Part One
The creed of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah in summary
First Issue: The Word Malak and What Faith in the Angels Includes
Malak (مَلَك), plural malāʾikah (مَلَائِكَة), is from alūkah (أَلُوكَة), the message: the angel is the one who carries the message. Faith in them is the second of the six pillars that the Prophet ﷺ named to Jibrīl when he asked about faith, and Allah joined disbelief in them to disbelief in Him: “Whoever disbelieves in Allah, His angels, His Books, His Messengers and the Last Day has gone far astray.”
Faith in them includes four things. That they exist, as real creatures and not powers or ideas. That one believes in those whose names have been reported, Jibrīl, Mīkāʾīl, Isrāfīl, Mālik, Munkar and Nakīr, and in the rest in general. That one believes in their descriptions as they came. And that one believes in their tasks: the revelation, the rain, the Horn, taking the souls, writing the deeds, guarding the servants, keeping Paradise and the Fire, and bearing the Throne.
Part Two
The texts of the Qurʾān and the Sunnah
Second Issue: The Angels in the Book of Allah
Allah said at the opening of Sūrat Fāṭir:
All praise is for Allah, Originator of the heavens and the earth, who made the angels messengers having wings, two, three and four. He increases in creation what He wills. Indeed, Allah is over all things Powerful.
Sūrat Fāṭir, 35:1 Read the verse (opens in a new tab)
They have wings, in numbers, and Allah adds in creation what He wills. A power of the soul does not have wings in twos and threes. And they do what they are commanded without disobedience.
He said in Sūrat al-Taḥrīm of the keepers of the Fire:
O you who believe, protect yourselves and your families from a Fire whose fuel is people and stones, over which are angels, stern and severe; they do not disobey Allah in what He commands them, and they do what they are commanded.
Sūrat al-Taḥrīm, 66:6 Read the verse (opens in a new tab)
And they are servants, not daughters of Allah as the Arabs said, nor partners to be worshipped.
He said in Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ:
And they say: The Most Merciful has taken a son. Glorified is He. Rather, they are honoured servants. They do not precede Him in speech, and they act by His command.
Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ, 21:26–27 Read the verse (opens in a new tab)
Third Issue: The Angels in the Sunnah
Muslim reported in his Ṣaḥīḥ from ʿĀʾishah that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:
The angels were created from light, the jinn were created from a smokeless flame of fire, and Ādam was created from what has been described to you.
Muslim, al-Ṣaḥīḥ no. 2996 (ed. ʿAbd al-Bāqī 4/2294)
Source, chain and authenticity
Authentic. It is in the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim, and the ummah received the two Ṣaḥīḥs with acceptance; its full chain is given in the Arabic above.
Read the page in the source edition (opens in a new tab)
The whole page in Arabic
٦٠ - (٢٩٩٦) حَدَّثَنَا مُحَمَّدُ بْنُ رَافِعٍ وَعَبْدُ بْنُ حميد (قال عبد: أخبرنا. وقال ابن رافع: حدثنا) عبد الرزاق. أخبرنا معمر عن الزهري، عن عُرْوَةُ، عَنْ عَائِشَةَ، قَالَتْ:
قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ ﷺ "خلقت الملائكة من نور. وخلق الجان من مارج من نار. وخلق آدم مما وصف لكم".
Three creations from three origins. The angels are not jinn, and the jinn are not angels, and this ḥadīth is the key to the question of Iblīs below. And the greatest of them was seen by the Prophet ﷺ in his true form.
Al-Bukhārī reported in his Ṣaḥīḥ, on the verse “And he was at a distance of two bows’ length or nearer”, from Zirr:
Ibn Masʿūd narrated to us that he saw Jibrīl, and he had six hundred wings.
al-Bukhārī, al-Ṣaḥīḥ no. 3232 (al-Sulṭāniyyah 4/115)
Source, chain and authenticity
Authentic. It is in the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī, and the ummah received the two Ṣaḥīḥs with acceptance; its full chain is given in the Arabic above.
Read the page in the source edition (opens in a new tab)
The whole page in Arabic
Part Three
The claims of the opponents and their refutation
“The angels are the powers of the soul and the intellects of the spheres”
The claim
Said by the philosophers, Ibn Sīnā and al-Fārābī, and by the Bāṭiniyyah and some modernists after them
The angels are not creatures with forms that come and go. They are the good powers in the soul, or the intellects that move the heavenly spheres, and the “descent of Jibrīl” is the overflowing of knowledge on the soul of the prophet.
The response
This is a denial of the angels with the word kept. The angels of the Book have wings, came to Ibrāhīm as guests and were offered a roasted calf, came to Lūṭ, came to Maryam as a man, and came to the Prophet ﷺ in the form of a man with very white clothes and very black hair, so that the Companions saw him and he asked about Islām, īmān and iḥsān. The Prophet ﷺ said: “That was Jibrīl, who came to teach you your religion.” A power of the soul is not seen by a room full of men.
And whoever makes revelation the overflowing of knowledge from an intellect has made prophethood something acquired, as the chapter on Prophethood shows, and has made the Qurʾān the speech of the Prophet ﷺ composed from what overflowed on him. That is the saying of al-Walīd: “This is nothing but the speech of a human being.”
“Iblīs was one of the angels”
The claim
Reported from some of the Salaf, Ibn Masʿūd and one narration from Ibn ʿAbbās, and taken up by later writers
Allah said “So the angels prostrated, except Iblīs”, so Iblīs was an angel, and an angel can therefore disobey.
The response
Allah said in Sūrat al-Kahf:
And when We said to the angels: Prostrate to Ādam, they prostrated, except Iblīs. He was of the jinn, so he departed from the command of his Lord. Will you then take him and his offspring as allies besides Me, while they are enemies to you? Wretched is the exchange for the wrongdoers.
Sūrat al-Kahf, 18:50 Read the verse (opens in a new tab)
The Salaf differed over the exception. One saying, reported from Ibn Masʿūd and in one narration from Ibn ʿAbbās, is that he was of the angels and then changed. The other, the saying of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and al-Zuhrī, is that he was never of them. The verse of al-Kahf settles it: “He was of the jinn.” And the ḥadīth above says that the angels were created from light and the jinn from fire, and Iblīs said himself: “You created me from fire.” The angels “do not disobey Allah in what He commands them”, and he disobeyed.
As for the exception, he was included in the command because he was among them and with them in worship, so he was counted with them in the address, and the exception returns to the command and not to the kind. The Arab says: I commanded my servants and my guest, and they obeyed except my guest. So the angels are as Allah described them, free of disobedience, and Iblīs is of the jinn, who have choice and among whom are believers and disbelievers.
Sources
- Muslim, al-Ṣaḥīḥ
- Qurʾān
- al-Bukhārī, al-Ṣaḥīḥ