The Almighty warned us about the devil and uncovered his ways. The noble verse mentioned what the devil said: “He said: ‘Because You have thrown me out of the way, lo! I will waylay them within Your straight path, then I will come to them from between their hands and from behind them, from their right and their left: nor will You find, in most of them, gratitude (for Your mercies)’.”
The Holy Qur’an,
Fortress 7, Al-A’raf (The Heights), verse 16-17
To clarify the warnings of our enemy, Satan, and his troops that are included for us in these verses, we will explain each one of them in detail separately.
“…I will waylay them within Your straight path”: this is in reference to the path of righteousness. He means that he will tempt them to stray from this path and induce them to commit sins. This is why you see that the magicians – who are all his followers – are to be found in mosques, in places of worship, and in graveyards (where spiritual purity is high). You will also notice that they have learnt the Qur’an and the prophet’s sayings by heart.
Furthermore, you can find some witches wearing turbans and jubbahs, while the women among them sometimes put on veils and yashmaks which portray an outwardly Islamic appearance.
They pretend to be pious worshipers, and dissemble in enjoining justice, forbidding evil and spending the night in prayer. They do that only in order to fill minds with doubt about Islam and make people disincline to Islam. They will seize any opportunity that will help them to cause damage.
They take corruption as their watchword and work to realize this aim; they make magic their practice and take cunning and deception as a way of life. They plot against people and deceive the common people using different methods. Sometimes they use the guise of religion, but can use any other guise according to their tendency or inclination. When they succeed and their tricks work against people, they start spreading corruption among their followers as much as possible. They grasp at worldly gains and try to bring about corruption. This is in accordance with the covenant they made with their master, the devil.
Some of them appear to offer a perfect picture in terms of their clothes, their appearance and their good looks, but the majority come out before people in a dowdy and foul-smelling way. This is a scheme to make simple-minded people think that they are attracted by their love for God, and that they feel loathing for this worldly life. They seem to display affection, sympathy and gentleness, and appear to set things right, but in reality, they are hiding nothing but perfidy, mercilessness and treachery. However, as the prophet (cpth) says: “But the true believer is astute, discerning and cautious.”[32]
The true believer follows his statement (cpth), which was related to people of heresy: “Beware of people by mistrusting them.”[33] Because of this, the magicians’ tricks do not work on such a person, as they know that a saint is one who follows God’s orders and does not exceed His bounds, rather than one who claims to have been granted false supernatural powers, who creates deceptions and who breaks Gods orders. As for the unbelievers, on the other hand: they become subordinate to them and a conduit for their seduction and evil.
The noble messenger (cpth) warned the common Muslims of weak belief about the rebellious ones when he said: “I do not feel worried about my nation: neither about believers nor polytheists, for the believer is restrained by his belief and the polytheist is repressed by his disbelief. But I feel worried about you who is an eloquent hypocrite who says what you know, but does what you disapprove of.”[34]
Now, we will relate to you an actual event which clarifies that a saint is one who only follows God’s commandments and stops at His limits, and never exceeds them whatever the attractions may be.