Blame it on thyself, not the devil

If there were a court on earth where the devil (Satan) and man could seek redress, the number of cases between both could be as huge as the number of sinning men and women. While the hearing of all the cases would require a judge with persevering patience, there’s also the onerous task of how […]

If there were a court on earth where the devil (Satan) and man could seek redress, the number of cases between both could be as huge as the number of sinning men and women. While the hearing of all the cases would require a judge with persevering patience, there’s also the onerous task of how all the judgments would not to be seen to be one-sided; all in favour of one against the other.  More so because the devil stands to be the accused in all the cases. In this discourse, an attempt would be made to showcase why man, not the devil, is to blame for his acts of naughtiness and defiance against Allah’s injunctions.

A businessman identified as Harisu Yahaya told an area court in Kubwa, Abuja on Monday October 30, 2023 that it was the devil that pushed him to impregnate his fiancée, Maryam Muhammad. Yahaya’s confession was actually a response to a petition filed by Maryam seeking maintenance claims regarding their six-year-old daughter. “I am the father of the child and I’m not married to the plaintiff; it was the work of the devil that made me to impregnate her”, Yahaya said. When Yahaya said he had no resources with which to maintain the daughter, the plaintiff (Maryam), however, pleaded with the court to compel Yahaya to take custody of the child since he has parents with whom the daughter could stay; adding that she was ready to withdraw her petition for maintenance if Yahaya takes custody of the child.

Sometime in March this year, a 43-year-old man, Abiodun Oladapo, allegedly impregnated his 19-year-old daughter and blamed his action on the devil. He asked his daughter, to name a different person as responsible for the pregnancy. The victim, who is five months pregnant, told the police at the Mowe divisional police station in Ogun State that her father had been sleeping with her since February 2022, with a threat to kill her if she informed anybody about it. Incest, which is now a common phenomenon, is the worst form of fornication.

Surprisingly, even clerics are not left out of this blame game. In the same Ogun State in 2020, a 44-year-old pastor of the Christ Apostolic Church (CAC) allegedly raped his daughter. Following his arrest by the police after his daughter reported the matter at the Owode-Egbado divisional police headquarters, he blamed the devil for the act; claiming he was hit by “the devil’s arrow” targeted at him. The daughter reportedly told the police that her father started sleeping with her since 2015 when she was 19 years old, shortly after the death of her mother; adding that she got pregnant for her father three times and that he took her to a nurse where the pregnancies were aborted.

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One is beginning to think and feel that Allah has taken shyness out of this world as things you would never have imagined them happening come to boldly stare you in the face. The shameless father told the police that “unlike what was reported in the media, I only began to have sex with her in 2017 and not 2015 as claimed by the police. Also, the abortion I did for her was just once and not thrice.”

In 2021, another suspect identified as Olaoluwa Jimoh was arrested on September 16 by police attached to Ode-Remo division in Ogun State for allegedly raping his daughter several times before she eventually got pregnant. The 19-year-old victim told the police that she has been living with her mother until about two years ago when the suspect asked her to come and live with him. Sometime in June 2021, her father forcefully had sex with her, and that since then, the randy father had raped her several times; threatening to kill her if she informed anyone about it. The suspect blamed the devil for his actions.

In a similar incident, the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP) in June 2019 arrested a 48-year-old man in Abuja for alleged rape and sexual exploitation of a 16-year-old orphan. The suspect reportedly confessed to have sexually abused the girl twice and attributed the act to the “work of the devil”. The Director General of NAPTIP, Dame Julie Okah-Donli, described the action as the highest form of wickedness against a vulnerable and helpless orphan.

Besides unchaste persons who held the devil responsible for their misdemeanours, nearly everyone who commits a sin at any point in his life attributes his undesirable acts to the devil. A husband or a wife who wants to regret the excesses that led to separating from his or her partner also blames everything on the devil. A student caught perpetrating an examination misconduct accuses the devil. When a thief is caught red-handed, he holds the devil responsible for his wayward actions.

It is characteristic of every sinner to describe his or her transgressions as ‘the devil’s handwork’; the same devil that would, in the hereafter, absolve himself of any blames from sinful men and women. Allah explains in the Qur’an that after man had listened to the devil’s invitation to the path of disobedience on earth, the devil would, on the Day of Judgement, exonerate himself by saying it was man’s foolish choice to disobey Allah because he (the devil) had Allah’s fear. Qur’an 59:16 reads, “He says to man ‘Disbelieve,’ but when he (man) disbelieves, he (the devil) says, ‘I am innocent (of your accusations). Verily, I fear Allah, the Lord of the universe.”

Just imagine the devil claiming to be innocent of the evils he led man into. With guts, the devil is even asserting to have a sense of self-righteousness; incredibly rating himself higher than the man that chose the path he (the devil) showed to him? What a last-minute abandonment of man by his worst enemy who many, while on earth, consider as their best ally! If there’s any lesson from Qur’an 59:16, it is the truth that those who blame the devil for their unwelcome actions are actually on their own as the ‘Prince of Darkness’ would openly disown them before Allah.

The devil would be right to turn his back on man because the latter had a choice to ignore the former’s call to disobedience. Of course, Allah gave man the reasoning faculty to choose to follow either the path of guidance or that of transgression. Therefore, man has no excuses to blame the devil. May Allah guide us to always ignore the devil’s invitation to unrighteousness, amin.