That the Lord of the universe, Allah; in His infinite wisdom and sublime deeds, Has created many a creature to occupy the heavens and the earths and to perform some known and unknown functions, in the lives of other creatures,is no lie! He is indeed Al-Khalaqqu-Al-‘Aliim, the Creator of all, the Knower!
Among these creatures are the Malaaika; the singular being ‘malakun; and an angel in Britain English! Know brethren, that it is truly obligatory to believe in the existence of the Angels as Islamic faithfuls. These angels are bodies made of soft light with pious souls!
They are blessed servants of the Lord who are neither males nor females. In the same vein, they do not eat, drink, sleep, tire or reproduce! They are just the responsible servants of Allah who are made to serve Him in perpetuity. And while in His services, they do not renege on what He Has commanded them to do but rather, they make His commandments their wishes every time!
Angels are all honourable and good-natured! They are parts of Allah’s panorama of creatures, though, their source are neither man-like nor jinn-like! Their source to say the obvious, is light as the prophet salla-llahu alehi wasalam has pointed to in one of his traditions as follows:
” The Angels were created from light while the Jinn were from fire and Adam, was from what had been explained to you!”
The Lord of the universe, who Is the most High , Has indeed created the angels to be unique in their forms and appearance! He Has made them to be a winged-natured creatures! Among them, some have two wings; some have four; some have six while others have more wings than that! It is Allah, who increases them in wings as He deems them fit.
In one of the noble sayings of prophet Muhammad ( salla-llahu alehi wasalam) he had quipped that :
” Angel Jubril who is truly the leader of all angels ,was created with six hundred wings! Exalted is Allah who is the creator of all things and who knows all things and who creates what He wishes and does what He fancies ,in His capacity! In addition , He Has noted in Qur’an 35vs 1, while describing the creation of the Angels as follows:
” And praise is due to Allah, the originator of the heavens and the earth, the maker of the Angels as apostles flying on wings, two ,and three and four ; He increases in Creatures what He pleases; surely Allah Has power over all things!”
One big fact about these special creatures of Allah is that, they are empowered and authorized to oversee different functions in the lives of man and the jinn. Among them are those who are commissioned to oversee the amount of rain that will fall in all the regions of the Earth yearly and the numbers of the plants; both food and non-food, that will be annually!
Among them are those who are given the priority to monitor the deeds of man and the jinn while there are others that take the lives of man and the jinn at their appointed times and places. Some of them, also guard man from the bad plays of the jinn which can harm them or lead to their deaths only that sometimes, God allow them to hurt or harm man or being the cause of man’s death whenever He wants!
In the midst of these angels are others who are prioritized to send peace and sound health to God’s messengers and prophets while there are other ones who are conditioned to note the leaves which fall from trees as there are special angels who are commanded to bring inspiration and words to prophets of God!
In short, believing in the angels is so important that it is parts of the six articles of faith in Islam that whosever wants to be Muslim in actual sense of it , must endeavor to believe without entertaining any doubt on it, no matter how little it may be!
In the meantime, the one who does not believe in the existence of angels is said to be outrightly away from Islam and that he is already a Kafir! This is inferred from the verse in chapter of the Women in the glorious Qur’an as follows :
” …and whoever disbelieves in Allah and His angels and His apostles and the last day, he indeed strays off into a remote error”
Do The Angels Take The Forms Of Other Creatures?
Know, may the good Lord bless you brethren,that the angels do take the forms of other creatures different from their original forms. They do these often so as to mitigate the fear or fears which accompany their appearance in their normal forms when they want to appear to human beings so they will not be running away out of fear from them!
This has been clearly demonstrated in the Hadith of the prophet salla-llahu alehi wasalam, which has it that Jubril came to the prophet in the form of a whitish man with blackish hairs and who appeared like a traveller from long distance in a whitish attire!
In another instance, angel Jubril did appear to prophet Muhammad salla-llahu alehi wasalam in the form of one of his companions known as Dahiyatul- Kalbi, who was said to be the best in manners and appearance when compared to others men during his time!
And in another, Jubril had appeared to him in his original form with six hundred wings! The prophet salla-llahu alehi wasalam,has said that when he appeared in his original form was when the revelation he brought appeared to be heavy in his bearing compared with when he came in the forms of other man!
Besides, angels can take the appearances of man, animals and birds with the exemption of snakes, scorpions, dogs and swines !
Alas! What one should be wary of while believing that angels can take possession of other creatures is that ,though ,angels can exist in other mediums but not as perfectly and originally as the creatures they have possessed! For examples, an angel that possesses a man cannot be said to be with male organ and by that, be deemed as a male angel while angels cannot take the form of woman as being bandied about in other religion cycles to the extent that they make a drawing and sculpture of them in woman attires with wings!
No, it is not like that! It is the unbelievers in the creed of Islam that named the angels of Allah as females as explained in Quran 53:27-28 below :
“Most surely they who do not believe in the hereafter name the angels with female names . And they have no knowledge of it ; they do not follow anything but conjecture , and surely conjecture does not avail against the true at all”
The Angels’ Culture And System Is Obedience, So Do Not Revile Or Abuse Them
Angels are friends and lovers of God , anytime any day! They are His decent and noble-minded creatures! He ( God) Has praised them in His book, the Qur’an when He vouchsafes and acknowledges their decency in Qur’an 66 vs 6 as follows :
” …they do not disobey Allah in what He commands them , and do as they are commanded!”
In the Hadith collection of Al-Tabaraniy, we read:
” There is no spot in the heavens and the earth a space the like of a foot, a span or a palmful , except that there is an angel standing or an angel bending or an angel prostrating !”
Obviously, the culture and system of the angels is obedience! They pray, praise and worship their Lord in perpetuity but do not get tired! This is the reason it is not allowed in Islam to blasphemy , revile and abuse them! Scholars have said on their reviling and blasphemy that : ” indeed he who reviles an angel among the angels has disbelieved and got out of the void of Islam!”
In the Glorious Qur’an, Allah Has liken those who chose the Angels as enemies as His own enemies too when He says :
” Whoever is the enemy of Allah and His angels and His apostles and Jibreel and Meekaeel , so surely Allah is the enemy of the unbelievers ” Qur’an 2:98
Iblis; Satan Is Not An Angel; Angels Do Not Transgress The God’s Bonds
As for the Iblis, Satan, he is not an angel and not part of them but a jinn! The evidence in the Qur’an in Qur’an 18 :50 is as follows :
” And when we said to the angels : make obeisance to Adam;they made obeisance but Iblis( Satan) did not! He was of the jinn, so he transgressed the commandment of his Lord!”
It then follows that if Satan had been an angel among the angels ,he would not have transgressed the commandment of Allah ,the most Merciful! He would also have not disbelieved too since Allah Has serenaded the angels in the Qur’an that :” they do not disobey Allah in what He commands them and do as they are commanded”
And what some people do say that Satan was the leader of the angels until his fall_ this is no truth but a fallacious statement which has no basis in Islam. This notion negates what is said of the angels in the Qur’an and tradition of the prophet salla-llahu alehi wasalam, while it demonizes the established praises for them in Islam!
Angels Cannot Fall; Matters Around The Two Angels; Haaruta And Maaruta
If the angels have been vouchsafed from sins and transgressions, nothing can make them prone to falling! Angels to repeat the obvious attributes about them; do not sin, nor transgress! Instead they are given the power to obey Allah in perpetuity!
But what is reported about the two angels Haaruta and Maaruta that both of them courted material things of these words and were afterwards, tested with a woman named “zahratu”. It is said that they both sinned by drinking alcoholic, engaged in illicit sexual intercourse with that woman and later killed a soul without any right and later ,this woman was turned to Star _ all these are nothing but pious twitting of innocent angels story! The story has no substantial basis in Islam!
What Allah Has stated in Qur’an 2:102 about the story of the two angels Haaruta and Maaruta that :
” They followed what the Satan’s recited over Solomon ( Sulaiman)’s kingdom. Solomon did not disbelieve but Satan disbelieved teaching men Magic, and such things as came down at Babylon to the angels Haaruta and Maaruta. But neither of the two taught anyone ( such things) without saying: ” We are only for trial; so do not blasphemy “. They learned from them the means to sow discord between men and wife, but they could not thus harm anyone except by Allah’s permission”
What actually transpired between these two angels and the people of Babylon was that the two angels did teach men a form of sorcery so that they would be able to distinguish between a sorcery and prophetic miracle as the practices of sorcery were being taken from the charlatans as prophetic miracles in Babylon at that material time!
Teaching them sorcery was therefore, not a step at making them practice sorcery but a trial at showing them truth from falsehood, so that they will not be following sorcery and its practitioners and that their religion and its practices would be saved from shirk which could make it null and void in the long run as sorcery is part of associating partner with God, who is one and only creator of the universe whom everybody must be worshipped !
So far, for all the blessing and grace of God on the angels to be special in forms and worship ,they are not to be worshipped as some are doing! We must know that they are creatures of Allah like us and by that, our worship, prayer and bemoaning,must be directed to Allah, the true God of creation alone. Worshipping others beside Allah is a pure shirk which can predispose creatures to hell fire. May the good Lord save us from it.