Iblis

By Shulamith Levy Oppenheim

Book Overview

The story of Adam and Eve's banishment from Paradise has been part of the world's literary and religious heritage for almost 3,000 years. Focusing on the Islamic version of the story, Oppenheim... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0152380167
• ISBN13: 9780152380168
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: Harcourt Childrens Books
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 10.3" x 0.3" x 11.5"
• Age Range: 4 to 8 years
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 3

Customer Reviews

Some artistic liberty, not a big deal

I do appreciate the fact that the translators looked to translate a story from a different culture and the illustrator obviously put a lot of work into his beautiful drawings. But peacocks aren't considered bad in Islam. They're considered beautiful and the author probably put a peacock in his story to add an element of beauty. In fact snakes aren't considered bad either. Animals, like small children are considered to be incapable of sinning- they don't understand enough to understand good and evil. A spider is said to have saved the Holy Prophet's life in another story in which he was hiding in a cave and a spider covered the entrance with webs and his enemies didn't find him. Also in Islam "actions are judged by intentions" so if these animals didn't intend to defy God, they wouldn't have gotten the punishment for doing so. There's also a bit of a controversy over if Iblis was an angel (a species that is not supposed to have free will enough to defy God, and are practically perfect and always praising God) or a jinn (a bad jinn is a demon). Jinns are supposed to have free will and can be good or bad or neutral or some combination of the three just like humans.