Those people have been deluded by their faulty theories—conjectures erected upon minds corrupt at the root. Because of them they have abandoned all sound branches of knowledge, above all the truths brought by the messengers. Concerning them the Almighty has spoken: “When their messengers came to them with clear proofs, they exulted in the knowledge they already possessed, but that which they had been mocking engulfed them” (Ghāfir 40:83).
Their condition is evident to every Muslim and to everyone who affirms the existence of the Creator: they are known to be the most misled of all sects. Yet some traces and offshoots of this materialistic creed have seeped into certain Muslims. A group of modern writers, for example, have interpreted the angels’ prostration before Adam as nothing more than the subjugation of the universe to human beings—that the earthly elements, minerals, and the like have been placed at man’s disposal, and that this, they claim, is the meaning of the angels’ prostration!
No one who believes in Allah and the Last Day can doubt that this notion springs from that moribund view and that it is a distortion of the Book of Allah, no different from the corruption perpetrated by the Bāṭiniyyah and the Qarmatians. Should this story be twisted into such an interpretation, the same tampering could be applied to every other narrative in the Qur’an, turning the Qur’an—after it had been a clarification of all things, guidance, and mercy—into a set of cryptic symbols that any enemy of Islam could manipulate at will. The Qur’an would thus be nullified; its guidance would become misguidance and its mercy a punishment. Exalted are You! This is a monstrous slander!
For the believer, it is sufficient to refute this vile claim simply to recite what Allah has related to us about Adam and the angels’ prostration. He will see that it is in the starkest contradiction to what Allah and His Messenger intended (1). However much its proponents may adorn it, twist expressions for it, or attribute it to scholars in whom others place trust, the believer will never forsake his faith or the Book of his Lord for such deceptive marketing—or for those who, being deluded themselves, attempt to delude others.