The fall of Iblis is read in Sufism as both disobedience and heroism

Evidence

Sura al-Ar’af (The Heights) 7 (1–206). The Heights are the barrier that will divide the saved from the damned on the Day of Judgment. The point here would be to say that as a narrative archetype this sura can be linked with any one of several corresponding biblical passages, such as the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31–46). Similarly, in the broader mythological universe of Islamic cultural traditions, the fall of Iblis, like the fall of Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost—one of Frye’s touchstone texts—is read ambiguously within the artistic tradition of Sufism as an act both of disobedience and of heroism (although it should be pointed out that whereas Milton’s Satan refuses to bow before God, Islam’s Iblis refuses to bow before Adam because none but God deserves that degree of reverence). — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 965

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• SHARE: The Iblis-vs-Satan asymmetry (refusal to bow before Adam vs. before God) is a precise, shareable nugget for anyone working on comparative religious archetypes.
• XREF: Gives the reader an Islamic archetype to pair against Frye’s biblical frame when reading Hamid and Naqvi’s use of religious narrative.