Two Reasons It Is Fard to Fight Him

For two very important reasons it is fard upon every believer constantly to wage war against Shayṭān, and fard to try to defeat him. He must be defeated, or he will defeat the one who does not: there is no other option. No truce is possible with him — "leave me alone and I will leave you alone" does not work.

The first reason: every one of us, without exception, has in Shayṭān such an enemy that no peace or truce can ever be made with him, ever and ever. A sworn enemy. Impossible. Even one who says, "I do not believe in Shayṭān — I do not believe in the unseen, in jinn or in the devil, it is all nonsense, I am a scientific man, go and think what you like" — the reality does not change on account of it. Another point: there is no khayr, no goodness of any kind, that has ever come, or will ever come, from him.

He is always looking, every possible moment, every instant, for an opportunity, however small, to destroy a person's eternal life. He does not rest, does not sleep, does not take his eye away, constantly focused — and a person may try to ignore him: that does not work either. Such an enemy must never be treated with neglect, for Allah has already commanded — as has been read above — that Shayṭān is an enemy, and must be taken as one; he invites his followers only that they become companions of Hellfire.

The second reason concerns his stamina. Like the battery advertisement with the rabbit that keeps going, still banging its head against the wall, long after everything else has stopped, Shayṭān's energy does not exhaust itself. He is always there, always contesting, never giving up, attacking day and night, twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, until a person leaves this world.

Every human being has one assigned to him: the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) says that as soon as a child is born, an angel and a devil are given to him, and when he reaches puberty that devil becomes active, giving waswasah, because from that point the sins are recorded. Did the Messenger of Allah himself have one? He was asked exactly this — do you also have a devil? — and he answered yes, but mine has submitted; mine has entirely given up on me. According to one account, instead of suggesting evil to him, his devil now tells him only good things, complaining of himself: I am the unluckiest devil there is, to have been given this one — he is so sick, so feeble, so frail, so overcome — as though drugged — that he has no power to move at all. He has entirely surrendered; he has no control over the Messenger of Allah at all.