How many devils are there?

- Is there a devil in every human being?
- Can devils cause material harm to human beings?

Dear Brother / Sister,

The unbelieving jinn are called devils and there are many of them. Allah knows the number of devils.

There are devils that haunt every human being. There is a hadith regarding the issue:

“My devil has surrendered to me.” (Tirmidhi, Rada 17; Musnad, III / 309)

Devils are a type of spiritual beings that have no ability to do good and only do evil. “And the Jinn race, We had created before, from the fire of a scorching wind.” (al-Hicr, 15/27) The original name of Iblis was Azazil. After he opposed the command of God Almighty to prostrate to Adam and rebelled against this prostration command with conceit, he was named “Iblis” and “Satan”.

The greatest obstacle to humanity’s spiritual progress and fulfillment of its duty of servitude to Allah is Satan. In the Holy Quran, Satan (the devil) is described as “aduwwun mubin / a clear enemy” for human beings. God Almighty invites the believers to seek refuge in Allah from Satan in many verses of the Holy Quran. Satan’s greatest goal is to make people irreligious, to make them atheists. If he fails to do it, he leads them to polytheism. Satan is not satisfied with making people polytheists; he makes them cruel polytheists and miserable. Not only that, Satan tries to make him a man of his cause, working day and night on behalf of polytheism. That is his ultimate goal. A polytheist without a cause is Satan’s slave and those who accept polytheism as a cause are his companions.

Satan changes his tactics related to the believers who choose the truth, the right and the good, and frustrate all his schemes. When he understands that he cannot touch the believer’s faith, he tries to deal with his worship; he wants him to be a believer without worship. If he fails to achieve it, he wants him to be content with the fard deeds and not to approach sunnahs and nafilahs. If this also fails, he wants him to be busy only with his personal worship and not to tell others anything about the religion. And he advises the believer as follows: “Every man for himself.”

Satan uses many tricks to lead people astray. Some of those tricks and schemes are as follows:

1. Lust and anger: They are Satan’s greatest ways of influencing people. That is why the following is stated in a hadith:

“Satan enters the human body like blood flows through the body. Narrow his paths with hunger (fasting).”

For the greatest way of Satan’s penetration into human beings is lust. Fasting breaks the lust.

2. Envy and greed: A greedy person becomes blind and deaf to the truth.

3. Desire: Satan makes people love the things they desire with various show-offs and tricks. So much so that it is as if what man desires becomes his deity.

4. Haste: Man has no time to think when he is in a hurry. Satan can give him delusions at that time.

5. Fear of poverty: This fear prevents man from charity and invites him to accumulate wealth.

6. Bigotry: One of the doors through which Satan penetrates the heart is to harbor hatred and contempt for Muslims who are not of one’s own sect.

7. Disagreement

8. Doubt: One of the doors through which Satan penetrates the heart is to make some people, who are narrowminded due to their ignorance and heedlessness or their immersion in sins, doubt about issues of belief that they cannot comprehend.

9. Having bad thoughts: When a person begins to think badly of a person, Satan encourages him to backbite that person. Or Satan does not allow him to respect that person’s rights. Satan makes him look at him as if insulting him. Doubtlessly, they are not the only tricks and schemes of Satan and his ways of penetrating people. They take many different forms according to people, times and conditions.

Does Satan have the power of coercion over human beings?

The Quranic verse “feeble indeed is the cunning of Satan” draws attention to the weakness of Satan’s tricks and traps (an-Nisa, 4/76). Many other verses also state that Satan has no power over people. (e.g. Ibrahim, 14/22; al-Hijr, 15/42; an-Nahl, 16/99; al-Isra, 17/65; Saba, 34/21) If Satan had such power, people would say, “O Lord! You allowed Satan to haunt us. He took away our will. He forced us to commit those sins...” They would make excuses before Allah. However, what Satan does is only to give delusions, to make bad things and sins look good. If a person wishes, he can obey that delusion and become a sinner; if he does not obey, he can earn a degree in the sight of Allah.

The essence of the fight against Satan is opposition to his directives. Therefore, it is necessary to know this enemy well. Those who cannot distinguish whether the inspiration that comes to their heart comes from Satan or from the angel are often deceived by Satan’s delusions. The human heart is a battlefield of angelic and Satanic inspirations. In this battle, the believers should seek refuge in Allah and get rid of Satan’s delusions:

“If a suggestion from Satan assail thy (mind), seek refuge with Allah. for He heareth and knoweth (all things). Those who fear Allah, when a thought of evil from Satan assaults them, bring Allah to remembrance, when lo! they see (aright).” (al-A’raf, 7/200-201)

Thus, the believers are under the protection of Allah. Even if Satan gives them delusions, they immediately come to their senses by remembering Allah and His punishment, and they are not deceived by Satan. They get rid of the delusions and see the truth.  

The word “aslama” mentioned in the hadith above means both that he was compelled to surrender and that he became a Muslim. Therefore, if it is accepted to mean “he became a Muslim”, it can be understood that he will enter Paradise. However, hadith scholars accept that word to mean “he submitted and surrendered” because the essence of Satan is corrupted; it is out of the question for him to become a Muslim. (Tirmidhi, Rada 17; I. Jawzi, Talbisu Iblis p. 34)

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