Morality

There were once two angels, Harut and Marut, who forgot to be humble, as it behoves angles to be, and boasted of their invincible purity: "We are made of light; we are above all sin and desire, unlike the weak sons of man, sons of a mother's dark womb." But they forgot that their purity had to come from their own strength, for they were pure only because they knew no desire and had never been called upon to resist it. Their arrogance displeased the Lord, and He said to them: " Go down to earth and stand your test there." The proud angels went down to earth and wandered, clothed in human bodies, among the sons of man. And on the very first night they came upon a woman whose beauty was so great that people called her The Shining One. When the angles looked at her with the human eyes and feelings they now had, they became confused and, just as if they had been sons of man, the desire possessed her arose in them. Each of them said to her: "Be willing unto me." But The Shining One answered: "There is one man to whom I belong; if you want me, you must free me of him." And they slew the man; and with the unjustly spilt blood still in their hands, they satisfied their burning lust with the woman. But as soon as the desire left them, the two erstwhile angels became aware that on their first night on earth they had sinned twofold- in murder and fornication-and that there had been no sense in their pride. .. And the Lord said: "Choose between punishment in this world and punishment in the Hereafter." In their bitter remorse, the fallen angles chose punishment in this world: and the Lord ordained that they be suspended on chains between heaven and earth and remain thus suspended until the Day of Judgement as a warning to angels and men that all virtue destroys itself if it loses humility. But as no human eye can see angels, God changed The Shining One into a star in the heavens so that people might always see her and, remembering her story remember the fate of Harut and Marut.

The outline of this legend is much older than Islam; it seems to have originated in one of the many myths which the ancient Semites wove around their goddess Ishtar, the Grecian Aphrodite of later days, both of whom were identified with the planet we now call Venus. But in the form in which I heard it, the story of Harut and Marut is a typical creation of the Muslim mind, an illustration of the idea that abstract purity, or freedom form sin, can have no moral meaning so long as it is based on a mere absence of urges and desires; for is not the recurrent necessity of choosing between right and wrong the premise of all morality?

Poor Harut and Marut did not know this. Because as angels they had never been exposed to temptation, they had considered themselves pure and morally far above man- not realizing that thedenial of the 'legitimacy' of bodily urges would indirectly imply a denial of all moral value in human endeavours; for it is only the presence of urges, temptations and conflicts- the possibility of choice- which makes man, and him alone, into a moral being: a being endowed with a soul.

p. 146-147 of "The Road to Mecca"