No Power Over Faith, Only Suggestion

Shayṭān then began, as it were, to complain: O Muḥammad, in spite of everything I have said, I have no strength to take away the faith of the faithful — I take it away only when it is thrown away to me of their own will. If I had any power to change people, there would be no one left on the face of the earth able to say the declaration of faith; I have no power over people at all, they simply give in to me — I am only a salesman, suggesting, and they hand it over themselves. I cannot take anyone's faith; had I such strength, I would not leave a single person on earth to worship Allah, to pray or to fast. All I can give the children of Adam are imaginings, illusions, false hopes, so that the ugly appears beautiful, the wrong appears right, the bad appears good. One scholar has called the devils the marketeers of Hell — and, he said, they do their work very well, salesmen for Jahannam.

Nor, he told him, do you yourself, O Muḥammad, hold any power to give guidance to anyone — you are only a proof of the truth. Had it been given to you to grant truth directly, not a single person on earth would have been left who did not worship Allah. The fortunate one, the saʿīd, is fortunate already in his mother's womb, and the rebellious sinner, the shaqī, is a rebel there too; this is the decree, the qadar, of Allah. As you are the guide of the fortunate, so I am only the occasion of sin for those destined to sin — it is Allah who makes one person fortunate and another rebellious. He then recited from Sūrat Hūd:

— and from Sūrat al-Aḥzāb:

The command of Allah, he said, is a decree already made absolute.