Yesterday Allah shaped the first human being with His own hand. Tonight the story turns to a single, unglamorous thing that happened next, and that the whole rest of human history is built on: he forgot, he slipped, and then he turned back. The first sin in creation belonged to Iblis, who would not bow. The first repentance belonged to Adam, who fell and came home. We are the children of the one who returned.
This is day three of twenty-nine, still in the opening chapter, the first human beings, retold faithfully from Mufti Ismail Menk's series. He picks up loose threads from last night, and out of them draws something startlingly close: the trick Iblis pulled on Adam, peace be upon him, is the exact trick he still pulls on you.
The first sin, and who really owned it
فَقُلْنَا يَٰٓـَٔادَمُ إِنَّ هَٰذَا عَدُوٌّ لَّكَ وَلِزَوْجِكَ فَلَا يُخْرِجَنَّكُمَا مِنَ ٱلْجَنَّةِ فَتَشْقَىٰٓ
“So We said, "O Adam, indeed this is an enemy to you and to your wife. Then let him not remove you from Paradise so you would suffer.”
Surah Ta-Ha 20:117 Read 20:117 with tafsir
Go back to the moment the angels were told to prostrate to Adam, and one creature refused. Not bowed late, not bowed grudgingly: refused, flat. I am better than him, he said, and with that he became the accursed, the one thrown out. Mufti Menk stops to name it for what it is. That was the first sin ever committed against Allah in all of creation, and it belonged to Iblis. Allah warned the new couple plainly: O Adam, this one is an enemy to you and to your wife, do not let him drive you out of the garden into hardship.
Then watch what the enemy does once he is expelled, because it is the most human thing in the world. He does not say, my Lord, I was wrong, I sinned, forgive me. He turns and blames Adam: because of him I was thrown out. But was Adam the reason Iblis was cursed? No. His own arrogance was. He had a problem and he refused to look at its root, so he could never solve it. Here Mufti Menk turns the mirror on us, and it stings: when something breaks in our lives, at home, at work, between whole nations, how often do we point everywhere except at the cause we are sitting on top of? People look at the Muslim and cry terrorist and never once ask how a thing began, what oppression lit it, where it went wrong. Islam preaches none of it: peace, dignity, security, harmony, in every direction. But the criminal who makes havoc and then blames the victim is only doing again what Iblis did first.
The enemy you never see coming
Iblis told Allah he would come at this human being from every angle, from the front and the behind, from the right and the left. Mufti Menk points out the one direction he left off the list: he never said from above. He will not come from above, because from above comes the help of Allah, and Iblis has no reach there. That is the whole game. A thief who announces himself gets nothing; you would simply leave. So he never announces himself. When you look one way he slips in from the other, and he works the way wireless works, a signal you cannot see crossing from somewhere to here. That is how he reached Adam in the garden after he had already been thrown out of it: not marching in as himself, but hidden, in disguise, in one report through the throat of a serpent that carried him past the gate. Allah knows exactly how. What the story fixes is the manner: he came in secret, never out in the open.
And he came selling two things people will always buy: a tree that, he whispered, would give Adam life that never ends and a kingdom that never runs out. Health and wealth, forever. Mufti Menk lets you feel how old and how current that pitch is. Watch what happens, he says, when one of us falls ill. We pray, we go to the doctor, we take the medicine, a month passes, two months, no cure yet. And right there the same whisper returns: there is another way, let me show you, come to the fortune teller, the witch doctor, the one who calls himself a great healer and will name who put magic on you. Same bait Iblis used on the first man, aimed now at his children. The lesson is not that we abandon medicine. It is that we will not chase health, or wealth, through anything that displeases Allah, because we have to die either way, and to die having failed the test is the only real loss.
Cutting lemons for the devil
إِنَّ عِبَادِى لَيْسَ لَكَ عَلَيْهِمْ سُلْطَٰنٌ إِلَّا مَنِ ٱتَّبَعَكَ مِنَ ٱلْغَاوِينَ
“Indeed, My servants - no authority will you have over them, except those who follow you of the deviators.”
Surah al-Hijr 15:42 Read 15:42 with tafsir
وَأَنَّهُۥ كَانَ رِجَالٌ مِّنَ ٱلْإِنسِ يَعُوذُونَ بِرِجَالٍ مِّنَ ٱلْجِنِّ فَزَادُوهُمْ رَهَقًا
“And there were men from mankind who sought refuge in men from the jinn, so they [only] increased them in burden [i.e., sin].”
Surah al-Jinn 72:6 Read 72:6 with tafsir
This is the section Mufti Menk lingers on, because he has watched it ruin people. The healer tells you to cut a precise number of lemons, weigh each one, squeeze out so many drops, add a little saffron, arrange bones in a certain shape. The instructions get sillier the deeper you go: bring a tongue, slaughter a dove, sometimes worse. And the whole time, he says, Iblis is laughing, at us and at Allah, because this is exactly what he promised. Didn't I tell You I would lead them to worship me? Tell them to pray when they are sick, tell them to seek proper treatment, and they will not listen. Tell them to cut eighty lemons and they will do it. He once heard of a man who told a woman that someone in her own family had put magic on her, and it shattered the whole family. How did he know? No angel told him. If Jibril did not come, then Iblis did. And when Iblis comes he plays Muslim: I am a clean jinn, a believing jinn, I knew the Prophet. Do not be fooled.
Allah draws the line that protects you. Over My true servants, He tells Iblis, you have no authority at all, only over those who choose to follow you. And about those who run to the jinn for help, Allah is blunt: men who sought refuge in jinn were only increased in burden, more lost, more wretched, not less. So no, we are not permitted to seek the aid of the jinn, and the ones who boast that they own a jinn or command one are the most fooled of all. Think about it, Mufti Menk says: Iblis deceived Adam, who had seen him, who knew exactly what he was, face to face. How much more easily will he deceive us, who have never even laid eyes on him? There is no quick fix. Wealth comes by honest work, slow and sure and lawful, or by robbery, fast and cursed and lived in fear. Health comes by prayer and the Qur'an and lawful medicine, slowly, surely, or by the overnight cure of the witch doctor, who is only Iblis, laughing.
Why did Adam slip at all
وَلَقَدْ عَهِدْنَآ إِلَىٰٓ ءَادَمَ مِن قَبْلُ فَنَسِىَ وَلَمْ نَجِدْ لَهُۥ عَزْمًا
“And We had already taken a promise from Adam before, but he forgot; and We found not in him determination.”
Surah Ta-Ha 20:115 Read 20:115 with tafsir
People come to Mufti Menk and ask the question that sounds so reasonable: a prophet, the first man, why would he sin? And he answers it, but then he flips it like a teacher who sees the trap. Listen to the verse: We made a covenant with Adam before, but he forgot, and We found in him no firm resolve. He did not plot it. He was not determined to disobey. He forgot, and he slipped. And the Arabic almost confesses it: one reading of the word insan, the word for a human being, ties it to nisyan, forgetting, as though to be human is to be the one who forgets. So yes, Adam forgot. But here is the flip: why are you sinning? You do not forget. You plan it, you calculate it, you carry it out, you enjoy it afterward, and then you plan it again. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ gave the cure in a single line: glad tidings of Paradise to the one whose own faults keep him too busy to inspect the faults of everyone else. Iblis would love nothing more than to keep you absorbed in why Adam slipped while you walk calmly into a sin you fully intend.
The promise every soul has already made
وَإِذْ أَخَذَ رَبُّكَ مِنۢ بَنِىٓ ءَادَمَ مِن ظُهُورِهِمْ ذُرِّيَّتَهُمْ وَأَشْهَدَهُمْ عَلَىٰٓ أَنفُسِهِمْ أَلَسْتُ بِرَبِّكُمْ ۖ قَالُوا۟ بَلَىٰ ۛ شَهِدْنَآ ۛ أَن تَقُولُوا۟ يَوْمَ ٱلْقِيَٰمَةِ إِنَّا كُنَّا عَنْ هَٰذَا غَٰفِلِينَ
“And [mention] when your Lord took from the children of Adam - from their loins - their descendants and made them testify of themselves, [saying to them], "Am I not your Lord?" They said, "Yes, we have testified." [This] - lest you should say on the Day of Resurrection, "Indeed, we were of this unaware."”
Surah al-A'raf 7:172 Read 7:172 with tafsir
أَوْ تَقُولُوٓا۟ إِنَّمَآ أَشْرَكَ ءَابَآؤُنَا مِن قَبْلُ وَكُنَّا ذُرِّيَّةً مِّنۢ بَعْدِهِمْ ۖ أَفَتُهْلِكُنَا بِمَا فَعَلَ ٱلْمُبْطِلُونَ
“Or [lest] you say, "It was only that our fathers associated [others in worship] with Allāh before, and we were but descendants after them. Then would You destroy us for what the falsifiers have done?"”
Surah al-A'raf 7:173 Read 7:173 with tafsir
Here is the moment Mufti Menk says we have all forgotten, and the Qur'an says so on purpose. When Adam was created, Allah drew out from his back every single soul that would ever descend from him, all of us, to the last person before the Hour, and showed them to him. Then He put one question to every soul at once: am I not your Lord? And every soul answered, yes, we testify. Allah seals the scene with the reason He records it: so that you cannot stand on the Day of Resurrection and say you knew nothing, and cannot say you were only following the shirk of your forefathers, helpless children born after them. The excuse is closed before it is made. Each soul gave its own word.
Ask yourself honestly, Mufti Menk says, do you remember that day? Not one of us does. So Allah, in His mercy, says: no matter, I will keep sending you reminders. That is what the Qur'an is. The covenant in your chest, the faint pull toward your Lord you have felt your whole life, has a date older than the world, and revelation comes to wake it. Which means belief is not something foreign being asked of you. It is the oldest promise you ever made, being called in. And the warning folded inside it is real: no one will be judged through a forefather. Each of us will stand before Allah with no translator between, answer for ourselves alone, and the only safe answer is the one we keep ready now.
Turning the page, the road back
قَالَ ٱهْبِطَا مِنْهَا جَمِيعًۢا ۖ بَعْضُكُمْ لِبَعْضٍ عَدُوٌّ ۖ فَإِمَّا يَأْتِيَنَّكُم مِّنِّى هُدًى فَمَنِ ٱتَّبَعَ هُدَاىَ فَلَا يَضِلُّ وَلَا يَشْقَىٰ
“[Allāh] said, "Descend from it [i.e., Paradise] - all, [your descendants] being enemies to one another. And if there should come to you guidance from Me - then whoever follows My guidance will neither go astray [in the world] nor suffer [in the Hereafter].”
Surah Ta-Ha 20:123 Read 20:123 with tafsir
وَمَنْ أَعْرَضَ عَن ذِكْرِى فَإِنَّ لَهُۥ مَعِيشَةً ضَنكًا وَنَحْشُرُهُۥ يَوْمَ ٱلْقِيَٰمَةِ أَعْمَىٰ
“And whoever turns away from My remembrance - indeed, he will have a depressed [i.e., difficult] life, and We will gather [i.e., raise] him on the Day of Resurrection blind."”
Surah Ta-Ha 20:124 Read 20:124 with tafsir
When Adam was sent down to the earth, Allah did not abandon him. He gave him the promise that holds the entire human story together: I will keep sending you guidance, and whoever follows My guidance will not go astray and will not be wretched. But whoever turns away from My remembrance, his life will be narrow, pinched, joyless however full his hands are, and he will be raised blind on the Day of Resurrection. This, Mufti Menk says, is why the restless and the discontented are restless: not for lack of money, but for distance from Allah. The atheist, the agnostic, the one sure this life is all there is, can be drowning in things and still find something missing, because a human being was not built to live without his Lord.
And underneath every line of it runs the mercy that is the real heart of tonight. Mufti Menk says it almost gently: Allah's mercy is so vast that a man could follow Iblis for seventy years, and if for one second he turns back to Allah, every drop of that evil is wiped away and he begins on a clean page. Turning the page is not hard. But a page does not turn itself; you have to put your finger to it and move it. Adam did. In one narration he stands before his Lord and asks, my Lord, did You not create me with Your hand, honour me, have the angels bow to me? Yes. Then if I obey You and ask Your forgiveness, will You return me to the garden? And Allah says, yes. That is the whole message, and it is addressed to you: the first human being fell, repented, and was promised home. The door he walked back through has never once been shut behind him.