The Happiest of His Followers, and What Silences Him

Asked who among his followers were the happiest, Shayṭān named those who abandon their prayer deliberately — watching whatever is on the television, knowing the call to prayer has sounded, knowing the time for it is passing, and simply lying about, unable to be bothered. These, he said, are the happiest of his people, and give him and his fellow devils the greatest pleasure to watch.

Asked who among them were the best of all, he named the miser: one so tight-fisted that he squeezes everything in his grasp and lets nothing pass to his own family, licking whatever he holds from the very bottom rather than share it — like a man who keeps honey in a tightly sealed jar and lets others only lick at the jar's outside, never touching what lies within.

Asked what stops him doing his work, he named the gathering of people of knowledge and their discourse. A hadith of the Messenger of Allah commands: keep to the company of the scholars, ʿalaykum bi-mujālasat al-ʿulamāʾ, and to listening to the words of the wise, wa-stimāʿ kalām al-ḥukamāʾ — for Allah revives a dead heart through the effect of their words, just as barren land is brought to life again by rain. It is this, above all, that unsettles Shayṭān's work.