Magic Is Bad

"You shall not permit a sorceress to live" - Exodus 22:18

“A man or a woman who is a medium or a necromancer shall surely be put to death." - Leviticus 20:27

Those lines from the Bible make it quite clear that Magic is Bad, and were the basis for Europe's witch hunting craze during the 15th to 18th centuries. The Islamic ruling on magic is equally clear, and comes from the Hadith (the Qur'an's expanded universe):

"The prescribed punishment for the magician is that he be executed by the sword."

Islam, like Christianity, affirms the existence of magic and assigns it to evil forces. Christianity assigns it to demons and Satan (the Devil). Islam assigns it to evil jinn and Iblis (the Devil). In Islam, 'satan' is not the name or title of a single Devil; it can be applied to any human or jinn who is opposed to Islam and Allah. This is slightly similar to an early Hebrew tradition in which the word 'satan' (adversary) was applied to any angel or servant whom God sent to oppose or tempt someone (to be their adversary) - there are examples of this usage in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. These 'satans' are loyal servants of God, doing his bidding, and were eventually merged together into the single Jewish Satan (The Adversary) from the Book of Job, who is still a loyal servant of God. The 'satan' jinn of Islam are against God, but since God controls everything, they're also doing exactly what he wants? Islam is particularly irritating because it doesn't seem to have anything resembling a coherent mythology, because Muhammad was an illiterate merchant who only knew bits of Jewish and Christian lore, which he slammed inconsistently together, sprinkling some Arabian folklore on top.

Umar, the second Caliph of Islam (634CE - 644CE), asked his soldiers to kill every fortuneteller and magician they found during their campaigns against the Persian and Byzantine empires. However, later Caliphs were more relaxed, so it was down to the hardcore Muslims to remind everyone how to deal with magicians. During the reign of Al-Walid I, a magician was present at the caliph's court. He wowed the audience by severing a man's head then re-attaching it to his body: the audience cheered and yelled, "OMFG! He can raise the dead!"

But one audience member wasn't impressed. He went to the next show with a sword strapped to his back. (No security searches back then.) As the the show began, the Good Muslim charged through the crowd, sword drawn, and chopped the magicians head off.

Turning to the shocked crowd, the Good Muslim yelled, "If he can really raise the dead, let him raise himself!"

The Good Muslim was arrested and imprisoned.

Bilal Philips

Having done a bit more research into the author of my current Islam book, I discover that he holds fairly extreme views. I bought it in an Islamic Bookshop in Nottingham, so expected it to be fairly mainstream. Yes, the author is a Sunni Muslim, who make up 80% of Muslims. But he is a Hanbali Sunni Muslim, who make up 15% of Muslims. And he is a Salafi Hanbali Sunni Muslim, who make up an even smaller proportion of Muslims. His views are fundamentalist and extreme, which have caused him to be banned from entering several countries (including the UK), although his views are mainstream in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Since Jihadi Islam (Al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc) is the most extreme branch of Salafi Islam, we could consider this author's views a sort-of 'moderate ISIS': he obviously shares a lot of their beliefs, but isn't quite THAT crazy. He has apparently denounced ISIS and received death threats from them.

Keep all that in mind when thinking about my most recent Islam posts, and any more I write based on his book. I feel I should re-iterate something I said in the first post of this new series:

'Since the Qur'an is a very tedious and self-contradictory book, it doesn't give you a very clear idea of Islamic belief, which meant that generations of Muhammad's successors have had to perform arduous exegesis to figure out what God was supposedly going on about... this means that it's very easy to create-your-own Islam to suit your existing prejudices and ideas, hence there are a billion interpretations of what Islam means.'

To give you some idea of the various branches of Islam, here's a handy diagram: 

God's Awesome Oneness

Following on from my last post (about Allah summoning to Eden every human being who has ever existed or ever will exist, in order to clarify with them that he alone is their God), Muslims believe that the Islam is the natural way humans are supposed to live: any deviations from the natural Islamic way of life are caused by the environment. If children are left alone, they grow up being good Muslims believing in Allah (obviously, no studies are cited to back up this assertion). A child is not born a blank slate, but an Islamic slate (geddit?). The natural Islamic way of life is called the 'Fitrah'. As a child grows up, environmental pressures - friends, parents, government, jinn, etc - lead them astray, turning them into Christians, Jews, Communists, etc.

'There is no god but God.' Islam is very big on the oneness and almightyness of God. It's extremely easy to blaspheme in Islam, if we're taking my book's stance as fairly orthodox. Here are some beliefs that go against the Islamic belief in God's awesome oneness:

Free will. Allah has complete control over the universe. Nothing happens without his will. Everything is under his control. (Since belief in free will is affirmed two chapters later, because otherwise the afterlife Reward vs Punishment thing would be utterly stupid, perhaps a denial of free will is also blasphemous?)

Associating other gods with Allah. Polytheism and dualism are bad. Christianity is bad because it divides God into three persons: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, united in substance. No: God is one. Deifying humans is also, obvs, a no-no: Muslims believe Jesus was a human prophet whose teaching was warped over time, resulting in Christianity.

Denying God's existence. Since my book is authored by a Sunni Muslim who disapproves of Sufi Islam, mystical theology - all is Allah, Allah is all - is also in this category: denying God's separateness from the rest of reality is as bad as denying him altogether.

Humanizing God. Allah cannot be depicted in human or animal form. Allah is so beyond such imagery that, by depicting 'him' this way, you are implying a limitation of him: this is the beginnings of idolatry. Sistine Chapel bad.

The belief that energy can neither be created or destroyed is blasphemous, because Allah created everything and can destroy everything whenever he jolly well likes.

Praying to something, or someone, other than God. Allah has complete control over creation: all prayers should be directed to him. Praying to something, or someone, else implies that you believe that thing or person has powers over creation to rival Allah's. Don't pray to Muhammad. Don't pray to saints. Don't pray to angels. Likewise, belief in omens and charms, lucky and unlucky, are offensive to God, because they imply that the material thing (rabbit's foot, 4-leaf clover, broken mirror, etc) has powers over creation to rival Allah's total control. Fortunetelling of any kind is bad, because only Allah knows and controls the future: reading your horoscope is offensive to God.

God is one. God is all-powerful. Free will doesn't exist but also does. Only God knows the future. God is utterly transcendent and beyond our comprehension. Everyone with me so far?

Islamic Incoherence

A perfect example of how incoherent Islamic theology is: in chapter 1 of 'The Fundamentals of Tawheed (Islamic Monotheism)', I learned that belief in free will is blasphemous, because this belief goes against the idea that Allah has complete control over his creation (and the Qur'an verses which attest this); in chapter 3, I learn that if humanity doesn't have free will, then the whole reward and punishment thing is, obviously, pointless, therefore humans have free will, otherwise this religion doesn't make sense. Presumably this book went through multiple drafts. Presumably people proofread it. Doublethink at its finest.

Like early Christianity, Islam believes in bodily resurrection on Judgement Day, rather than the immediate post-mortem transition to Heaven or Hell envisioned by modern Christianity. When someone dies, their body disintegrates and their soul is put in a suspended state called 'Barzakh': the soul is frozen, oblivious, until Judgement Day, when the body is rebuilt and the soul has to confront its life choices, with their resultant reward or punishment. From the soul's perspective, it is an immediate transition to Judgement Day: suspended souls to do not perceive time, like one in a deep sleep.

Christianity, over the centuries, came up with a few explanations for what happened to people who died before Jesus, people who lived too early to share in the salvation he brought. They had to be in Hell. Some Christians just accepted this in an uncaring 'oh well, tough for them, lucky me being born when and where I was!' way. Others developed the idea of the 'Harrowing of Hell', which is alluded to in the New Testament: Jesus' descent into Hell after the crucifixion. In some interpretations, he smashed his way through Hell to rescue the old prophets and preach to the righteous, saving as many as he could and leading them to Heaven. In the 4th century Gospel of Nicodemus, Jesus conquers Hell and turns it from Satan's Kingdom into Satan's Prison. In Dante's Inferno, the two poets pass some ruined sections of Hell laid waste during Jesus' assault on the underworld (I imagined this as a sort-of holy equivalent of the Dead Scar in Quel'thalas from the Warcraft games).

Muhammad got in early so no speculations on this subject would be necessary, and also covered what would happen to people from different cultures who didn't know anything about Islam and God's rules. Obviously, he's already established that free will doesn't exist but also does, so don't expect anything too profound:

Shortly after creating Adam, the first man, God extracted from Adam's loins all of the future generations of humanity. He laid these out in front him, and spoke to them all face-to-face, saying:

"Am I not your Lord?"

And every single human who has ever existed or ever will exist replied: "Yes, we testify to it."

God then explained why he decided to have this meeting:

"That was in case you (mankind) should say on the Day of Resurrection, 'Surely we were unaware of all this. We had no idea that You, Allah, were our God. No one told us we were supposed to worship you alone."

Presumably, God then wiped all their memories so he could surprise them on Judgement Day, then shoved everyone back into Adam's testicles.

Islamic Determinism

Welcome to a new series of 'Mike Learns About Islam and Writes About It So You Can Learn Too' (working title). I'm currently reading up on the fundamentals of Sunni Islamic Monotheism. Since the Qur'an is a very tedious and self-contradictory book, it doesn't give you a very clear idea of Islamic belief, which meant that generations of Muhammad's successors have had to perform arduous exegesis to figure out what God was supposedly going on about. Some Muslims say that this is part of the text's holiness: God speaks, through the Qur'an, differently to each person. However, this means that it's very easy to create-your-own Islam to suit your existing prejudices and ideas, hence there are a billion interpretations of what Islam means. There are only two beliefs unifying all Muslims: (a) there is one god, Allah, and (b) Muhammad was his prophet. To quote one author: '[Muhammad] left serious theological difficulties to his more reflective successors'.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let's learn about one Sunni Muslim's interpretation of Islam. He's got a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D in Islamic theology and has been a university professor in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, and the book is apparently quite popular in Muslim communities, so we can assume his interpretation is fairly orthodox.

One of the things brought up in the first chapter is a heresy that has re-emerged again and again in Islamic culture throughout history. It's something that people really like to believe in. It's very important in many branches of Christianity.

Free will.

In Christianity, free will is often used as part of the explanation for the existence of evil in a cosmos created by a good God: true free will entails the ability to choose evil over good; freely-chosen good is greater than forced good, the existence of evil is a price worth paying (Benjamin Franklyn: 'They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety').

None of that in Islam. God created everything and predetermined everything. Which means that God created (a lot of) people with the intention of making them suffer because they did what he decided they would do, giving them no choice in the matter.

Some Qur'an verses against free will:

'Allah created you and whatever you do.' 

'It was not you who threw when you threw, but it was Allah who threw.'

'No calamity strikes except by Allah's permission'

'If the whole of mankind gathered together in order to do something to help you, they would only be able to do something for you which Allah had already written.'

'Had I wished, I could have granted each soul its right guidance. But My decree is binding: I shall fill Hell with both jinn and humans.'

'You did not slay them; it was Allah who slew them.'

'The Prince of Darkness' by Jeffrey Burton Russell

In The Prince of Darkness (1989), Jeffrey B. Russell has condensed his academic quartet on the history of the concepts of evil and the Devil from antiquity to the modern world - The Devil (1977), Satan (1981), Lucifer (1984), and Mephistopheles (1986) – into one slim book intended for a popular audience. The academic quartet has a total page count of 1223; The Prince of Darkness is only 288 pages including appendices and index. There is an astonishing amount of information in this small volume.

Burton begins with the ancient world mythologies, looking at the elements in them which influenced the Devil concept, such as: the chaos monsters including Leviathan and Tiamat; conflicts between gods, such as the Greek war between the Olympians and the Titans which ended with the Titans imprisoned in Tartarus; gods and spirits of death and destruction; and Zoroastrianism, with its good god and bad god in conflict across the cosmos until the end of time. 

Following this, we get an overview of the ancient Hebrew tradition leading to the development of fallen angels: the early Hebrew monotheists ascribed both good and evil to the One God, but the Jews later wanted to distance evil from the God they worshiped, to absolve him of blame, so they had God delegate some evil to the angels, loyal servants under his command, such as the satan in the Book of Job (this is modern Judaism's view of Satan: a loyal servant of the good-bad God). This delegating God calls for angel volunteers to act as tempters, satans: 1 Kings 22:19-23:

'And Micaiah said, “Therefore hear the word of the LORD: I saw the LORD sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right hand and on his left; and the LORD said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ And one said one thing, and another said another. Then a spirit came forward and stood before the LORD, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ And the LORD said to him, ‘By what means?’ And he said, ‘I will go out, and will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ And he said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do so.’ Now therefore behold, the LORD has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the LORD has declared disaster for you.”'

Delegated angels became rebel angels in Judaism's apocalyptic period, when the the Jews were convinced the world was going to end any day now. During this period a lot of texts, now considered apocryphal, developed different versions of the fallen angel myth. In some stories, Satan is kicked out of heaven for refusing to bow to newly created humanity. In others, angels fall to Earth lusting after human women. In others, the evil lord Mastema, Prince of Evil, leads an army of evil against God, constantly trying to thwart God's good plan. 

Early Christianity was a branch of Apocalyptic Judaism; the New Testament further developed apocalyptic and diabolical concepts. The early Christians believed that Satan was ruler of the world, 'the prince of this world', who would be punished at the end of time (any day now) by being shoved into Hell. Jesus' sacrifice had broken Satan's complete hold over humanity: those that turned to Jesus were saved. The pagan gods existed, but they were fallen angels who ruled the Roman empire. In the second century, Justin Martyr developed one of the first fully fleshed-out Christian cosmological worldviews: in it, he described 3 categories of evil beings: Satan, a great angel, who fell from grace through sin at the beginning of time; the rest of the fallen angels, who fell from heaven when they lusted after human women; and demons, the hybrid monsters of illicit angel-human interspecies sex. The evil ones had control over the world; Jesus' first coming signaled the beginning of the end of their reign. At the second coming they would be cast into Hell.

Over the centuries this worldview changed. There were stories about Christ's descent into Hell during the 3 days between death and resurrection: he breached the doors of Hell, preached to the righteous (who were only in there because they happened to be born too soon to convert to Christianity in their lifetimes), and locked Satan&Co up, turning their old Kingdom of the Dead into their prison. Satan&Co did not have complete free reign on earth; they had been imprisoned by Jesus, who would finish the job at the second coming. 

The earlier threefold division between Satan, fallen angels, and demons was abandoned: they all became the same, angels who fell with Satan at the beginning. Satan's power over earth and his imprisonment were combined somewhat contradictorily, both simultaneously occurring straight after his fall: Satan&Co were imprisoned in Hell after their rebellion, but also have considerable powers over the Earth.

There are chapters covering: the entertaining mythologies of Gnosticism and Manichaeism, both dualist cosmologies with a good god and a bad god; early Christian heresies, and how Satan became associated with them; the Desert Fathers, monks who believed the Devil was constantly tempting them; various theologians and how they reconciled evil with a good God – these early theologians culminated in Augustine of Hippo, who synthesized their ideas into the classical view of Western Christianity. 

Medieval Christianity is the next stage of Burton's history. As Christianity became popular, it got mixed up with a lot of pagan traditions (Saturnalia was a pagan festival of gift-giving over the Winter Solstice. Eostre was pagan deity of Spring who had a festival at the Spring Equinox.), and so the Christian Devil got mixed up with a lot of pagan traditions: he gained horns and cloven feet from the god Pan; he enjoys Pagan-style celebrations, sacrifices, the Wild Hunt. Lilith is Lucifer's mother. The Devil of Medieval folklore has a lot of strange similarities to Santa Claus. Throughout history there has been a divide in religions between the popular/folk religion of the masses, and the reasoned out religion of the elites. This divide was far wider in olden days, when literacy levels were extremely low and so the masses could not read sacred texts for themselves. 

We get an overview of Medieval theologians such as Anselm, Eruigena, and Aquinas, and a look at Cathar dualism (a medieval gnostic Christianity). And then along came Dante, who created one of the most important depictions of the Devil: trapped deep in the Earth, at the centre of the universe, farthest from God, in a cold, dark, place; immobile, bestial, pathetic. Dante's Satan is contrasted with the brightness, warmth, and lively mobility of Heaven. To many theologians, evil is nothingness, non-being: Satan's pathetic immobility shows him as the personification of evil as lifeless non-being.

In the Middle Ages, clerics wrote mystery plays to bolster the faith of uneducated laypeople. Some told the stories of Satan's rebellion, Adam and Eve in Eden, and on through Old Testament scenes. The plays end with the passion, and therefore triumph, of Jesus over Satan. Satan in these plays, while evil, is also made into a comically inept supervillain whose plans are foiled by God.

The witch hunting craze influenced popular perception of the Devil. How the Devil was thought of during the Reformation. The early development of the Faust legend; diabolical themes in the plays of Marlowe and Shakespeare (Doctor Faustus and Hamlet, respectively). A whole chapter is devoted to Milton's Paradise Lost, because it is one of the best things ever written and massively important in the history of the Devil idea. 

And then we get to the rise of unbelief in the Age of Enlightenment. Rationalism and empiricism weakened Christianity, belief in God and the Devil. Some branches of Christianity tried to adapt to this by almost eliminating the Devil from their theology. God and the Devil were seen as primitive superstitions. The Marquis de Sade, from whom we get Sadism, used the atheist argument to advocate cruelty and hedonism: if you enjoy torture, do it, because pleasure is good. Geothe wrote Faust, presenting a new Devil for a new world ('Mephistopheles in the most important literary Devil since Milton's, but the difference between Milton's Satan and Goethe's Mephisto is the difference between a basically Christian and a basically secular world view').

A Romantic movement arose in response to the Enlightenment. They valued emotions and feelings over reason and logic. They gave new meaning to traditional symbols. Satan, fighting against Jehovah, was a heroic figure fighting for freedom from illegitimate authority. Jesus, against Satan, was a hero fighting unjust worldly authority. Thus in Romantic eyes Satan could represent heroism, individualism and the strive for freedom, but also isolation and selfishness. The artists of this period played with the Devil concept in interesting but often incoherent way. William Blake's mythology, especially The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Lord Byron's Cain: A Mystery. Percy Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, which combines the Greek Prometheus with the loving Jesus and the heroic Satan. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the first science fiction novel, about a man gaining Godlike powers, creating life: diabolical imagery surrounds the monster, but Frankenstein replaces supernatural horror with scientific horror. Victor Hugo's The End of Satan.

Romanticism split into Naturalism, which spurned the supernatural in favour of realism, and Decadence, an exploration of human sensuality. The latter led to a rise of occultism. Baudelaire's The Flowers of Evil. Lautreamont's The Chants of Maldoror. J-K Huysman investigated the occult Satanism of his day and wrote the novel The Damned, a fictional account of his experiences in this secret world. Huysman was so repelled by what he witnessed that he converted to Catholicism. 

After being attacked on scientific and historical fronts, religion was then attacked by psychologists: Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein, Carl Jung. Freud argued that the Devil was the personification of repressed unconscious desires. Klein argued that since children easily divide the world between good and bad, while adults learn ambivalence and shades of grey, the religious divide between good and evil is a sign of psychological immaturity. Carl Jung saw the Devil as an important psychological symbol that helped us face up to the existence of evil. Dostoevsky's The Devils and The Brothers Karamazov defends religion while facing up to problem of evil and presenting compelling evil characters. Twentieth century horrors re-emphasized the problem of evil. Satan in modern literature: Tolkien, CS Lewis, Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus, the short stories of Flannery O'Connor, etc. The Devil in pop culture and music. LaVeyan Satanism ('their Satanic Bible is a melange of hedonistic maxims and incoherent occultism').

Burton believes that a lack of belief in a transcendent evil force makes the world more dangerous, and he looks at the arguments on both sides. My own opinion on this matter is undecided.

This is an astonishingly erudite book, and contains an incredible amount of information for less than 300 pages. My only complaint is that the Devil in Islam is not explored: Burton says in his introduction that this is treated in the Lucifer volume of his original quartet, but I feel like he could have fit even a short chapter on Islam's Devil into this book. Nevertheless, I thoroughly recommend this book for a relatively easy-reading history of the Devil and evil in human thought.