Whitney S. Bodman is a professor of Comparative Religions at Austin Seminary. He holds a Doctorate of Theology in Islamic Studies at Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge. He is the chair of the Texas Conference of Churches Muslim-Christian Forum and serves on the Executive Committee of Interfaith Center for Public Policy.
Intriguing and poetic analysis on the character of Iblis and his refusal to bow to Adam despite God's command, and the subsequent conflation of the character of Iblis into al-Shaytan, the one-dimensional hound of humanity.
"The evil of al-Shaytan is simple and clear; one knows to reject it even if one does not. If humanity had been created with neither will nor reason, al-Shaytan would be sufficient to reveal the boundaries of the straight path. But mortals were not so formed. The burdens of discernment and the power of desire, even desire for God, lead mortals into a wilderness of God's own design. Although will and righteousness direct us towards the final destinatio, that same will and righteousness also lead us astray. Like al-Hallaj's Iblis, we cannot assume that God's command, often interpreted through human medium and contextualized in time and space, with God's will, which is eternal, are the same. The very recognition that there is a difference is the fertile soil of tragedy. We choose, discern, reason, decide, and suffer the consequences, trusting in God's mercy.
While it is tempting, in the human search for the straight path, to dismiss tragedy as a failure of faith in God's good mercy, in fact it is in the tragic that we recognize that the straight path is not well lit. We choose, and suffer the consequences. That is the path."