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Christianity presents to us a very dualistic model of morality. The moral ideal is God, who is perfectly good; who, in some interpretations, even defines what “good” means, to the point that the words “God” and “good” are essentially synonymous. Paul the Apostle writes in Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God — what is good and acceptable and perfect” (12:2, NRSV). This is not the God that we find in the early books of the Old Testament, who often seems cruel and capricious, but it is nevertheless the one that the Christian world has come to accept. And humans are expected to follow this model of goodness, however failingly. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48, NRSV). But even the greatest effort made in striving to follow the path of the righteous is insufficient; this is the focus of Christian atonement theology, which asserts that only the sacrifice made by Jesus on the cross, if we accept it, can justify our moral failings with the moral perfection of God.

Contrasting with this perfect good is Satan the Deceiver, the modern construction of the figure who appears in various forms in the Bible and is called ha-satan, the Accuser, who is called “the deceiver of the whole world” (Revelation 12:9) and depicted in films such as The Exorcist and elsewhere in popular culture as a force of incredible malevolence. And the punishment for those who fail to follow the path of the righteous and, more importantly, accept the sacrifice of Jesus, is eternal torture.

Christian morality is not a subtle matter; it is entirely black and white, and these two sides of morality are at war with each other. In The Poetics of Iblis (2011), which is an exceptional book and the primary source I’ll be using today, and whose subject matter I’ll be covering shortly, Whitney S. Bodman calls this stark duality “the combat myth.” Referencing The Origin of Satan (1995) by Elaine Pagels, Bodman says:

The combat myth became the central Christian understanding of evil. Elaine Pagels, who traces the emergence of the theology of Satan in the early church, attributes this to an apocalyptic character of early christian thought. According to Pagels, apocalyptic thought addresses the primary question, “Who are God’s people?” In practice, though, the question becomes, “Who are not God’s people?” since the questioners inevitably assume their own inclusion among the righteous. This question invites an answer with reference to the combat myth.

I am reminded of The Clash of Civilizations (1996), in which political analyst Samuel Huntington writes: “Religion is a central defining characteristic of civilizations, and, as Christopher Dawson said, ‘the great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest.’” And elsewhere: “We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against.” In this way, Satan represents whomever the Christians oppose, and while many Christians would claim that those whom they oppose are no more than the evil and the wicked of the world, the history of Western civilization paints a far different picture. I wonder if I may be a Satanist only with regard to certain Christians and certain interpretations of Christianity. I think that many Muslims and Hindus would see me not as an adversary but as a fellow lover of God, and I would not disagree, though I am certainly a Satanist with regards to certain interpretations of Islam and Hinduism as well. Gandhi is said to have said that he was not only a Hindu, but a Christian, a Muslim, a Buddhist, and a Jew as well. I think that I am a kind of Muslim and a kind of Buddhist, and a kind of Christian as well, and the kind of Christian that I am, and perhaps the kind of Muslim as well, is a Satanist.

Human morality is a much more complex matter than the Christian combat myth suggests. Moral philosophers have been working on the problem of good and evil for millennia and, while progress has certainly been made in understanding the problem, few would seriously argue that the matter has been resolved in any way. Those who would make such an argument are likely arguing from the religious standpoint that I have already presented, but such a view is highly problematic. While this command morality certainly addresses the moral question of what is good and what is evil, it fails to address the ethical question of what should and shouldn’t be done. Certainly there are ethical exemplars presented in the Christian religion, but following their example is never sufficient. Paul is often quoted to support this point, from Romans 3:10: “There is no one who is righteous, not even one.”

As Bodman argues in The Poetics of Iblis, the matter is one of critical importance for human understanding:

The key to understanding a religious tradition may lie not in its construction of divinity or ultimacy but in its anthropology, its assessment of the nature, limitations, and potentialities of the human being. An important component in this assessment of the human is an evaluation of the nature and source of evil. To understand the nature of evil is to understand the nature of humanity, and to understand the nature of humanity, in a given religious tradition, is to understand the heart of that tradition. Indeed, it is to understand claims about the nature of God.

My aspiration for religion is that it be a reflection both of who we are and of our highest aspirations for ourselves as humans, but in terms of morality, traditional religion seems to fail at this.

In 1955, the Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis published Ο Τελευταίος Πειρασμός, which was translated into English and published as The Last Temptation of Christ. The book tells the story of Jesus as a much more complex figure than the one presented to us in the gospels: one flawed, imperfect, filled with doubts, tempted by immorality, though he ultimately is able to overcome all of this. The Greek Orthodox Church wanted the book banned, stating, in a statement filed with the district attorney of Athens:

…this work once more contains evil slanders against the Godlike person of Jesus Christ; it seeks to destroy his divine nature and the Christian ethic and distorts the gospel truths with hallucinations, and, through and uncontrolled impertinence, falsifies the saving teachings of the Bible This novel, which is derived from the inspiration of the theories of Freud and historical materialism, perverts and hurts the Gospel discernment and the God-man figure of our Lord Jesus Christ in a way coarse, vulgar, and blasphemous. God’s Struggler: Religion in the Writings of Nikos Kazantzakis, edited by Darren J.N. Middleton, 1996

The film version, released in 1988 and starring Willem DaFoe as Jesus, met with similar controversy.

Islamic morality is quite different from Christian morality. Bodman writes of it:

Al-Shaytan [the Qur’anic word for Satan] is not the cause of evil; God ultimately causes evil and mortals immediately cause it. Al-Shaytan serves only to lure us to the many attractive alternatives to the straight path (sirat-al-mustaqim). Since good and evil cannot be discerned by reason and cannot be examined in those terms… the only question is that of rightly perceiving what God has commanded in any situation. In essence, in this view, there is no fundamental theology of evil in Islam. Instead, there is a theology of submission.

But also in the Qur’an is the figure Iblis, who is often conflated in Islam with Al-Shaytan, though there are some distinctions that can be made between the two. Bodman sees Iblis as a tragic persona in a narrative with much greater and more complex moral potential.

First, let us take a moment to put this in context and review what Islam is. Islam is the world’s second largest religion, the Abrahamic religion founded by the Prophet Muhammad after he claimed to have received revelations from God starting in the year 609. Central to Islam is the Qur’an, “The Recitation,” which is believed to be the literal word of God as revealed to Muhammad. It is a beautiful, inspiring, and powerful text, though quite enigmatic and confounding as well. While the Qur’an is by far the ultimate sacred authority in Islam, there are other authoritative texts as well, such as the Hadith (stories and sayings of the Prophet).

The story of Iblis is told seven times in seven different places in the Qur’an. Although there is a great deal in common between them, each depiction is unique, and Bodman analyzes them each in turn. Early on in his book, Bodman presents a composite of the seven versions:

God tells his angels that he will create a human from hardened, “ringing” clay. The angels worry that this human will corrupt the earth. God reassures them, then shapes Adam and blows divine breath into him. God then commands the angels to bow down to Adam, which they do, except Iblis, a jinn, who refuses. God questions Iblis about this refusal. Iblis says, “I am better than he. You created me from fire, but him from putrid clay.” God evicts Iblis from heaven, rejecting him, but before Iblis leaves, he asks for respite until the day of resurrection. God gives him respite until “an appointed time.” Iblis then promises to lead humanity astray, all but God’s faithful.

It must be noted as well that at no point does Iblis tempt Adam to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; thus, the notion of humankind as “fallen” and subject to Original Sin is foreign to Islam.

There is a mystical branch of Islam as well, commonly known as Sufism or Tasawwuf. In How to Read the Qur’an (2011), Carl Ernst writes:

… even the most literalist reading of the Qur’an had to deal with the problem of interpreting certain verses metaphorically. In particular, the verses that described God in human terms, referring to the face or hand of God, for instance, had to be understood metaphorically if they were not to be anthropomorphic. How should one understand the description of God sitting on the celestial throne?

And as Errnst describes elsewhere (his book Sufism, also from 2011, being a useful reference here as well), this led to a more metaphorical approach to interpreting the entire Qur’an. The Sufis are noted for their beautiful devotional poetry, their meditative, whirling dances, and their relation of Islam to inward, ineffable religious experience.

The Sufis have their own interpretation of the story of Iblis. Bodman quotes from the Tawasin of Mansur Al-Hallaj:

Among the inhabitants of heaven, there was no affirmer of unity like Iblis,

When Iblis was veiled by the ‘ayn , and he fled the glances and gazed into the secret, and worshiped his deity stripped of all else.

Only to be cursed when he attained individuation and given demands when he demanded no more.

He was told, “Bow down!” He said, “[to] no other!” He was asked, “Even if you receive my curse?” He said, “It does not matter. I have no way to an other-than-you. I am an abject lover.”

Bodman comments on this:

Here Iblis is the ultimate monotheist, who will bend the knee to none other than God, even if such a determination means disobedience to that same God. He disobeys the command of God to bow to Adam in order to obey the will of God to worship none other than God.

Bodman finds this a more subtle and morally-complex interpretation, which casts Iblis as a kind of tragic hero, than the more common Islamic and Christian interpretations that cast Iblis (or Satan) as being the evil adversary in a morally-dualistic worldview. And we see this moral complexity related to Satanism when Bodman explains that

The tragic Iblis is one whose reasoning ability, an ability given to him by God, is exactly that which removes him from God. His reason enables him to determine what is fair and just, and certainly God, one of whose names is al-’Adl (the Just), should epitomize justice. Yet here it is God who seemingly sustains injustice and unfairness. Rightfully, in the name of justice, Iblis must disobey the Just.

We Satanists and atheists and spiritual free-thinkers are called, in Western civilization, to worship the Christian God as the source of goodness and justice, but we see great evil and injustice perpetrated by those who are promulgating this very mandate, and as well, great evil and injustice perpetrated by the Christian God as depicted in the Bible. Being reasoning beings, we must disobey, and recognize that those who claim the sacred as manifesting alone in this depiction of God are themselves hypocrites and deceivers. Like Iblis, we refuse to bow to nothing that is not the highest of all sacred truths, and if no such truth exists (though I believe that it does), we do not bow.

God created Iblis, like us, as a being with reason and free will, who must use both to discern and act on what is right. But though Christianity says that what is right is to follow what God says is right and though Islam says that what is right is to submit to God, in practice, in the real world, knowing and doing what is right is no simple or easy matter.

In contrast to what one might think of one who takes on the mantle of Satanism, it remains my objective to be a morally good person, though what that means is something I define for myself (as all ultimately must, though they often at least claim to have abdicated that responsibility) and which I understand in very different terms than traditional Christians and those who hold to the traditional Western moral values based on Christianity. But we are unable to see the future and no one has ever known the ultimate consequences of any of their actions. What good that I believe I have done in the world may turn, in time, to play out in evil ways, and those things that I think I have done wrong may yet do some good. This makes our own struggle to do good a tragic one as well. As the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990), we can’t even figure out what’s right for ourselves most of the time. Better, then, an icon who is inherently and perfectly good, as Jesus was, or inherently and perfectly submissive to God’s will, as Muhammad was, or one who struggles as we struggle?

In Islam, the notion of spiritual struggle is held sacred. As described in What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam (2002) by John Esposito, this is the Arabic word jihad, which is often misinterpreted in the West. Jihad, which means “struggle,” is distinct from qital, which means “to fight” in a literal sense. Jihad can mean the struggle to defend Islam, and this meaning has been appropriated, corrupted, and promulgated by certain Islamic sects for political purposes, but in the broader context of Islam, this is called “the lesser jihad.” The greater jihad is personal, spiritual struggle. The Qur’an speaks of jihad in many places, such as this verse from the chaptered called “The Pilgrimage:”

Believers, bow down, prostrate yourselves, worship your Lord, and do good so that you may succeed. Strive hard for God as is His due: He has chosen you and placed no hardship in your religion, the faith of your forefather Abraham. God has called you Muslims — both in the past and in this [message] — so that the Messenger can bear witness about you and so that you can bear witness about other people. So keep up the prayer, give the prescribed alms, and seek refuge in God: He is your protector — an excellent protector and an excellent helper. 22:77-78, translation by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem

So jihad is associated, among other things, with seeking refuge in God. And God is described extensively in the Qur’an — in contrast to polytheistic, trinitarian, or dualistic conceptions of God — as being a unity, such as in these famous verses which comprise the entirety of chapter 112, “Purity of Faith.”

Say, “He is God the One, God the eternal. He begot no one nor was He begotten. No one is comparable to Him. 112:1-4

And in the first chapter, “The Opening,” which I have heard described as a distillation of the message of the entire Qur’an, it is said:

In the name of God, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy! Praise belongs to God, Lord of all worlds, the Lord of Mercy, the Giver of Mercy, Master of the Day of Judgement. It is You we worship; it is You we ask for help. (1:1-5)

Citing the glorious Mathnawi of Rumi, which has been called “the Qur’an in Persian,” Bodman quotes Iblis in saying that he “serves God as the touchstone that distinguishes the true from the false.” This relates Iblis to Satan the Accuser, the archetype of Satan that appears in the early books of the Bible, not an enemy of God but rather a heavenly servant who acts as a kind of prosecutor and adjudicator. And as well, Bodman cites a passage from the Sufi classic The Conference of the Birds by Farid ud-Din Attar in which Iblis teaches Jesus (much as Satan taught Jesus in the wilderness, in my interpretation) that he, Iblis, is lord of the material world, while the spiritual world belongs to “the believers.” In Satanism we live for this life and this world, rather than nihilistically denying this life and this world for some other life and other world promised to us by various religions.

In this, Iblis seems an ideal exemplar for those who would seek a spirituality of and for this life alone and who would struggle to know and experience the truth of the sacred, which seems to me to be one of the fundamental exhortations both of the Qur’an and of Satanism. I feel that we Satanists are, as the Iblis of Al-Hallaj, abject lovers, in whom there is only a great and boundless love, so great that we would disobey the very command of God rather than disobey the love that is written on our hearts.

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