Part 3

as would make him able to do what he wishes without His permis­

sion so that he can do as he likes. Or someone might think that

there was something in Allah's creation, which cannot counted or

enumerated, which might be hidden from His knowledge or might

escape, even if only for a fraction of a second, from the absolute of

power of Allah Almighty. So He says:

"Who can intercede with Him except by His permis­

sion? He knows what is before them and what is after

them. But they do not encompass any knowledge of Him

except what He wills." (2:255)

Allah wants people to know that they are protected by Allah's

concern as long as they obey Him and hold to Him even in the

state when they have no power to defend themselves at all - while

they are asleep. They should keep in mind that in the case of Allah

Almighty, "Drowsiness does not overcome Him nor "does sleep."

That is why man can sleep soundly, safe and secure in the knowl­

edge that the eye of Allah which never sleeps is protecting him; It

is the power of Allah which is the source of all the capacities of

everything else in existence. They are under His control and so

people should have no fear that anything will harm them.

Just as Allah - glory be to Him and may He be exalted! ­

informs us about the shaytans who see us but whom we do not see,

so He also informs us about two other hidden forces: magic and

envy. If Allah had not told us about them, we would not have

recognised them nor understood anything about them. However

Allah has taught us about these two things and so we know how to .

guard ourselves from them by seeking refuge with Him from them.

Nothing in existence, no matter what the nature of its creation,

has any power to bring harm or benefit to any other creature. No

creature or genus should allow itself to be deluded into thinking

that it has any intrinsic superiority or power. There is no force in

existence that has any effectiveness whatsoever except that which

Allah desires it to have.

. When Iblisrebelled, he falsely assumed that the nature of his

own creation raised him above the will of His Creator. So when

Allah - glory be to Him and may He be exaltedl - asked him to

prostrate to Adam, his reply was as has come in the Noole Quran:

"I am better than him. You created me from fire and You

created him from clay." (7:12)

And in another ayat, Iblis says:

"What! Me prostrate to one You have created out of

In this instance Iblis took one of the elements of his creation

which made him feel that he, was intrinsically superior to man. He

forgot that what each creature is given does not come from itself.

It is from the Almighty and therefore, just as it is subject in its for­

mation to the will of Allah, so it is also subject to the commands of

Allah. No matter what the creational nature of Iblis was, that did

not give him any reason for disobeying the commands of Allah

and ascribing his strength to himself. Doing that made him an

Creatures can be deluded by blessing into thinking that the

blessing they have been given makes them independent of the

Giver of Blessing and that that blessing has been obtained by their

own capabilities. In doing this they forget their Creator and rebel

against Him who gave them the blessing. This is the case with

"He said, 'I have only been given it on account of a

He forgot that all knowledge is from Allah and that when He

gave it to him, the gift of it should have increased him in thankful­

ness to Allah and obedience to His commands.

We have so far seen that there are hidden forces in existence

which Allah - glory be to Him and may He be exalted! - created

and which are governed by laws of which we know nothing and of

whose nature we do not know anything except what Allah

Almighty has told us. However, in spite of our ignorance about

them, these forces nevertheless exist and have effects. Allah

Almighty has also called our attention to the fact that even if one

genus is by nature stronger than another, He is nonetheless able to

subject it to a weaker one.

We must now examine a number of important questions;

Who are the people who practice it?

What is its effect on man?

Why did Allah Almighty send two angels to teach people

Magic is mentioned in the Noble Quran and therefore we

know that it is without doubt an existent reality. We should discuss

it because it is one of the things which Allah - glory be to Him and

may He be exalted! - saw fit to mention in His Immense Book.

Magic is one of the hidden forces of existence and we should see

what the Creator of the universe has told us about it.

The Arabic word for magic, "sihr", is derived from the word

"sahar" which is from the root s-h-r. Sahar is the time between

the end of the night and the beginning of the day. It contains some

of the shades of the darkness of night and some of the rays of the

light of day. You cannot say that it is day, meaning daytime and

light, nor say that it is night, meaning absolute darkness. So it has

a double nature and not just one.

One type of magic gives the appearance that something is hap­

pening when in reality it is not actually happening at all. So the

effect of this type of magic is on the eye and it is the eye that is

bewitched. It sees things which do not take place or 'happen. That

is why Allah Almighty says about the magicians of Pharaoh:

"They cast a spell over the people's eyes and caused

them to fear them. They produced a powerful magic."

The sight is deceived but the actual substance has not changed.

If we investigate magic-in-its most basic forms we fmd that

there is one type which man. perferms by his own abilities and

another in which he seeks the assistance of superhuman forces,

The magicians who perform simple forms of magic basically

rely on deceiving the eyes or what is known as sleight of hand.

Those are the ones who present what they call magic tricks in

gatherings. Their skill lies in the factthat they are trained to move

their hands so quickly that the eye does not see what has hap­

pened. This is why the spectator" thinks that what has happened

before him is that the nature of things has changed. When, for .

instance, a magician makes a glass of water disappear and then

brings it back again, or stretches his hand up into the air and pro­

duces things which you did not see there before, or makes things

disappear and other things appear, all that is what is called sleight

of hand. In reality, what happens is that the eyesight is deceived.

Sight can be. deceived by many things. For instance, the eye

supposes a mirage to be water . n it is not. And sometimes a

point of light can be made to appear like a solid form. Its swift

movement is simply not able to be perceived by the eye. We also

see this effect when we tum on an electric fan and look at it. We

cannot see its real shape. It appears to. us from the speed of the

movement as one solid shape. When we tum it off and the fan is

still, you can see it in its real shape and see all its blades and the

gaps between them and other details. You could not see these

while it was going, because of the speed of the movement.

So the eye is deceived by swift movement. This is what con­

jurors rely on in sleight of hand manoeuvres and other magic tricks

which they perform. They rely on the speed of the movement of

the hand to deceive the eye and it appears as if they produce a sort

The Magic of the Eyes

However, there is another type of magic and it is that which we

are really interested in discussing here. When we gave the simple

example above we did so in order to make the matter easier for the

reader to grasp, using a phenomenon which is seen and observed

every day to allow us to understand the meaning of the deception

of sight or the magic of the eye. However there is a higher form of

it involving genuine illusion and bewitching of the eye which has

no basis in ordinary experience.

Allah - glory be to Him and may. He be exalted! - wanted to

make us understand that magic is a type of effect on the eye mak­

ing it see things which do not actually take place or exist at all. To

understand this in more depth we must discuss the encounter of

Musa, peace be upon him, with the magicians, and what Allah

"They said, 'Musa, will you throw or shall we be the

first to throw?' He said, 'No, you throw!' And suddenly

their ropes and staffs appeared to him, by their magic, to

In this passage we should pay close attention to the words of

Allah Almighty, "appeared to him." In other words, what took

place was a mere illusion and not reality at all. In the eyes of the

magicians the ropes remained simply ropes but in the eyes of all

who saw them they appeared as terrible serpents which they saw

as real serpents slithering on the ground. This is known as halluci­

natory magic. The eye sees what is not really there and imagines

things which are not really happening. That being the case, what is

the difference between this and what happened when Musa threw

The Magicians and the Miracle

The reason why the magicians prostrated and proclaimed their

belief in the Lord of Musa when Musa's staff was thrown was that

they saw the staff of Musa change into a real snake. Those magi­

cians had made their magic bewitch the eyes of the people so that'

they began to imagine things which had no real existence. But the

eyes of the magicians were not affected by the magic and they

continued to see things as they actually were. As we have already