A meditation on evil and its adversary, Satan, in the Islamic tradition — and on what it means to resist evil without becoming what one resists.
The tradition takes evil seriously without granting it dignity. Satan, in the Qur’anic telling, is not a rival power but a whisperer — his entire arsenal is suggestion, and his favorite suggestion is that cruelty is necessary. Every atrocity begins as an argument that this time, the evil is required.
To resist evil, then, is first to refuse its reasoning — in the world, and in the self. The video essay considers the Qur’an’s command to repel evil with what is better, and asks what it costs, and what it wins, to obey it.