Read · 2 min · This is the session
Choose three questions for our 15-minute discussion. Start with the core questions: Q1, Q2 and Q3. The first two are the ones the audio briefing asks. You are welcome to pass or use a general example rather than share something personal.
Q1 core
Iblis’s claim to be better than Adam led him to reject a clear command, and the verdict in ayah 13 puts the one who was tatakabbara among as-saghirin, the humiliated. In everyday life, what makes it difficult for us to accept correction, and what would help us respond with humility?
Read 7:13Q2 core
Iblis vows to sit on Allah’s straight path and wait. A narration on the hadith page describes Shaytan sitting on the road to something good, at the moment it was about to cost something. When have you felt discouraged from something good you meant to do, and what helped you go ahead?
Read 7:16Q3 core
Iblis ends his vow with “You will not find most of them grateful” — shakirin, the word behind Indonesian syukur. Ibn Kathir reports Ibn 'Abbas reading the grateful here as those who worship Allah alone. If shukr in this ayah means faith showing itself and not just a good feeling, what does it look like in an ordinary week?
Read 7:17Four more questions (Q4–Q7), if the conversation goes there
Q4 optional
Ayah 11 says “We created you, then We shaped you” — plural — and then tells the story of one man. Ibn Kathir says this is because Adam is the father of all of us, so what was given to him was given to us. What changes for you when you read the honouring of Adam as something that happened to you?
Read 7:11Q5 optional
Allah asks what prevented Iblis from obeying. What does Iblis’s answer reveal about what he valued more than obedience?
Read 7:12Q6 optional
Ibn Kathir answers the fire-versus-clay claim by listing what clay is like — patient, steady, something things grow in — against fire's burning and haste. Do you find that convincing as an argument, or is the real answer that the comparison was the wrong move to begin with?
Read 7:12Q7 optional
Ibn 'Abbas is reported to read the four directions as four kinds of pressure: doubt about the Hereafter from the front, love of this life from behind, confusion in religion from the right, attraction to sin from the left. Which of the four is loudest in your week?
Read 7:17Tadabbur — personal reflection
- Iblis argued with a command he fully understood. Sit with one instruction from Allah that you understand perfectly well and still negotiate with.
- The angels bowed without asking why. Where in your life is obedience simpler than you are letting it be?
- He was given time, and he used it against himself. You have been given today.
- Finish this silently: One thing I was given before I asked for it is ……… One way I will say shukr for it this week is ………