The Mirror of the Excellences of Islam — Page 106
PREFACE ESSENCE OF ISLAM 105 actually state that there is only one companion, who is a caller unto evil, who keeps company with man at all times to ruin his faith; and that God Almighty found it very pleasing that by making Satan the constant com- panion of man and by allowing him to infiltrate into the very flesh and blood of man, the latter should be quickly led to his ruin; and that Gabriel, whose other name is 'the Holy Spirit', has most certainly not been appointed as a caller unto good for the ordinary people, nay, not even for the saintly; that all these people have been left entangled in the clutches of Satan; however, the Holy Spirit does descend upon the Prophets, but even that is only for a moment or for a very short time, after which he ascends to the heavens, leaving them all alone; that sometimes the Prophets remain deprived of the company of the Holy Spirit, or Gabriel, even for forty days or more; but that the other companion— who is Satan-does not, God forbid, leave them even for a single moment, though ultimately he may turn into a Muslim. The reply to this is that these people are maḥjub and heedless and deprived of the verities of the Noble Quran. Nor, in reality, is this their actual belief. They have fallen into this difficulty through their own folly and lack of reflection and because of their meanness and malice toward this humble one. The paths these people took in opposition to this hum- ble one were fraught with these difficul- ties, so they unknowingly got trapped in AUTHOR'S MARGIN NOTE The belief of Batālawi and Dehlawi is that even the Prophets are frequently deprived of the companionship of the Holy Spirit, but the other companion (i. e. satan) remains with them at all times—just like other people—although he does not gain control over them. In spite of this, they say that there was no satan with Jesus, and the Holy Spirit verily came with him and verily ascended upon the heavens with him. them, just as a bird, lured by a grain, gets caught in a net. The fact is that when these people insisted that Gabriel, the Angel of Death, and other angels descend upon the earth with their actual bodies, and then return to the heavens after a brief stay and thus, when they descend from the heavens, it becomes devoid of their presence, and after- wards, when they fly back from the earth to the heavens, the earth becomes devoid of their presence; this led to hundreds of objections