How did Satan manage to tempt Adam to eat the forbidden fruit though he had been expelled from Paradise?

 

Dear Brother / Sister,

The original home of man is Paradise. Therefore, the first man was created in Paradise. Although Adam was in Paradise, Allah did not create them to remain in Paradise in that state; He created them for a higher purpose: to reproduce and to be a means of testing. For this reason, He allowed them to make that mistake.

Allah created the angels who are incapable of sinning and the animals who are not held responsible at all.

In addition to those two beings, He created man who is both perfect enough to surpass the angels and evil enough to be inferior to the animals who have no intellect. Satan was created to reveal what characteristics man has.

For example, gold and copper are boiled in fire to separate them from their mixed state; similarly, Allah created Satan from fire to separate the good and bad qualities of man, to understand the good-natured Abu Bakr (ra) and the evil-natured Abu Jahl.

Besides, the seeds in the barn need to be thrown into the ground to become trees. On the surface, the subsoil is dark and boring. However, the way to become a tree is to go there. Even if a seed stays in the barn for thousands of years, it cannot become a tree.

Thus, Allah sent our father, the Prophet Adam, who was in the barn of Paradise, to the field of the world. He made Adam sit in the fire of Satan to make him to return to Paradise as a tree. He buried him in the soil of worship. Thus, he returned to Paradise as a tree. Our situation is like that too.

One of the things that occupies and exhausts the minds of human beings is the expulsion of Prophet Adam from Paradise and his being sent to earth because of Satan. Some people ask:

“If it had not been for Satan, would the Prophet Adam have remained in Paradise and would we have been there?”

In explaining this issue, let us pay attention to the conversation of God Almighty with the angels before He created Adam: The incident is narrated as follows in the chapter of al-Baqara:

“Behold, thy Lord said to the angels: ‘I will create a vicegerent on earth.’ They said: ‘Wilt Thou place therein one who will make mischief therein and shed blood?- whilst we do celebrate Thy praises and glorify Thy holy (name)?’ He said: ‘I know what ye know not.’” (al-Baqara, 2/30)

As it is seen in the verse above, God Almighty states that He will create human beings on earth even before creating Adam. In other words, He informs us that people will not live in Paradise, but on earth. Satan’s deception of Adam was only a reason why man was sent to earth.

On the other hand, unlike the angels, man has been given ego and sensual feelings. For the effects of those feelings to be seen, it was necessary to send man to the world, to give him some responsibilities and to subject him to a test. At the end of this test and experience, man would either be worthy of Paradise, or he would become worthy of hell.

There is not much information in the Quran and sound hadiths about Satan’s entry into Paradise and his approaching Adam and Eve (Hawwa).

Hasan Basri said: “Satan managed to convey delusion from earth to the sky or Paradise with a power given to him by Allah Almighty.”

Some tafsir scholars state the following: “Adam and Eve would sometimes come close to the gate of Paradise, and Satan would watch from outside and approach them; and that is how the delusion occurred.”

Since Satan’s expulsion from Paradise would not prevent him from delivering his delusion from the outside, we can conclude that there would be no contradiction in this matter. Allah made Adam hear the devil’s evil delusion as a necessity of the test.

It is also very important to consider in what sense the words in the Quran are used. Considering the innocence of the prophets, it is clear that this was certainly not a conscious rebellion.

As a matter of fact, it is mentioned in the previous verses where the incident is narrated that Adam (as) forgot this promise:

“We had already, beforehand, taken the covenant of Adam, but he forgot: and We found on his part no firm resolve.” (Taha, 20/115)

Thus, this behavior of Adam was not a conscious act of disobeying Allah’s command. Therefore, it is possible to understand the verse not as rebellion as we understand it but as follows:

“In the result, they both ate of the tree, and so their nakedness appeared to them: they began to sew together, for their covering, leaves from the Garden: thus did Adam disobey his Lord, and allow himself to be seduced.” (Taha, 20/121)

Prophets Do Not Commit Sins

Sins are divided into two categories as major and minor. The main major sins are as follows:  

Murder, fornication, drinking alcohol, disobeying one’s parents, gambling, bearing false witness, and following bid’ahs that harm the religion. 1

None of the prophets committed any major sins either before or after their prophethood.

However, some prophets committed some mistakes that are called “zalla” (wrongdoing), which is not the way we know it, through error, forgetting or abandoning the better. 2 An example of zalla is the Prophet Adam’s eating the fruit of the forbidden tree while he was in Paradise. By eating the forbidden fruit, Adam did not commit a sin in the sense we know, but he abandoned what was better. As a result, they were deprived of the blessings of Paradise because of this mistake. The fact that there is no concept of sin and thawab in Paradise means that this sin has a different form than what we know.

One of the blessings of Paradise is that there is no need to “go to the toilet” there. 3 Since there were no leftovers of what was eaten and drunk in Paradise, Adam and Eve did not answer the call of nature in Paradise. Their private parts were hidden from them by clothes or a light. 4 Since eating the fruits of the forbidden tree would cause their private parts to open and cause them to do things that would cause pain, such as urination and defecation, Allah forbade them to eat from that tree. 5 As a matter of fact, as soon as they ate the fruits of the forbidden tree, their private parts, which they had never seen before, opened up. Since it was not appropriate for them to open, they began to cover their private parts with leaves. 6

We should not forget the share of qadar in the expulsion of Adam from Paradise due to eating the fruit of the forbidden tree because the realization of the wisdom and purpose of God Almighty’s creation of man became possible only after Adam and Eve descended from Paradise to the earth.

Abul-Hasan ash-Shazali states the following about Adam’s zalla:

“What a wise sin it was since it caused repentance to be legitimized for people who will come until the Day of Judgment. “7

Footnotes:

1. Barla Lahikası, p. 179.
2. Muvazzah ilm-i Kelâm, p.184; Fıkh-ı Ekber Şerhi, p.154; Risale-i Hamidiye, p. 491.
3. Muslim, Jannah: 15.
4. Tefsîr-i Kebir, 14:49; Hak Dini Kur’ân Dili, 3:2140.
5. Hülasatül-Beyan ,2:4748.
6. Al-A’raf, 22.
7. Risale-i Hamidiye, p. 611.

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