Evil

[ravage]

@Das_Reich

The bottomline in all of these is the protest of an otherwise religious individual against a figure of higher religious authority but with best intentions and concern for miscarriage of justice.
Except for the last case, where the accuser persists in his deviation and meets a humiliating end.In all the rest examples the accuser or rebel is guided and finally reforms himself and comes closer to the truth.Plus there are traditions from them that they regret their course of action.
Moral of the story is always the same “nothing good ever comes out of arguing with a superior religious authority”
Obviously in this case these higher authorities are Prophet and Sahaba, the status to which ordianary muslims cannot aspire to be.These examples are not relevent for a later period.They do give us an example of how to behave under ideal circumstances.

Do you think it is a feature of our political systems where everyone is equal and the idea of an inherently superior class/kings etc is not palatable (in theory atleast) that an attitude of intellectual rebellion against superior religious authority has lost (to my eyes) its negativity, a negativity that would have been obvious in earlier days?

Very nice examples, all relevant (and also, thank you for recommending those books, will def. check them out inshallah). But what do you think ‘guided’ them and brought them closer to the truth. I mean, what kind of truth did they discover that led them to the error of their ways? Is it as simple as “Dont question superior authority”?

@Iconoclast

Second, people have come up with various explanations of satan and Adam story. I once asked this question to a sufi and he answered that every relationship with God is that of love. Hence Iblis’s questioning was against ettiquete of love, and hence he was banished from heavens.

Its an interesting explanation, and I think has room to accomodate the issue of intellectual rebellion too (preferring your notions of self-righteousness before the preferences of a loved one?). Not wholly satisfying though.

shardmanny: perhaps. but we are who we are, we cannot reason as if we belong to a different society. because at best we can only hope to live according to what we think that society was.

jhoom: The arrogance was in his reasoning before God. He was arrogant regarding himself all along, it only showed when he argued with Allah showing a certain kind of rationality.