Yesterday the question was why Allah tells these stories at all. Tonight the first one begins, and it begins where everything begins: with a Lord who decided, before there was a single human heart to know Him, to make a creature out of the dust of His own earth and breathe His own command into it. This is not a myth about how people came to be. It is the record of the One who was there.
This is day two of twenty-nine, retold faithfully from Mufti Ismail Menk's beloved series. He opens the very first prophet's story not with Adam, peace be upon him, but with a discipline: how a Muslim handles what the older books say, what we take, what we leave, and why. Then he walks us through the making of the first man, scene by scene, and lands on the one act of worship Adam was the first ever to perform.
Why we say stories, and what we do with the old reports
لَقَدْ كَانَ فِى قَصَصِهِمْ عِبْرَةٌ لِّأُو۟لِى ٱلْأَلْبَٰبِ ۗ مَا كَانَ حَدِيثًا يُفْتَرَىٰ وَلَٰكِن تَصْدِيقَ ٱلَّذِى بَيْنَ يَدَيْهِ وَتَفْصِيلَ كُلِّ شَىْءٍ وَهُدًى وَرَحْمَةً لِّقَوْمٍ يُؤْمِنُونَ
“There was certainly in their stories a lesson for those of understanding. Never was it [i.e., the Qur'ān] a narration invented, but a confirmation of what was before it and a detailed explanation of all things and guidance and mercy for a people who believe.”
Surah Yusuf 12:111 Read 12:111 with tafsir
Some people flinch at the word stories, as if it cheapens the Qur'an. Mufti Menk settles it from the Qur'an's own vocabulary: Allah calls them exactly that, qasas, and tells us why He narrates them, so that we may ponder and learn a thing or two. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was not standing at the mountain when Allah called out to Musa, peace be upon him, yet he knew the whole of it, because Allah informed him. That is the gift on offer here. Without revelation, none of this could ever be reached.
Before he shapes the first man, Mufti Menk hands us a tool we will need for the next twenty-eight days. Open the older scriptures and you will meet the same prophets, because they began from one source. So how does a Muslim treat those reports, the Israiliyyat, the narrations carried down from the People of the Book? He gives the rule the Sunnah gives, in three parts. What our own revelation contradicts, we throw out. What our own revelation confirms, we accept, not because the old book held it, but because the Qur'an or the authentic Sunnah did. And the great middle category, what revelation neither confirms nor denies, we neither believe nor disbelieve. We may read it, it may add a little colour, but we build no belief on it. Hold that rule. It is how this whole pillar stays honest.
I am placing a khalifa on the earth
وَإِذْ قَالَ رَبُّكَ لِلْمَلَٰٓئِكَةِ إِنِّى جَاعِلٌ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ خَلِيفَةً ۖ قَالُوٓا۟ أَتَجْعَلُ فِيهَا مَن يُفْسِدُ فِيهَا وَيَسْفِكُ ٱلدِّمَآءَ وَنَحْنُ نُسَبِّحُ بِحَمْدِكَ وَنُقَدِّسُ لَكَ ۖ قَالَ إِنِّىٓ أَعْلَمُ مَا لَا تَعْلَمُونَ
“And [mention, O Muḥammad], when your Lord said to the angels, "Indeed, I will make upon the earth a successive authority." They said, "Will You place upon it one who causes corruption therein and sheds blood, while we exalt You with praise and declare Your perfection?" He [Allāh] said, "Indeed, I know that which you do not know."”
Surah al-Baqarah 2:30 Read 2:30 with tafsir
Notice where Allah chose to tell this. Right near the opening of the Qur'an, in Surah al-Baqarah, almost the first thing the believer reads, is the announcement of us. Allah told the angels: I am placing a khalifa on the earth. Mufti Menk opens the word out. A khalifa is one who stands in another's place and carries on his work, the way Abu Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him, was called the khalifa of the Messenger ﷺ. But the deeper sense fits us better: one who succeeds another, generation after generation. The angels do not die; we do. Adam came, then his children, then theirs, and now you, here for a span, then handing the earth to whoever comes next. To be human is to be a link in a line that keeps moving.
And the angels asked the question every honest person eventually asks of the human race: will You place on it someone who spills blood and spreads ruin, while we never stop praising You? It was not objection, Mufti Menk is careful to say, but a request to understand. Allah's answer is four words that hang over the whole story of mankind: I know that which you do not know. There was a purpose in Adam that the angels could not see, a purpose that includes you, because you are the ones who succeeded him. Knowing why we are here can only come from the One who said this, not from any amount of digging in the ground.
Clay of every colour, shaped by His hands
إِذْ قَالَ رَبُّكَ لِلْمَلَٰٓئِكَةِ إِنِّى خَٰلِقٌۢ بَشَرًا مِّن طِينٍ
“[So mention] when your Lord said to the angels, "Indeed, I am going to create a human being from clay.”
Surah Sad 38:71 Read 38:71 with tafsir
The Qur'an uses several words for the substance of Adam, and Mufti Menk reads them as stages rather than contradictions: dust, then soil once water was added, then clay, then a dark moulded clay left to settle. Allah gathered that dust from across the whole earth, from valley and mountaintop, from the red soil and the pale and the dark, from the soft sand and the hard rock. So when you look at the colours and tempers of the human family, the easy ones and the difficult ones, the gentle and the hard, you are looking at the earth Adam was gathered from. We were diverse before we were even born. Allah describes the clay as like the clay of pottery, and Mufti Menk pauses on the word like: pottery is fired in heat, and here no fire was used. The likeness is in the look, not the making.
Then the size. The authentic narration gives Adam a stature of sixty cubits, a being far taller than any of us, and a hadith adds that Allah created Adam upon his image, meaning upon Adam's own final form. Mufti Menk corrects a misreading head on: this is not, as some claim, that man was made in the image of God. It simply means Adam did not grow from an infant the way we do; he was brought into being already complete, already adult, already full-sized, eyes and limbs and all. To imagine the image of Allah is impossible for us, and we do not go there. We stay with what the text says and no further.
The soul, the sneeze, and the rush in us
Mufti Menk slows the next scene down, because the Qur'an does. Allah shaped the body and left it for a time, a lifeless statue of moulded clay. Then the soul was breathed in, and it entered, the narration says, from the top, from the head. The most honoured organ came alive first, the brain, the very thing that sets a human apart from every other creature. Then the eyes opened, and the first thing Adam ever saw was the fruit of the Garden, for he was in Paradise. As the breath reached his nose he sneezed, and an angel told him to praise his Lord. So Adam said alhamdulillah, all praise is for Allah. That is where it comes from: when you sneeze and say alhamdulillah, and the one beside you answers yarhamukallah, may Allah have mercy on you, you are repeating the first words of the first man.
And there is a small, piercing detail. Life had reached his head and his hands but not yet his legs, and already he was reaching out for the fruit he could see, unable to wait the moment for his body to be finished. Mufti Menk reads our whole nature in that reach. The human being was created hasty, the Qur'an says more than once. Look at how we treat this short stretch of life, grabbing for as much as we can before the end: as much wealth, as much of everything. He turns it gently into a prayer, that we would rush like that for the things that last, for the Qur'an, for obedience, for the worship of Allah, so that when the span closes we have filled it with what we can actually keep.
Prostrate to Adam, and the first refusal
وَإِذْ قُلْنَا لِلْمَلَٰٓئِكَةِ ٱسْجُدُوا۟ لِءَادَمَ فَسَجَدُوٓا۟ إِلَّآ إِبْلِيسَ أَبَىٰ وَٱسْتَكْبَرَ وَكَانَ مِنَ ٱلْكَٰفِرِينَ
“And [mention] when We said to the angels, "Prostrate before Adam"; so they prostrated, except for Iblees. He refused and was arrogant and became of the disbelievers.”
Surah al-Baqarah 2:34 Read 2:34 with tafsir
قَالَ يَٰٓإِبْلِيسُ مَا مَنَعَكَ أَن تَسْجُدَ لِمَا خَلَقْتُ بِيَدَىَّ ۖ أَسْتَكْبَرْتَ أَمْ كُنتَ مِنَ ٱلْعَالِينَ
“[Allāh] said, "O Iblees, what prevented you from prostrating to that which I created with My hands? Were you arrogant [then], or were you [already] among the haughty?"”
Surah Sad 38:75 Read 38:75 with tafsir
Allah commanded the angels to prostrate to Adam, a prostration not of worship but of honour, an acknowledgement that this new creature had been raised in rank above them. They all fell down at once. One did not. Iblis, who had been among them but was never truly of them, refused. Mufti Menk lingers on who he was: not an angel, but of the jinn, made from a smokeless fire while the angels were made from light, and Allah names this plainly in the Qur'an. He had earned a place among the heavenly assembly through long worship, but when the test came the difference showed. He looked at Adam made from clay and at himself made from fire and said, I am better than him. So he must prostrate to me. That was the first sin ever committed against Allah, and its name is arrogance, kibr.
This is the lesson Mufti Menk presses hardest in the whole episode, and it is for us, not for a fallen creature long ago. The Prophet ﷺ defined arrogance with a precision that catches most of us off guard: it is not fine clothes or a good vehicle, it is rejecting the truth and looking down on people. So never let a good deed convince you that you have arrived and that the next person is nothing, because that is the exact thought that ruined Iblis. We do not judge a book by its cover, and someone who looks beneath us today may, by a single sincere turn to Allah, race far ahead of us tomorrow. Before Allah, people are equal like the teeth of a comb. He loves you as much as He loves me, and He is waiting for each of us to turn back to Him.
The names of everything, and the first salam
وَعَلَّمَ ءَادَمَ ٱلْأَسْمَآءَ كُلَّهَا ثُمَّ عَرَضَهُمْ عَلَى ٱلْمَلَٰٓئِكَةِ فَقَالَ أَنۢبِـُٔونِى بِأَسْمَآءِ هَٰٓؤُلَآءِ إِن كُنتُمْ صَٰدِقِينَ
“And He taught Adam the names - all of them. Then He showed them to the angels and said, "Inform Me of the names of these, if you are truthful."”
Surah al-Baqarah 2:31 Read 2:31 with tafsir
Adam was not left to learn the world the slow way we do, name by stumbling name. Allah taught him the names of all things at once: this is a tree, this a stone, this a mountain. Then He set those same things before the angels and asked them to name them, and they could not. Exalted are You, they said, we have no knowledge except what You taught us. So Adam named them, and the angels were amazed at what this new creature carried. Here Mufti Menk catches the second half of Allah's answer to them: I know what you reveal and what you were concealing. The honour of Adam was not muscle or size, it was knowledge, the one gift that made even the angels see why he had been raised.
Then Allah sent Adam to greet the angels, and told him exactly what to say: assalamu alaykum, peace be upon you. They answered, wa alaykumus salam wa rahmatullah. Mufti Menk points at it: this is where our greeting comes from, the very first words exchanged between Adam and the heavens, and it is the greeting Allah preserved for us when so many nations swapped theirs for a careless hi or hey. And it carries a promise inside it. To say peace be upon you is to say, you are safe from my harm. So the Prophet ﷺ said: shall I show you a thing that, if you do it, will spread love among you? Spread the salam between yourselves. The first sound of human community was a guarantee of safety, and Allah handed it down to you.
The Garden, the one tree, and the whisper
وَقُلْنَا يَٰٓـَٔادَمُ ٱسْكُنْ أَنتَ وَزَوْجُكَ ٱلْجَنَّةَ وَكُلَا مِنْهَا رَغَدًا حَيْثُ شِئْتُمَا وَلَا تَقْرَبَا هَٰذِهِ ٱلشَّجَرَةَ فَتَكُونَا مِنَ ٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ
“And We said, "O Adam, dwell, you and your wife, in Paradise and eat therefrom in [ease and] abundance from wherever you will. But do not approach this tree, lest you be among the wrongdoers."”
Surah al-Baqarah 2:35 Read 2:35 with tafsir
فَوَسْوَسَ لَهُمَا ٱلشَّيْطَٰنُ لِيُبْدِىَ لَهُمَا مَا وُۥرِىَ عَنْهُمَا مِن سَوْءَٰتِهِمَا وَقَالَ مَا نَهَىٰكُمَا رَبُّكُمَا عَنْ هَٰذِهِ ٱلشَّجَرَةِ إِلَّآ أَن تَكُونَا مَلَكَيْنِ أَوْ تَكُونَا مِنَ ٱلْخَٰلِدِينَ
“But Satan whispered to them to make apparent to them that which was concealed from them of their private parts. He said, "Your Lord did not forbid you this tree except that you become angels or become of the immortal."”
Surah al-A'raf 7:20 Read 7:20 with tafsir
Adam was the only one of his kind, and he felt the ache of it; he asked Allah for company. Then he woke and found beside him someone made like him, Hawa, peace be upon her. A woman, Mufti Menk says, given to a man as a gift after prayer, and he adds a word for the sisters too, that they would live as the gift they are. Allah settled the two of them in the Garden and made it all theirs: eat freely, wherever you wish, in ease and abundance. Only one tree was placed off limits. When people ask why Allah would forbid anything at all, Mufti Menk answers with a child's arithmetic: a maths test is not only addition, there is subtraction too. One part of your soul grows by doing what Allah commands, and a different part grows by leaving what He forbids. Almost everything was permitted; a single thing was not. That is the whole shape of the test.
And Allah had warned them plainly: this one, Iblis, is an open enemy; do not let him drive you out of the good you are in. But the enemy was patient. He came whispering that the forbidden tree was the secret of never dying and a kingdom that would never end. Mufti Menk marks the mistake at its root: Adam turned to listen. The Qur'an teaches that the instant you feel shaytan's whisper you seek refuge in Allah and shut the door, you do not lean in. Iblis tried once, and again, and again, until the whisper found a way through, and the gift Allah had named, that in the Garden they would never be exposed, began to slip from their hands.
The fall, and the first repentance ever made
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
قَالَا رَبَّنَا ظَلَمْنَآ أَنفُسَنَا وَإِن لَّمْ تَغْفِرْ لَنَا وَتَرْحَمْنَا لَنَكُونَنَّ مِنَ ٱلْخَٰسِرِينَ
“They said, "Our Lord, we have wronged ourselves, and if You do not forgive us and have mercy upon us, we will surely be among the losers."”
Surah al-A'raf 7:23 Read 7:23 with tafsir
They ate. At once what had been hidden was exposed, and the two of them ran to fasten the leaves of the Garden over themselves, ashamed for the first time. Mufti Menk clears away two things our culture loves to add. First, the Qur'an does not pin this on Hawa; Allah says the whisper came to them both and they both ate, so there is no honest ground for the old habit of blaming the woman. Second, this was not a defiant, deliberate rebellion. Allah says it Himself: We took a promise from Adam, but he forgot, and We found in him no firm resolve to disobey. It was a slip, not a mutiny, which is why Mufti Menk holds to what he said on the opening night, that the prophets did not deliberately sin; Allah protected them. In a hadith, Adam later answers Musa, peace be upon them both: would you blame me for something Allah decreed for me before I was even created, part of the very plan that brought us to the earth?
And then the scene that the whole episode has been climbing toward. Allah did not leave Adam in his shame. He taught him words, and through them forgave him: Our Lord, we have wronged ourselves, and if You do not forgive us and have mercy on us, we will surely be among the losers. Mufti Menk lets the weight of it land. This was the first repentance in the history of existence, an act of worship no creature had ever performed, and the angels witnessed something brand new. Tawbah is what the human being was made for. The angels cannot sin; you can, and you can also turn back, and that turning is among the most beloved things you will ever do. He leaves us the four conditions of a true return: admit the sin, regret it, ask Allah to forgive it, and resolve not to go back. Meet those four, and no soul on earth ever needs to know. Between you and Allah, it is wiped clean.