if someone wanted to come to our school and I'm interviewing them and they say: "We're going to come to your school, but we're not going to come for class." The Prophet ﷺ goes quiet. He says: "What's your next condition?"

Condition two: Alla naksir as-sanam al-akbar — "We will not break our biggest idol. All the other idols you can go ahead and break — we won't break them with our own hands, we can't do that — but the largest idol, you have to keep it for a year. When a year passes by, then we'll break it." So the element of shirk that we had in our life — we still want some of it to be there. We're not worshipping it; we just want it to be there.

Condition three: "We will not give you our wealth for any form of assistance."

The Prophet ﷺ's Eagerness for Guidance

The Prophet ﷺ hears these conditions and — remember — the Prophet ﷺ looks for any excuse to make someone Muslim. In one narration it says: if there are 99 signs that a person is not Muslim but there is one sign that they are Muslim, identify them as a believer — they are a believer.

As in the case of Usama ibn Zayd ﷺ: there was a battle and he was on top of someone, and that person said the kalima while he was in a rage of battle — and he was killed. Later on, when he came back to Medina, they told the Prophet ﷺ about this. And the Prophet ﷺ was so upset and said: "Did you rip open his chest? Do you know what he really meant?" And Usama ibn Zayd ﷺ said: "There was not a day in my life that I felt I wished my mother never gave me birth — except for that day, because of the way the Prophet ﷺ reacted."

Every person has a potential of becoming a believer. And once a person has iman, they are safe from the fire of Jahannam.

The Divine Warning: Ayah 74 of Surah Al-Isra

So these people come with these conditions, and the Prophet ﷺ is reflecting upon them for a positive reason. And as he's reflecting upon them, Allah sends down these ayahs of Surah Al-Isra:

"O Muhammad ﷺ, it was very near — they were about to tempt you away from that which We have told you to do. They were about to tempt you away from that which We have told you to do." Meaning: you were going to accept them despite them not doing the things that they're supposed to be doing. And what would you get in return? وَإِذًا لَّاتَّخَذُوكَ خَلِيلًا — "In return for that, they'll become your friends. They'll become your supporters."

Obviously this was a positive thing for the Prophet ﷺ, because he wanted them to become Muslim. But the idea that we take from it is that Shaytan uses this concept of making us want to feel accepted by our societies, and by doing so — regardless of how much deen we're compromising — at least we're being accepted.

وَإِذًا لَّاتَّخَذُوكَ خَلِيلًا — "I'll become your friend. Don't do that. I'll be your friend. Society will accept you. People will like you." But that is not the goal for us. People liking us is not the goal. Allah accepting us is the goal. Allah being pleased with our worship is the goal.

And if Allah is happy with us, the people in this world will also tend to enjoy our company. As in the Hadith Qudsi — that the Prophet ﷺ explains: when Allah loves someone, He calls Jibreel ﷺ and tells him:

"I love so-and-so individual, so you must also love him." And then Jibreel ﷺ comes down to the heavens and declares: "Allah has declared His love for so-and-so individual — all the angels in the sky, you must also love this person." Until the love of that person comes into the world and into the hearts of the people in this world.

Now that wife or that husband, that son or that daughter, that friend or that sibling that you were not able to get along with — since we are able to refine and redefine the importance of our relationship with Allah, those relationships also fall into place. It's not the opposite — that we get accepted by everyone else first. No: we get accepted by Allah first, and everyone else falls into place.

And Allah tells him:

"If We had not given you strength, you were tempting yourself towards what they wanted — because they were going to be your friends."

The Lesson: Istiqamah Over Acceptance

So in this surah, in this passage, Allah tells us that one of the greatest tricks of Shaytan is that he tries to tempt us away from Allah's ibadah and Allah's worship through the pressure and through the compromise of our societies. People want to accept you.

And I mentioned this before too: the definition of istiqamah is that regardless of how our circumstances change — regardless of what changes around us — our relationship with Allah does not differ. Our relationship with Allah does not differ. Even if things change around us. People accept us, people don't accept us — I still have to pray salat. I still have to read my Qur'an.

May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala give us the ability of having righteous company and righteous people around us.

And this passage comes directly after where Allah speaks about staying away from sins — and He mentions seven sins. Right after that He says this, meaning that these sins you can protect yourself from as long as you don't get exposed to them and you don't compromise yourself because of people and because of the acceptance of people.

Closing Du'a

May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala accept us, and allow us to identify the most important relationship that we have, and allow us to have good company that we can benefit from and can benefit others. And we should become — rather than always looking for good company — let us become the flower pot that is good company, that can benefit people around us. InshaAllah ta'ala.

JazakAllah khair everyone for joining. May Allah bless you all.

Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.