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Other traditions

During the first two centuries of Islam, Muslims almost unanimously accepted the traditional story known as the Satanic Verses as true. According to this narrative, Muhammad was told by Satan to add words to the Quran which would allow Muslims to pray for the intercession of pagan goddesses. He mistook the words of Satan for divine inspiration. Modern Muslims almost universally reject this story as heretical, as it calls the integrity of the Quran into question.

On the third day of the Hajj, Muslim pilgrims to Mecca throw seven stones at a pillar known as the Jamrah al-’Aqabah, symbolizing the stoning of the Devil. This ritual is based on the Islamic tradition that, when God ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael, Satan tempted him three times not to do it, and, each time, Abraham responded by throwing seven stones at him.

The hadith teach that newborn babies cry because Satan touches them while they are being born, and that this touch causes people to have an aptitude for sin. This doctrine bears some similarities to the doctrine of original sin. Muslim tradition holds that only Jesus and Mary were not touched by Satan at birth. However, when he was a boy, Muhammad's heart was literally opened by an angel, who removed a black clot that symbolized sin.

Muslim tradition preserves a number of stories involving dialogues between Jesus and Iblis, all of which are intended to demonstrate Jesus's virtue and Satan's depravity. Ahmad ibn Hanbal records an Islamic retelling of Jesus's temptation by Satan in the desert from the Synoptic Gospels. Ahmad quotes Jesus as saying, "The greatest sin is love of the world. Women are the ropes of Satan. Wine is the key to every evil." Abu Uthman al-Jahiz credits Jesus with saying, "The world is Satan's farm, and its people are his plowmen." Al-Ghazali tells an anecdote about how Jesus went out one day and saw Satan carrying ashes and honey; when he asked what they were for, Satan replied, "The honey I put on the lips of backbiters so that they achieve their aim. The ashes I put on the faces of orphans, so that people come to dislike them." The thirteenth-century scholar Sibt ibn al-Jawzi states that, when Jesus asked him what truly broke his back, Satan replied, "The neighing of horses in the cause of Allah."

Muslims believe that Satan is also the cause of deceptions originating from the mind and desires for evil. He is regarded as a cosmic force for separation, despair and spiritual envelopment. Muslims do distinguish between the satanic temptations and the murmurings of the bodily lower self (nafs). The lower self-commands the person to do a specific task or to fulfill a specific desire; whereas the inspirations of Satan tempt the person to do evil in general and, after a person successfully resists his first suggestion, Satan returns with new ones. If a Muslim feels that Satan is inciting him to sin, he is advised to seek refuge with God by reciting: "In the name of Allah, I seek refuge in you, from Satan the outcast." Muslims are also obliged to "seek refuge" before reciting the Quran.