76الَّذينَ آمَنوا يُقاتِلونَ في سَبيلِ اللَّهِ ۖ وَالَّذينَ كَفَروا يُقاتِلونَ في سَبيلِ الطّاغوتِ فَقاتِلوا أَولِياءَ الشَّيطانِ ۖ إِنَّ كَيدَ الشَّيطانِ كانَ ضَعيفًاMuhammad AsadThose who have attained to faith fight in the cause of God, whereas those who are bent on denying the truth fight in the cause of the powers of evil. Fight, then, against those friends of Satan: verily, Satan's guile is weak indeed!1Thus the Qur'an implies that "evil" is not an independent, esoteric factor of life, but rather a result of man's succumbing to the temptations arising from his own moral weakness and thereby "denying the truth". In other words, the "power" of the negative principle symbolized by Satan has no intrinsic reality ("Satan's guile is weak indeed"): it becomes real only through man's wilfully choosing a wrong course of action.