According to Allah’s narrative, Iblis was upset with His order of expulsion, and he protested loudly. Pleading his innocence, he accused Allah of putting him in the wrong way [1] and doing him injustice. Since Iblis did not have the ability to retaliate against Allah’s might, he asked him, instead, to grant him power to misguide and disorient mankind on earth by making wrong seem right and fair. [2] Allah could not refute Iblis’s accusation; rather, to appease him, He conceded to his demand with confidence that Iblis would be able to exercise his authority only over those human beings who would become his followers. [3]

Armed with his covenant with Allah, Iblis, also known as Satan, descended on earth to take revenge on the human race for injustice done to him by Allah, his creator. Here, he multiplied his race with his progeny,[4] joined by a mysterious female Jinn from nowhere, with the frightening result that he and his issues can wreak havoc on any human being they chose for the purpose.

At this stage, we again need to reflect briefly on the concept of predestination as propounded by Allah, and also on the so-called “Universal Plan” that He is supposed to have conceived for the Planet Earth and its inhabitants. We are told that before the birth of a child, his destiny is predetermined. Whatever Allah willed for him or her, he or she would have to live with that Will throughout his or her entire life. If a child were predestined to follow Satan, he would have to do so, because, we are told, nobody can ever go against Allah’s Will. Therefore, in a situation where a person is predisposed to the commission of sins, one may wonder, what role Satan can play in such a person’s life.

We are further told by Allah that before the inception of the universe, He had planned to have the earth inhabited by the human race, together with all faunas and floras. To execute His scheme, He had prepared the earth to be hospitable to its occupants. For this purpose, He needed to send down to it a pair of human beings, as well as pairs of all animals so that the earth could be replete with their respective procreation. Of course, Allah could have created all beings in the same fashion, in which He had created Adam and his wife in heaven, but in keeping with His Universal Plan, He chose to create them, instead, on earth itself. It is on account of the successful fruition of His Universal Plan that we find ourselves on earth on which, we must live till the end of our lives, braving multiple of weal and woes as He determined for us at the time of our creation.

Our travails do not end with our death. We will be confronted in our grave by angels, and if we fail to satisfy them with answers to their questions, we will be subjected to various torments, which will continue up to the time of our resurrection on the Day of Judgment.

 Muslims claim that the first man that Allah created was Muhammad. Having created him in His own image, Allah preserved his soul in the felicity of Paradise . When his presence on earth became necessary, he arrived in the form of a human being, having been given birth to naturally by a woman, his mother. By sending him to earth, both as a Prophet and an Apostle, Allah achieved the ultimate goal that He had conceived before creating the Universe. With what material Muhammad was created, however, has never been divulged.

We now turn to the expulsion of Adam, his wife and Iblis from Paradise . Allah did not tell us when and where on earth the three had landed. The Bible, however, says that Adam was placed at the east of the Garden of Eden.[5] Neither the Bible nor the Quran says where his wife, Eve, was deposited on earth. Some Muslim commentators, however, surmise that she had descended on the island of Sri Lanka , and after wandering all over the earth for an unknown period of time, she found Adam at the plains of Arafat, in Mecca . Muslim pilgrims now congregate at Arafat every year to commemorate the union of our original parents.

Eve was never married to Adam, though they are claimed to have been Muslims from the time of their creation.

Furthermore, Allah did not tell us how and with which material Adam’s wife was fashioned. The Bible, of course, has described the process of her creation and the material with which she was formed into a human being.

The episode, which took place in heaven and which involved Adam, his wife and Iblis was in accordance with Allah’s scheme. He needed to send those humans to earth, but He could not do so without placing some kind of blame on their shoulders so that He could rule over them with ease. In His game plan, Iblis was used as a tool. Allah deceitfully involved him in two pre-conceived acts of disobedience, thus facilitating Adam and his wife’s expulsion from heaven. It was through this process that Allah had been able to materialize an important part of His Universal Plan.

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