Excerpted from _Mystical Dimensions of Islam_ by Annemarie Schimmel

	"One of the most fascinating aspects of mystical psychology in Islam is
the way in which the Sufis have dealt with Satan, the power of evil.  Satan,
according to the Koran either a fallen angel or a jinn created from fire, plays
a dominant role in the story of creation as told in the Koran (Sura 2:28-34). 
According to some mystics, he was the teacher of the angels and in this role
was even made the subject of a Bengali Muslim poem of the early seventeenth
century, the _Iblisname_ by Sayyid Sultan.  The author says that the angels
were ordered to honor Iblis even after God had cursed him, since he had been
their teacher -- the same applies to the disciple who has to honor and obey his
sheikh, even if the sheikh is a veritable satan.
	"A well-known tradition says that Satan sits in the blood of Adam's
children (cf. S 471), and thus he could be equated with the _nafs_, the lower
principle, the "flesh."  But never in the history of Islam has Satan been given
absolute power over men: he can tell them lies and seduce them as he did with
Adam, but they have the possibility to resist his insinuations (Iqbal's Satan
sadly complains that it is much too easy for him to seduce people).  Iblis
never becomes "evil as such"; he always remains a creature of God and, thus, a
necessary instrument in His hands.
	"In some mystical circles something like a rehabilitation of Satan was
attempted.  It seems that this idea was first formulated by Hallaj: Satan
boasts of having served God for thousands of years before Adam's creation, and
his pride in being created from fire makes him refuse God's order to prostrate
himself before Adam, newly created from clay.  Hallaj recognizes only two true
monotheists in the world, Muhammad and Satan -- but Muhammad is the treasurer
of divine grace, whereas Iblis has become the treasurer of divine wrath.  In
Hallaj's theory, Satan becomes "more monotheist than God Himself."  For God's
eternal will is that no one should be worshipped except Him, and Satan refuses
to fall down before a created being, notwithstanding God's explicit order.  As
Hallaj translates his outcry in a famous quatrain: "My rebellion means to
declare Thee Holy!"  Iblis was kept between will and order, and

		He was thrown into the water, his hands tied to his back,
		and He said to him: "Beware lest you become wet."

	"This tragic situation of Satan has inspired a number of poets to
express their sympathies with him whose predicament, in a certain sense,
foreshadowed the difficulties men would have to undergo in this world.  The
most beautiful poem in this respect is that by Sana'i -- a first great "Lament
of Satan," in which the fallen angel, whose "heart was the nest for the Simurgh
of love," complains of God's ruse: He had intended from eternity to condemn him
and made Adam the outward cause for his fall:

		He put the hidden snare into my way --
		Adam was the grain in the ring of this snare.
		He wanted to give me the mark of curse --
		He did what He wanted -- the earthen Adam was but an excuse.

To be sure, Satan had read on the Well-preserved Tablet that one creature would
be cursed by God -- but how could he, with his thousands of treasures of
obedience, expect that it would be he himself?  There are few poems that show
the tragic greatness of Iblis better than this little-known ghazal by the
master of Ghazna.
	"Sana'i may have been influenced in his thought by his elder
contemporary Ahmad Ghazzali (d. 1126), the classical representative of Satan's
rehabilitation, who dared to say: "Who does not learn _tauhid_ from Satan, is
an infidel" -- a remark that infuriated the orthodox but found an echo in many
later Sufi writings.  Attar follows him in his approach -- he too sees in Iblis
the perfect monotheist and lover, who, once cursed by God, accepts this curse
as a robe of honor; for (in the true Hallajan tradition), "to be cursed by
Thee, is a thousand times dearer to me than to turn my head away from Thee to
anything else."  Iblis becomes here the model of the perfect lover, who obeys
every wish of the beloved and prefers eternal separation willed by the beloved
to the union for which he longs.  Centuries later Sarmad, the Jewish convert to
Sufism (executed 1661) in Mogul India, shocked the orthodox with a quatrain in
which he called men to imitate Satan:

		Go, learn the method of servantship from Satan:
		Choose one _qibla_ and do not prostrate yourself before
			anything else.

Even the poetry of the eighteenth-century mystic Shah Abdul-Latif in the remote
province of Sind calls the reader to admire Iblis as the one true lover and to
follow his example -- a verse that has caused considerable puzzlement to the
commentators."

pp. 193-5