Ya-Sin · Makki · ayah 60 of 83

Ya-Sin 36:60

۞ أَلَمْ أَعْهَدْ إِلَيْكُمْ يَـٰبَنِىٓ ءَادَمَ أَن لَّا تَعْبُدُوا۟ ٱلشَّيْطَـٰنَ ۖ إِنَّهُۥ لَكُمْ عَدُوٌّ مُّبِينٌ

“Did I not enjoin upon you, O children of Adam, that you not worship Satan - [for] indeed, he is to you a clear enemy -”

Saheeh International

Essence

Nobody thinks they worship Satan, which is exactly the point: obeying the whisper of your father's oldest enemy is the worship it forbids.

A reflection

"I have never worshipped Satan"

Almost every reader passes this ayah with a clear conscience. Satan-worship belongs to candlelit cellars and heavy-metal album covers. Nobody you know has ever bowed to him.

The commentaries close that exit in a single word. Do not worship Satan means: do not obey him. That is how the concise commentaries gloss it, one after another. A longer commentary explains why the stronger word is used. What is forbidden is not merely prostrating to him. It is yielding to his command, because obedience is worship. Another notes that calling obedience worship here is deliberate, to make it as repellent as possible.

So the question the ayah puts is not whether you have ever knelt before him. It is whose suggestion you followed the last time two voices pulled at you.

Now hear it as its first audience did. The people of Makkah would have protested. We never worshipped Satan, they would say. We served our idols, and the angels we called daughters of God. One classical writer answers with another ayah. On that Day the angels will be asked whether these people worshipped them, and will reply that they worshipped the jinn. Whatever is worshipped besides Allah, he concludes, the worship lands on Satan in the end. He is the one who commanded it and made it look beautiful.

That was the shock of the first hearing. A whole city's religion was renamed in one sentence.

The shock still works, aimed inward. You do not need an altar to serve him. You need only to do what he suggests, a little at a time, while believing yourself unaffiliated.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.