“And recall when We asked the angels to prostrate themselves before Adam, all prostrated themselves except Iblīs, who said: ‘Shall I prostrate myself before him whom You created of clay?’ He then continued: ‘Look! This is he whom You have honoured above me! If You will grant me respite till the Day of Resurrection, I shall uproot the whole of his progeny barring only a few. Thereupon He retorted: ‘Be gone! Hell shall be the recompense – and a most ample one – of whatsoever of them follows you’.”
(Al-Qur’an – 17:61-63)
These verses of the Holy Qur’an narrate the story of Satan’s fall from the Paradise so as to bring home to the unbelievers the fact that their defiance, imperviousness, and their persistent pursuit of evil was tantamount to following in Satan’s footsteps, the one who has always been man’s mortal enemy. By following in Satan’s footsteps, man falls into a trap which Satan had laid for him from the very beginning. Satan had threatened at the very commencement of human life on earth that he would never cease in his efforts to mislead mankind.
Satan’s statement that ‘I shall uproot the whole of his progeny’ means that he will cause man’s feet to swerve from the path that leads to his well-being, and instead put him on a road which leads to his destruction. Since man has been invested with the vicegerency of God, he is required to be constant in his obedience to Him. Any deviation from this is similar to uprooting a tree by its very roots.
Satan misleads man by making him cherish false expectations, by holding out rosy promises which have no relation to reality. And this he does to prove that man does not deserve the exalted status which God has conferred upon him. The only way for man to defeat Satan’s design is to remain firm in obedience to God, to turn only to Him for guidance and help, and to place reliance on Him alone. Any other course means that man will end up falling into Satan’s trap.