Ramadaan and Shayateen!

New article written by our honored brother Tarek Mehanna (may Allah release him soon-Ameen) from his prison cell in the US.

As I watch the Sun set, the waxing crescent of the month of Sha’ban becomes more prominent in the sky above the prison. Soon, the rest of the sky seems clear & dark. But in reality, it’s still awash with color & light that nobody can see. Because its wavelengths are too stretched out for the human eye to detect, most of the light in the Universe is invisible to us.

What’s invisible to us was visible to the Prophet (saws), who said that “I see what you can’t see, and I hear what you can’t hear.” Providing us with a glimpse of the world beyond our perception, he then said that “the sky is groaning, and rightfully so. There isn’t the space of four fingers in it except that there’s an Angel in sujud. It you knew what I know, you’d rarely laugh, you’d often weep, you’d find no pleasure in bed with women, and you’d run to the hilltops screaming out to Allah.”

Also invisible to us is that “on the first night of Ramadan, the gates of the sky (another narration mentions mercy, and yet another mentions the Jannah) are opened, the gates of Jahannam are shut, and the shayatin are chained up.” We can’t detect this visually, but corresponding changes take place on the ground which we can perceive. Each Ramadan I’ve spent in a federal prison has fallen in the summer. The days leading up to it would thus be exceptionally hot & humid. But right at the start of each Ramadan, the heat would suddenly subside, and the climate would become cool. With only one or two interruptions, this would last for the duration of the month. Right after ‘Id al-Fitr, the heat would return. This would so eerily correspond to the beginning & end of Ramadan that one guard at the prison remarked (scornfully, of course): “I guess Allah loves you.”

The Prophet indeed said that “if Allah loves a servant of His, He shields him from the dunya.” In prison, we’re certain of the existence of a world beyond these walls, but are tested with the inability to actually experience it. Even those of you outside of prison are likewise tested with believing in a world you can’t see. In this sense, as the Prophet said, “the dunya is the believer’s prison.” Each of the amenities available to us in here (clothes, food, housing) is a counterpart to something available to you out there, except that the resemblance is strictly nominal. Everything we can see in this dunya is likewise a counterpart to something hidden away in the Ghayb that we can’t see, with the resemblance being strictly nominal. This is why Ibn ‘Abbas said that “nothing in this dunya resembles what’s in Jannah, except in name,” and the Prophet said that “the fire human beings light is just one seventieth the fire of Jahannam.”

This is exactly how Ibn Mas’ud described the Jinn: “The fire the Jinn are made of is just one seventieth the fire of Jahannam.” Though invisible to us, the Shaytan is a very real, living being. He has a physical form that can be touched, as ash-Shawkani wrote that “the position upheld by the majority of past & present scholars of Hadith & others is that Shaytan literally eats, has hands & legs, and that there are both male & female shayatin.” The Prophet himself once physically attacked Iblis during the Salah, describing to the Sahabah that “I put my hand forward & kept choking him to the point that I could feel the coolness of his saliva on these two fingers of mine (i.e., his thumb & index finger).”

It’s as if, with this one move, the Prophet was summarizing for us our relationship with Iblis. The command to take him as an enemy (35:6) is, as Ibn al-Qayyim wrote, “a push to exert all of your energy in fighting him, as if he’s an enemy who never rests & never slacks in fighting you so long as you have a breath left to breathe. These are three enemies you’ve been commanded to fight (i.e., your nafs, the Shaytan, and his allies). They’ve been unleashed upon you by Allah as a test, and you’ve been tested with fighting them in this life. Allah gave you support, strength, and weapons for this fight. He’s likewise given His enemies support, strength, and weapons, and He’s testing one side with the other. He’s made them a fitnah for each other in order to bring out their realities, and to distinguish those who ally themselves with Him & His Messengers from those who ally themselves with Shaytan & his group.”

He continued: “He informed you that you’ll remain victorious against this enemy so long as you fulfill His commands. He also informed you that if He ever gives your enemy victory over you, it’s because you’ve abandoned something that He commanded you to do, and have disobeyed Him. But He doesn’t leave you without hope. Rather, He ordered you to face reality, tend to your wounds, and return to the fight so that He’d help you against them. He told you that He’s with those who have taqwa, those who do good, those who are patient, and those who believe. He told you that He defends the believers in ways through which they couldn’t defend themselves. In fact, it’s because of His defense of you that you’re victorious over an enemy who would’ve otherwise obliterated you. And he defends you according to your level of Iman: If your Iman is strong, His defense of you will be strong. Whoever finds good should praise Allah, and whoever finds otherwise should blame nobody but himself.”

Finally, he wrote that “proper jihad is to struggle against yourself to force your heart, tongue, and limbs to submit to Allah so that they function for Allah & through Allah, not for yourself or through yourself. It’s to fight your shaytan by belying his promises, by not doing what he tells you to do, and by doing whatever he tells you not to do. This is because he deceptively promises to fulfill your vain desires & threatens you with poverty. He pushes you towards fawahish while pushing you away from guidance, taqwa, purity, patience, and every quality of Iman. So fight him by belying his promises & rebelling against him, and you’ll gain power & authority.”

There’s nothing he hates more than Islam, as the Prophet said that “Shaytan tries to block the human being from the various paths. He tries to block his path to Islam, saying ‘You’d become a Muslim, abandoning your way of life and that of your forefathers?!’ So he rebels against him & becomes a Muslim. He then tries to block his path to Hijrah, saying ‘You’d migrate, leaving your land & sky?! The Muhajir is like a horse tied to a rope!’ So he rebels against him & migrates. He then tries to block his path to Jihad, which consists of exerting life & wealth, saying ‘You’d fight & get yourself killed, leaving your wife to marry another man & your wealth to be divided between others?!’ So he rebels against him & fights.”

This is perhaps the first time in history that so many people across the globe have rebelled against Shaytan on such a scale. But you’ll find that even in Ramadan, most remain under his spell. Why? al-Qurtubi wrote that despite the shayatin being chained up during Ramadan, his effects emanate “from other sources, such as wicked souls, despicable customs, and the human shayatin.”

The human shayatin: these are the counterparts of Iblis in this world. Qatadah said that “there are shayatin who are jinn, and there are shayatin who are human.” These shayatin {“inspire each other,”} (6:112) as Ibn ‘Abbas explained that “the human shaytan meets the jinni shaytan, and one suggests to the other: ‘Misguide him like this, misguide him like that.'” The primary difference between them is that the jinni shaytan operates covertly, while the human shaytan operates overtly, as al-Hasan al-Basri explained that “the jinni shaytan whispers into people’s hearts. As for the human shaytan, he appears openly.” Otherwise, they both want the same thing & are identical at heart, as the Prophet described that there are people out there “whose hearts are the hearts of shayatin in the bodies of men.” We see them everyday: at work, at school, on the street, and in the media. They even interact with us, as Ibn Mas’ud described that “Shaytan appears in human form, approaches a group of people, and tells them a lie. When they disperse, one of them says: ‘I just heard a man speaking whose face I recognize, but I don’t know his name.'”

Even without knowing their names, we can recognize them from their words & acts. Allah has placed patterns in their behavior such that they inadvertently mimic one another, even if they live millennia apart. After Fir’awn was forewarned that a young man from Bani Isra’il would grow up to one day bring about the collapse of his kingdom, his policy of finding & killing each newborn male was simply the result of his obsessive fear of the yet-unidentified homegrown terrorist (Prophet Musa). Even Christian Bale, in an ABC News interview last November discussing his movie about Musa, couldn’t help but remark: “What would happen to Moses if he arrived today? Drones would be sent after him, right?” On the other end of history, the Prophet described that the Dajjal will emerge “in a fit of anger.” Various authentic ahadith specify that he’ll initially appear in the very two regions of the Earth to which his ancestors have been angrily crossing the ocean with their armies & drones: “a land towards the east known as Khurasan” and “a region between Sham & ‘Iraq.”

The awliya’ of Allah likewise share a common pattern of behavior. On his way to retake al-Masjid al-Aqsa from the Crusaders nearly a millennium ago, the primary cities that fell to Salah ad-Din were Halab, al-Mawsil, and ar-Raqqah (among others). Ibn Kathir wrote that once he conquered these cities, “the regions of the east & west all allied themselves with him. It was at this point that he was finally able to fight the Crusaders.” Indeed, after going on to defeat them at Hittin (on the 4th of July, 1187), Salah ad-Din finally reached al-Quds. Ibn Kathir ended his chapter on this by writing that “as for the Muslim prisoners who were held captive in al-Quds, he freed them all. He was generous to them, distributed expensive gifts to them, and clothed them. Each then set off for his homeland, eventually returning to his family & home. So all praise is due to Allah for His blessings & gifts.”

These Muslim prisoners were freed from captivity shortly before Ramadan, and the human shayatin who held them were now the ones in shackles. Once Ramadan begins, the same befalls Iblis himself, as Ibn Rajab wrote that “in Ramadan, the shackles have been placed on the feet of Iblis & his offspring just for you. In this month, vengeance is exacted upon Iblis. Muslim sinners are rescued from his captivity, and no trace of them remains with him. They were his chicks, and he would feed them their desires in his nest. Today, they’ve abandoned that nest. They picked the locks to his shackles & fortresses with tawbah & istighfar, walked out of his prison, and walked right into the fortress of taqwa & Iman. They became safe from the punishment of the Fire. They broke the back of Iblis with the word of Tawhid, and he whines about the pain of the injury. Each season of virtue leaves him saddened, and he cries in agony when he witnesses the descent of mercy & forgiveness of sins in this month. The party of ar-Rahman has won, and the party of Shaytan has fled. He no longer has authority over anyone but the kuffar. The regime of vain desires has been overthrown, and the dawlah has been handed over to the rule of taqwa.”

Salah ad-Din finally departed al-Quds on the 25th of Sha’ban, just a few nights before the start of Ramadan. He rode off into the night, heading towards his next battle on the Lebanese coast. As he looked up to see the waning crescent of Sha’ban, he was likely thinking of all he’d just seen occur on the ground & its invisible counterpart about to occur in the sky.

Written by: Tariq Mehanna
Monday, the 7th of Sha’ban 1436 (25th of May 2015)
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