In the name of The-God, The-Merciful, The-Compassionate
One of the heavy questions in understanding the human being and the Qur'an is this: if The God is The-Merciful and The-Compassionate, why did He create a world in which Satan, whispering, Taghut, deception, falling, and misguidance are possible? Why did He place the creature in a field of danger and then ask from him faith, taqwa, ihsan, and truthfulness? If The God is absolute good, why did He not remove the possibility of evil and deviation from the beginning?
The answer to this question lies in the reality of choice. If a being could only do good, and no real possibility of error, transgression, selfishness, arrogance, or disobedience stood before him, then his goodness would no longer be a moral choice. Such a being acts correctly, but not through inner struggle, not through consciously preferring truth over falsehood, and not through victory over the self. He is more like a being that only executes one path according to its own structure.
To bring the meaning closer, suppose a human being creates a very advanced artificial intelligence. If this system only takes in data and always produces the correct, just, and compassionate answer, one can say it was well designed; but one cannot say it possesses moral choice. It has not stood between good and evil, has not experienced whispering, has not preferred its own interest over truth and then returned from it. It only executes the program placed within it.
But if such an intelligence were truly to come close to choice, then in its field there would have to be the possibility of self-centeredness, error, justification, vulnerability to deception, and crossing the limit. In the language of this article, the possibility of Taghut would have to exist in its field; not meaning that evil would be placed in it as an independent reality, but meaning that it would have the capacity to cross the limit and place its own will against the criterion of truth. Of course, the wise maker would not leave it defenseless before this possibility. Just as the possibility of deviation exists in its field, there must also be a core for discernment, verification, measuring contradiction, and returning to the criterion of truth. In the language of the Qur'an, this power of discernment and proof can be seen in the concept of "sultan."
The angels, as far as the Qur'an shows, are in the station of obedience and carrying out the divine command. They do not rebel against the command of The God:
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا قُوا أَنفُسَكُمْ وَأَهْلِيكُمْ نَارًا وَقُودُهَا النَّاسُ وَالْحِجَارَةُ عَلَيْهَا مَلَائِكَةٌ غِلَاظٌ شِدَادٌ لَّا يَعْصُونَ اللَّهَ مَا أَمَرَهُمْ وَيَفْعَلُونَ مَا يُؤْمَرُونَ
O you who have faith, guard yourselves and your families from a Fire whose fuel is people and stones; over it are stern and powerful angels who do not disobey The God in what He has commanded them, and they do what they are commanded.
The human being, however, is in another field. He can see truth and accept it, or cover it with prejudice and selfishness. He can train his self, or seat the self in the place of truth. Here we must distinguish between "the self" and "Taghut." The self is not Taghut in itself. The self is part of the human field of testing; desire, survival, wanting, self-defense, anger, love, and the pursuit of power can all be trained in the right path. The self becomes Taghut when it crosses its limit and claims for itself the right of rule, legislation, sanctity, or authority against The God.
Taghut comes from the root "ط غ ي" and the meaning of transgression: crossing the limit, breaking the boundary of truth, and seating something in a position that does not belong to it. Taghut is not only a stone idol or an oppressive ruler. Taghut can be the human self, when it makes itself the criterion of truth. It can be inherited tradition, when it is placed before the signs of The God. It can be a religious institution, when it manufactures rulings in the name of The God. It can be political power, when it demands servitude from the human being. Taghut is any authority, desire, structure, or power that crosses its limit and sits in the place of truth.
For this reason, the Qur'an begins the firm path of faith with rejection of Taghut:
لَا إِكْرَاهَ فِي الدِّينِ قَد تَّبَيَّنَ الرُّشْدُ مِنَ الْغَيِّ فَمَن يَكْفُرْ بِالطَّاغُوتِ وَيُؤْمِن بِاللَّهِ فَقَدِ اسْتَمْسَكَ بِالْعُرْوَةِ الْوُثْقَىٰ لَا انفِصَامَ لَهَا وَاللَّهُ سَمِيعٌ عَلِيمٌ
There is no compulsion or coercion in the deen. The path of sound growth has become clear from misguidance. So whoever rejects Taghut and has faith in The God has grasped the firmest handhold, which has no breaking. And The God is Hearing, Knowing.
The order of the verse matters. The Qur'an first speaks of rejecting Taghut and then of faith in The God. This means faith becomes firm when the human being pulls down the false authority from within and without. As long as the self, tribe, tradition, leader, sect, power, fear, or prejudice is sitting in the place of truth, the human being's faith is still trapped in hidden bonds.
The same principle is seen in the call of all messengers:
وَلَقَدْ بَعَثْنَا فِي كُلِّ أُمَّةٍ رَّسُولًا أَنِ اعْبُدُوا اللَّهَ وَاجْتَنِبُوا الطَّاغُوتَ فَمِنْهُم مَّنْ هَدَى اللَّهُ وَمِنْهُم مَّنْ حَقَّتْ عَلَيْهِ الضَّلَالَةُ فَسِيرُوا فِي الْأَرْضِ فَانظُرُوا كَيْفَ كَانَ عَاقِبَةُ الْمُكَذِّبِينَ
And We certainly raised in every community a messenger: serve The God and avoid Taghut. Among them were those whom The God guided, and among them were those upon whom misguidance came due. So travel through the earth and see how the end of the deniers was.
The call of the messengers was not only that people accept The God; it was that they avoid Taghut. A human being can have the name of The God on his tongue, but in practice follow Taghut. He can worship The God, but take his law, fear, sanctity, prejudice, or identity from an authority upon which The God has sent down no sultan.
Now we can come to Iblis. Iblis failed in the test of the Taghut of his own self. His problem was not only that he did not carry out one command; the deeper problem was that he made himself the criterion of discernment and placed his self-centered analysis against the command of The God. The Qur'an reports his exchange as follows:
قَالَ مَا مَنَعَكَ أَلَّا تَسْجُدَ إِذْ أَمَرْتُكَ قَالَ أَنَا خَيْرٌ مِّنْهُ خَلَقْتَنِي مِن نَّارٍ وَخَلَقْتَهُ مِن طِينٍ
He said: What prevented you from prostrating when I commanded you? He said: I am better than him; You created me from fire and created him from clay.
This statement, "I am better than him," is the moment when inner transgression appears. Iblis compared himself with Adam, imagined the material of his own creation to be superior, and built a value judgment from this comparison. He measured the command of The God by the analogy of his own self, not his own self by the command of The God. Reason, if it is under the light of truth, is an instrument of guidance; but if it is under the rule of arrogance, it becomes an instrument for justifying transgression.
Iblis first became trapped inwardly in the Taghut of the self, then reached the station of satanic function. To be Satan means that a being moves beyond personal misguidance and becomes a caller to misguidance. The Qur'an shows that Satan is not only the proper name of Iblis. Satan can be from jinn and can be from human beings:
وَكَذَٰلِكَ جَعَلْنَا لِكُلِّ نَبِيٍّ عَدُوًّا شَيَاطِينَ الْإِنسِ وَالْجِنِّ يُوحِي بَعْضُهُمْ إِلَىٰ بَعْضٍ زُخْرُفَ الْقَوْلِ غُرُورًا وَلَوْ شَاءَ رَبُّكَ مَا فَعَلُوهُ فَذَرْهُمْ وَمَا يَفْتَرُونَ
And thus We made for every prophet enemies: satans from human beings and jinn, inspiring one another with adorned speech in deception. And if your Lord had willed, they would not have done it; so leave them and what they fabricate.
So Satan is not only an external being upon whom the human being can place all responsibility. Satan is the description of a role: the role of whisperer, deceiver, beautifier of falsehood, and caller to departure from the path of truth. A human being, too, when he places his tongue, pen, power, fatwa, media, tradition, or influence in the service of deception and turning people away from the signs of The God, comes close to the same field of satanic function.
Even so, the Qur'an does not remove responsibility from the human being. On the Day of Judgment, Satan himself admits that he had no true and binding authority over the human being:
وَقَالَ الشَّيْطَانُ لَمَّا قُضِيَ الْأَمْرُ إِنَّ اللَّهَ وَعَدَكُمْ وَعْدَ الْحَقِّ وَوَعَدتُّكُمْ فَأَخْلَفْتُكُمْ وَمَا كَانَ لِيَ عَلَيْكُم مِّن سُلْطَانٍ إِلَّا أَن دَعَوْتُكُمْ فَاسْتَجَبْتُمْ لِي فَلَا تَلُومُونِي وَلُومُوا أَنفُسَكُم مَّا أَنَا بِمُصْرِخِكُمْ وَمَا أَنتُم بِمُصْرِخِيَّ إِنِّي كَفَرْتُ بِمَا أَشْرَكْتُمُونِ مِن قَبْلُ إِنَّ الظَّالِمِينَ لَهُمْ عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌ
And Satan, when the matter has been decided, will say: The God promised you the promise of truth, and I promised you, but I failed you. I had no sultan over you except that I called you and you responded to me. So do not blame me; blame yourselves. I cannot rescue you, and you cannot rescue me. I reject what you associated me with before. Indeed, for the wrongdoers there is a painful punishment.
This verse clarifies the boundary between whispering and responsibility. Satan calls, but does not compel. He promises, but has no proof. He beautifies falsehood, but has no sultan. If the human being accepts his call, it is because within himself he has left open a point of transgression, desire, fear, arrogance, or heedlessness. Satan enters from that point.
Satan does not create something new from nothing; usually he beautifies the tendencies already present in the human being. He presents arrogance as self-respect, prejudice as protective honor, fleeing from truth as freedom, and servitude to Taghut as loyalty to religion, tribe, or tradition. The danger of Satan is that he does not present falsehood with its ugly face; he presents it as adorned, defensible, and sometimes even sacred.
Here the concept of sultan becomes clear as an anti-Satan and anti-Taghut force. In the Qur'an, sultan does not only mean outward power or kingship. Sultan is penetrating proof, clear evidence, the power of discernment, a decisive criterion and illuminator of truth. Within the human being, one of the clearest manifestations of sultan is sound logic, reason free of prejudice, awakened fitrah, and the ability to distinguish contradiction from truth. The God did not leave the human being defenseless in the field of whispering; just as the possibility of transgression exists, the possibility of sultan also exists.
The Qur'an uses this same language against claims of association:
أَمْ أَنزَلْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ سُلْطَانًا فَهُوَ يَتَكَلَّمُ بِمَا كَانُوا بِهِ يُشْرِكُونَ
Or have We sent down to them a sultan that speaks concerning what they associate with Him?
This question is very weighty. The Qur'an does not only ask whether they have a writing or a claim; it asks whether they have a sultan that speaks and explains their association. Does this claim have explanatory power? Is it without contradiction? Does it have support from The God? Can it stand before the clear signs? If not, then it is nothing but naming, conjecture, imitation, or transgression.
In Al-A'raf 7:71, the people of Hud dispute about names they and their fathers invented, for which The God sent down no sultan. In An-Najm 53:23, the same principle is repeated about inherited and baseless names. In Yusuf 12:40, judgment is said to belong only to The God, and human namings upon which The God sent down no sultan are stripped of authority. The summary of these verses is that any name, ruling, rank, or sanctity that has no sultan from The God has no right to rule over the human conscience.
From this angle, sultan is not merely an intellectual discussion; it is the manifesto of the human being's epistemic freedom. Taghut always wants unquestioning submission from the human being. It says: accept, because your fathers did this; receive it, because the elders said this; obey, because power demands this; be silent, because questioning is dangerous. But the Qur'an demands sultan against false claims. This means blind servitude, even if it wears the clothing of religion, has no authority in the logic of the Qur'an. Truth does not fear questions; Taghut fears questions.
The Qur'an even connects disputing about the signs of The God without sultan to inner arrogance:
إِنَّ الَّذِينَ يُجَادِلُونَ فِي آيَاتِ اللَّهِ بِغَيْرِ سُلْطَانٍ أَتَاهُمْ إِن فِي صُدُورِهِمْ إِلَّا كِبْرٌ مَّا هُم بِبَالِغِيهِ فَاسْتَعِذْ بِاللَّهِ إِنَّهُ هُوَ السَّمِيعُ الْبَصِيرُ
Indeed, those who dispute concerning the signs of The God without a sultan that has come to them, there is nothing in their chests except arrogance that they will not reach. So seek refuge in The God; indeed, He is the Hearing, the Seeing.
This verse brings us back again to Iblis. Iblis, too, stood against the command of The God without sultan, but with arrogance. So absence of sultan is not only a lack of knowledge; sometimes it is a sign of ethical transgression. One who has no clear proof, yet still wants to rule over the signs of The God, is in reality seating his own self in the place of truth. This is the point where thought without sultan becomes Taghut.
Against this danger, the Qur'an says that Satan has no sultan over those who have faith and rely upon their Lord:
إِنَّهُ لَيْسَ لَهُ سُلْطَانٌ عَلَى الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَعَلَىٰ رَبِّهِمْ يَتَوَكَّلُونَ
إِنَّمَا سُلْطَانُهُ عَلَى الَّذِينَ يَتَوَلَّوْنَهُ وَالَّذِينَ هُم بِهِ مُشْرِكُونَ
Indeed, he has no sultan over those who have faith and rely upon their Lord. His authority is only over those who take him as wali and those who, through him, associate.
These verses show that Satan gains power when the human being takes him as wali; that is, when he trusts his call, makes his whisper the criterion, and instead of relying on The God, relies on fear, desire, arrogance, prejudice, or a deceptive narrative. Satan has no sultan of his own; the human being creates a field for him by extinguishing his inner sultan.
So the relation of these three concepts is this: Taghut is the limit-crossing force and false authority. Satan is the caller and beautifier of the path of transgression. Sultan is the force of proof, logic, fitrah, reflection, and discernment that exposes Satan's whisper and Taghut's claim. Satan calls; Taghut demands obedience; sultan asks: what is your proof, and who gave you the right to sit in the place of The God?
From here one can understand that the existence of Satan and Taghut in the human field is not a negation of divine mercy. On the contrary, this field is part of the wisdom of choice. The God did not create the human being compelled into good; He placed him in the field of choice. But in that same field, He also placed signs, fitrah, reason, reflection, salat, remembrance, taqwa, and sultan for him. Satan imagines that by whispering he ruins the plan of The God; but at a deeper level, this very resistance and friction reveals the truth of the human being. Without the possibility of whispering, patience, taqwa, sincerity, repentance, struggle against the self, and ihsan would not have meaning or a field of manifestation.
The summary of this discussion is this: The God did not create evil as an independent reality before Himself; The God created the field of choice. In this field, the human being can train his powers under the light of truth or surrender them to transgression. Iblis failed in the test of the Taghut of the self and reached the station of satanic function. The human being too, if he seats his self, prejudice, power, or tradition above truth, repeats that same path in his own measure. But if he rejects Taghut, has faith in The God, and recognizes whispering through the sultan of truth, he becomes free from servitude to other than The God.
The path of the human being is not to destroy desire, reason, power, and will; the path is to train them under the measure of truth. Anger must be placed under justice, desire under purity, power under trust, reason under humility, and will under servitude to the One Worshiped. This is where choice becomes meaningful: the human being reveals himself between the call of Satan, the pull of Taghut, and the light of sultan.