The Seven Traps of Our Enemy ~ Audhu Billahi Minashaitanir’Rajeem🤲

Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Raheem

Ibn al-Qayyim (raḥimahullāh) said:
“Shaytaan/devil wants to destroy the son of Adam in one of the seven onerous traps. Some of them are more intense than others. Devil would not try to destroy him in the next phase until he fails to destroy him in a previous one.”

1️⃣ Disbelief in God
The first trap is disbelief in God, His religion, and His meeting, and His attributes of perfection and what the messengers have taught. If the devil overcomes him in this obstacle, the fire of his hostility cools and he enjoys his company.

2️⃣ Bid’ah ~ Religious Innovation
If, however, he crosses this trap and is saved from it with the light of guidance and his light of faith is saved, he seeks him out in the second obstacle, which is the obstacle of heretical innovation, either in terms of belief against the truth that God has sent with the messenger and revealed in His Book, or in ritual worship by means he did not command, by way of innovated customs and rituals in religion, which God accepts none of; the two kinds of innovations follow each other and are rarely separated. As one of them has said, the innovation in opinion has married the innovation in deeds, and the couple is busy with their wedding ceremony, and their illicit offspring inhabit the lands of Islam, and the people and the land complain of them to God Almighty.
Our Shaykh, God have mercy on him, said, “The reality of unbelief has married wicked heretical innovation and has given birth to the loss of this world and the next.”

If the servant crosses this obstacle as well, and the light of the Prophetic Way saves him from it, and he holds fast to the footsteps of the Prophet and the Predecessors, the best of the companions, and of the successors who followed them in the best way.

3️⃣ Major Sins
The third obstacle is that of the major sins; if the devil gets the better of him, he adorns them to him and makes them beautiful, spinning tall tales and opening to him the door of wishful thinking, suggesting that faith is nothing but affirmation and actions have no effect on it. He enjoys the sound of a statement sufficient to ruin the creation, that “With the affirmation of unicity, no sin does harm, just as no good deed does any good with associationism.”
The devil prefers to trap him in the obstacle of innovation because of how it opposes religion and the teachings of God’s messenger, and one who falls into it does not repent from it, but rather calls people to it, and because it contains speaking in God’s name without knowledge, clear opposition to the Prophetic Way and those who adhere to it, effort to put out the light of the Prophetic Way, befriending of what God and His Messenger have discarded and discarding of what He has befriended, inclusion into consideration of what God and His Messenger have rejected and exclusion of what they have included, befriending of what they have opposed and opposition to what they have befriended, affirmation of what they have denied and denial of what they have affirmed, giving lie to the truthful and affirming the liars, rejection of the truth with falsehood and inversion of truths by making the truth false and the falsehood true, deviance in the religion of God, blinding of the hearts to the truth, and attempt to render crooked God’s straight path; in summary, the opening of the door to changing the religion.

If he safely crosses over this obstacle through protection from God or sincere repentance, the devil summons him to the fourth.

4️⃣ Minor Sins
The fourth obstacle is that of minor sins; the devil measures out two caffisos and says, There is nothing on you if you avoid the major sins and cheat a little on the minor ones, or they will be erased if you avoid the major ones and do good deeds. He belittles them in a man’s eyes until he falls into it persistently, for persistence on a sin is worse than committing it. No sin is major with repentance and seeking forgiveness, and no sin is minor with persistence. The Prophet ‎ﷺ has said, “Beware the insignificant sins.” Then he struck the similitude of a people who settled on a barren piece of land. They needed wood to make fire, so one fetched one stick and another one fetched another, until they gathered many sticks, and made the fire and cooked their bread. Such are the insignificant sins; they gather upon a servant and he thinks nothing of them until they bring about his destruction.

If he escapes from this obstacle through watchfulness, circumspection, and persistence in repentance and seeking forgiveness, and by following any sins with good deeds, he summons him to the fifth obstacle.

5️⃣ Indulge in lawful things excessively (in order to keep him away from worshipping God)
The fifth obstacle is that of permissible deeds whose performance does not harm one, so he busies him with it against performing many deeds of obedience and striving his best in preparing for his hereafter. Once this is accomplished, he gets greedy and makes him abandon recommended acts of the Prophetic Way, and once he does that, to being lax in his obligations. If nothing else, he gets him to miss great benefits and lofty stations. If he only knew the price he must pay, he would never miss any of the deeds of righteousness, but he does not.

If he escapes from this obstacle as well through immaculate insight, a guiding light, and inner awareness of the value of acts of worship and increasing one’s deeds, and the brevity of one’s station at the port, the importance of the trade and the generosity of the buyer and the value to be attained in return, he would be jealous of his time and would hate to waste a single heartbeat without taking advantage of it.

6️⃣ Busying the slave with less rewarding deeds
Now, the enemy summons him to the sixth obstacle, which is that of good deeds that are not the best, but he enjoins him to them and beautifies them and shows him how beneficial and meritorious they are, to busy him from what is better than these acts and more beneficial, for when he despairs in making him lose the essence of good deeds, he tries to keep him from the best and most perfect of deeds. He busies him with less preferred and meritorious acts, with what God loves from what God loves more, with what pleases God from what pleases God more.

But how few in the world are those who reach this obstacle. He traps most people in one of the earlier obstacles.

If one passes through even this one through his understanding of deeds and their ranks with God Almighty, their ranks and worth, and discrimination between the high and the low, the good from the better, the ones that lead from those that are led, the most honorable from the less honorable—for in words and deeds there are those that are the more honorable and the less honorable, the ones that lead and the ones that are led, the ones that constitute the epitome and ones that do not.

This obstacle is not cleared except by the men of insight and truth from among the people of knowledge, the aspirants to the highest success, who have given each deed their right and everyone his due.
If he passes through this there remains no obstacle that the enemy can now demand of him to cross except one, which one cannot avoid, and if anyone were successful in it, it would be the messengers and prophets of God, the noblest of His creation to Him.

7️⃣ Devil assigns his army to harm the person in any way possible
That is the obstacle in which the devil assigns his army upon him to harm him in any number of ways, with hand, tongue, and heart, depending on his status in goodness. The higher his rank the more cavalry and infantry he summons, and unleashes against him in many different ways, and this obstacle is one against which the servant has no defense. The more he strives in the path of uprightness and calling to God Almighty, establishing His command, the more the enemy strives in inciting the fools against him.
In this obstacle, he must put on his war gear and resolve to fight the enemy of God through God. His worship is the worship of the elite among the knowers, and it is called the worship of hostility, and only those endowed with immaculate insight are aware of it. There is nothing dearer to God than the hostility of his allies against his enemy. God has alluded to this kind of worship in a number of places in His Book.

The Prophet ‎ﷺ has set down in law for the one offering ritual prayer two prostrations if he forgets something, and said, “If his prayer is sound, the two prostrations will flaunt the devil,” and he called them “the two flauntings.”
Whoever worships God by flaunting at His enemy has earned a large share of true friendship with God, and a share that is proportional to the extent of a servant’s love for his Lord and his hostility to His enemy. It is due to this flaunting that prancing in front of the enemy line in a battle has been praised, as well as prancing upon giving charity secretly where none but God sees one, as it flaunts the enemy [i.e., the devil] by showing how His beloved [i.e., the human being] has sacrificed his ego for God Almighty.
This is a kind of worship that is not known or practiced by people except a few, and whoever tastes its taste weeps over the earlier days when he neglected it.

It is God alone whom we seek for help and reliance, and there is no power to change or resist except through God.
The possessor of this station, if ever in a state of sin, looks at the devil looking at him joyously and flaunts at him by repenting sincerely, and thus his flaunting generates another opportunity to worship. This is a glimpse from some of the inner secrets of repentance; do not belittle it, for you are unlikely to find it in any other composition; God’s alone is all praise and all favor and from Him is all success.

📚Section-5.6 ~ The Seven Traps of the Enemy from Book Ranks of the Divine Seekers, Volume 1 ~ By Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (Madaarij as-Saalikeen Translated, Annotated & Introduced by Ovamir Anjum)
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Ya Wadud, we seek forgiveness for every sin that draws us near Your displeasure or anger 🤲

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