RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESexult because of that which has been given. God does not love proud
boasters.^185In the Qur'an, divine omnipotence is reconciled with human re-
sponsibility and ability to act by the concepts of guidance and mis-
guidance. Both are the consequence of human choice; divine guidance
or misguidance follows human acts of belief or unbelief. But according
to the choice, God sets his seal on the hearts of people and destines
them for reward or punishment. Except for unwilled offenses, people
are rewarded or punished for the good or evil that they perform.^186
Thus God does not punish people unjustly. It is said of the great sinners
of the Qur'an-the tribes of A<ad and Thamiid, Korah, Pharaoh, and
Haman-that "it was not God who wronged them but they wronged
themselves."187 Misguidance is further removed from the direct re-
sponsibility of God by making it the work of a demon: "And he whose
sight is dim to the remembrance of the Beneficent, We assign to him
a devil who becomes his comrade. And Behold! They surely turn them
from the way of God and yet they think that they are rightly guided."188
This is so close to the indwelling demon of the Me~allyane that it must
belong to the same thought-world. But it should be noted that ac-
cording to the Qur'an it is God who has the ultimate responsibility
for assigning the demon as a consequence of unbelief. This demon is
not inherited from a person's parents at birth.
But, in fact, the concepts of guidance and misguidance tend to
circumscribe the ability of a person to act as a free moral agent and
to reduce personal responsibility to the choice between good and evil.
These concepts were well developed among Magians and Christians
in the form of a conflict between yazdiin and devs or angels and demons
in the world who concentrated on protecting or misleading individual
people. Nestorian monks were preserved from the attacks of demons
by a guardian angel described by Isaac of Nineveh as "the intelligible
power which constantly covers a man and broods over him, removing
from him any injury or accident that threatens to approach his body
185 Qur'an, 57:22-23. The idea that the course of events on earth corresponded to
and was determined by the preexisting record in a heavenly book goes back ultimately
to the Babylonian tablets of destiny, which were read each New Year and gave the
fates for the year.
- Ibid., 53:31-32. See also Montgomery Watt, Free Will, pp. 12-16.
187 Qur'an, 29:40. There is a similar idea in Isaac of Nineveh, who says "may we be
deemed worthy of life everlasting before we appear before the King, and He puts His
seal on the book" (Isaac of Nineveh, "Mystic Treatises," p. 294).
188 Qur'an, 43:36-37.