Who is Gabriel in Islam?

Who is Gabriel in Islam?

In one of the most famous hadith, the prophet Muhammad is approached by a stranger who kneels before him and asks the prophet about Islam, faith, good deeds, and the nature of the end times. After Muhammad answers all of his questions, the stranger responds, “You have told the truth.” Now, all of Muhammad’s companions are surprised, like, “Who’s this guy fact-checking the prophet? Who has the audacity to claim equal or superior knowledge?” But once the stranger leaves, Muhammad turns to them and says, “That was Gabriel. He came to you in order to teach you of your religion.” The angel Gabriel or Gabriel in Arabic is a key figure in Islam. He is one of the greatest of the angels, a companion and guardian of the prophets and the foremost agent of God on earth. And as a major figure in both Judaism and Christianity, Gabriel offers a fascinating lens into how Islam integrates, adapts, and distinguishes itself from the other Abrahamic religions. To really understand Gabriel’s role, we need to step back and ask, what exactly are angels in Islam?

Like in Judaism and Christianity, angels are God’s messengers and agents. They pass along revelations, carry out divine commands, and sometimes even go to battle on God’s behalf. Like the jin, angels exist invisibly in a spiritual realm alongside our own, though they can interact with humans and enter and exit heaven. They also play a special role in recording humanity’s actions. It said in the Quran that every human has two angels watching their every action and recording their good and evil deeds. The Quran also states in multiple passages that belief in angels is one of the fundamental expectations of all Muslims as important as belief in scripture, prophets, the resurrection, and God. Since the first century of Islam, Muslim theologians have debated whether angels are infallible and whether or not they possess free will. For example, the prophet’s cousin and companion Iban Abbas claimed that angels were capable of acting contrary to God’s commands, whereas the early mystic Hassan Albasi asserted they were not. And this was not just a niche theological debate. It tied directly into another big question, whether or not Eliss or Satan was a fallen angel or jin, which I get into in another video. Those who argue that angels are infallible point to verses like Surah 66:6, which paints a vivid picture of angels guarding the fires of hell. Believers, guard yourselves and your families against a fire fueled by people and stones over which stand angels, stern and strong. Angels who never disobey God’s commands to them, but do as they are ordered. Those who argue for angelic fallibility point to a Quranic passage that names two angels, Harut and Marut, who came down to Babylon and ended up teaching people sorcery, something that’s clearly forbidden. And then there’s Surah 21:29, in which God seems to threaten the angels with hellfire if they claim to be divine themselves. That kind of warning only makes sense if disobedience is at least theoretically possible. Either way, it’s nearly universally accepted among Muslims that angels in Islam don’t sin or heir. Uh why that is, whether it’s because they simply can’t or because they choose not to is up for debate. In Islam, Gabriel is one of the four top angels in God’s service. The other three includes Michael or Mikall. Islamic tradition describes him as God’s messenger to the other angels, whereas Gabriel is his messenger to humanity.

Then there’s Azrael or Israel, the angel of death who guides the spirits of the dead to the afterlife. Finally, there’s Sarafhel or Israel who sits closest to God’s throne and is always holding a trumpet to his lips, waiting for his cue to sound it. and bring about the day of resurrection. Now, in Christianity, Gabriel and the others are usually called archangels, but that’s not really a term you’ll often hear in Muslim contexts. Some sources refer to them as the head angels or the cherubim or the close angels, as in the angels closest to God’s throne, but Islamic doctrine has never formalized a taxonomy of angels in the same way that Christian theologians have made over the centuries. For the most part, Gabriel is simply called an angel rather than an archangel or anything else. Now, Gabriel has a lot of roles in Islam, but by far, he’s most wellknown as the heavenly emissary who taught Muhammad that he was a prophet, taught him how to be a Muslim, and relayed the entire Quran to him. For Muslims, the Quran is God’s final revelation to humanity. While other prophets in their scriptures, such as Jesus in the Gospels or Moses in the Torah, are recognized as authentic and divinely inspired. They’re seen as being directed at particular peoples in particular times. By contrast, the Quran is seen as universal and eternal. The Quran means the recitation. So the oral nature of the text is key as in it’s understood to be the literal speech of God which God recited to Gabriel and which Gabriel then recited to Muhammad for transmission to mankind. Divine speech passed along voice to voice. According to Islamic tradition, Muhammad’s prophethhood began when Gabriel appeared to him in a cave calling upon him to recite the word of God. His commandments are preserved in the opening of Surah 96. Recite in the name of your Lord who created created man from a clot. Recite, and your Lord is the most generous, who taught by the pen, taught man that which he knew not. And over the next 22 years, Gabriel would regularly reappear before the prophet to deliver more of the scripture until it was entirely revealed. Yet, Islamic tradition remembers him as much more than a messenger of revelation. He was also a companion, teacher, and guardian. According to numerous hadith, it was Gabriel who taught Muhammad how to pray and how to perform wudoo, the ritual washing Muslims do before prayer. So Gabriel is remembered as the originator for the physical practices which many Muslims observe every single day. He’s also seen as Muhammad’s friend. He encouraged him in tough times, warned him of incoming danger, and even corrected him in the rare instances where the prophet aired. Some traditions even say Gabriel fought side by side with Muhammad in battle at the battle of Badr in 624 and at Ahood in 625, either with the angel Michael or leading a heavenly army.

And perhaps most famously, Gabriel is said to have accompanied the prophet on his miraculous night journey, the ascent to heaven from the skies above Jerusalem. And across this early period, Gabriel didn’t always appear the same way. Sometimes his presence was subtle and benign. The prophet’s wife, Aisha, for example, described gentle revelation as taking the form of good dreams. Other times, Gabriel took a human form, described as handsome, strong, and wearing green or white. In that shape, he was visible to others, like in that hadith of Gabriel at the start of this video. But these encounters were not always easy. Aisha is said to have reported that she saw sweat dripping from her husband’s forehead while receiving revelation from Gabriel, even though the weather that day was very cold. So, it seems that the weight of divine communication could be physically taxing. At other times, Gabriel’s appearance was more supernatural. Some traditions describe him seated on a chair suspended between heaven and earth or seated on a cloud. Others report that he could take on a terrifying form of a gigantic being with 600 wings whose appearance blotted out the sky. One report from the early mystic assad Musa even says Gabriel once appeared in such a terrifying form that Muhammad’s horse died on the spot from sheer fright. But perhaps the most moving articulation of the relationship between Muhammad and Gabriel is a tradition compiled by the 16th century scholar Alsuyuti. He cites a report from the prophet’s companion I even Abbas that when the angel of death came to Muhammad on his deathbed, the prophet asked him to wait until Gabriel arrived and only after Gabriel joined them was Muhammad willing to pass on. But according to Islamic tradition, Muhammad was not the only prophet guided by Gabriel. Scholars such as the 10th century scholar Al Tubbery and 12th century polymath Fakrad Alrazi describe Gabriel as the angel who delivered God’s messages to all of the prophets throughout history. The Quran appears to refer to Gabriel as the faithful spirit or even the Holy Spirit serving as an intermediary between God and humanity. Beyond his role as a messenger to the prophets, Islamic tradition is filled with stories of Gabriel serving as a literal guardian angel.

One tradition tells the story of Abraham being thrown into a blazing furnace by order of a king often identified as Nimrod, a ruler and hunter mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. But it was Gabriel who saved him by cooling the flames. Another tradition narrates that the sacred well of Zamzam and Mecca was dug by Gabriel’s wings to provide water for the prophet Ishmael and his mother Hagar who were stranded in the desert. Still more traditions tell of his protecting Jesus from Satan. Or in a controversial but wellattested hadith, Gabriel is said to have told Muhammad that as Pharaoh from the Exodus story was dying, Gabriel stuffed his mouth with dirt to prevent him from beseeching God for mercy. Because Gabriel shows up in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic texts, he’s a good example of how Islam both inherited and adapted beliefs from earlier Abrahamic traditions. In fact, in those early years of Islam, Gabriel seems to have played a role in connecting the new religion to its predecessors as a way to encourage Arabian Jews to embrace Islam. The earliest biography of Muhammad, the Sira of Iben Hisham, describes how Muhammad’s wife, Khadijah, embraced her husband’s prophethhood when her Christian cousin assured her that Muhammad had been visited by the same spirit that had guided Moses. Another hadith says that a group of Arabian Jews once asked Muhammad which angel had brought him revelation. When he said it was Gabriel, they backed away saying that they trusted Michael instead and viewed Gabriel with suspicion.

Islamic Exa Jesus says that this exchange led to the revelation of Surah 2 97 to98. Whoever is an enemy of Gabriel should know that he revealed this Quran to your heart by God’s will confirming what came before it. A guide and good news for the believers. Whoever is an enemy of God, his angels, his messengers, Gabriel and Michael, then let them know that God is certainly the enemy of the disbelievers. In this way, Muhammad’s connection to Gabriel helped the early Muslim community to position their faith as the rightful heir to the Jewish tradition, one that they believed Arabian Jews had drifted away from. And as Islam grew, this idea took a broader, more pmical edge. If Gabriel, the same angel known from Jewish and Christian tradition, affirmed Muhammad’s prophethhood, then Jews and Christians ought to recognize it, too. It’s also worth noting that Islamic tradition typically identifies Gabriel as the most warrior-like of the angels, unlike Judaism and Christianity, which more often identify Michael as the general of the heavenly armies. Given that Michael is portrayed as the guardian of the people of Israel specifically, some have suggested that the Islamic tradition’s emphasis on Gabriel as the most marshall angel reflects a broader shift. Early Muslims positioning Islam as a more universal expression of the broader Abrahamic tradition. That said, Michael still holds a high place in Islamic tradition. He’s honored as one of the greatest angels, just with a slightly different role than he plays in Judaism or Christianity. Beyond theology and scripture, Gabriel’s presence is also woven into everyday Muslim life. And nearly every Muslim community has developed their own stories and traditions about him.

In folk practice, for example, one of the most common rukas or incantations against evil is said to have been taught to the prophet in his community by Gabriel. When God’s messenger fell ill, Gabriel used to recite this. In the name of God, may he cure you. And from every disease, may he heal you. And from the spite of the envious, and from the evil of all who bear the evil eye. So, Gabriel is also understood as a guardian angel of believers worldwide. In some Shi traditions, Gabriel is also believed to have delivered special knowledge to Muhammad meant to be passed down to his descendants whom these groups believe to be the rightful leaders of the global Muslim community. Most other Muslim groups don’t accept this claim, but it shows how Gabriel’s role has been interpreted not just in the founding of Islam, but in shaping its unfolding history. Among Sufi mystics and Islamic philosophers such as the 9th century neoplatonist Al Farabi, Gabriel represented the active intellect, the force which bridged the human mind with higher realms of truth. Other mystical interpretations treat him as a manifestation of inspiration itself or of the moment where the heart and mind accept new knowledge. As the key intermediary between God and humanity and as the guardian of God’s prophets, the angel Gabriel shows up in nearly every corner of Muslim tradition. He’s many things at once.

A messenger, a teacher, a warrior, a companion, and at the same time, a being of overwhelming, even terrifying power. In a way, he puts a face to both the familiar and the unknowable manifestations of the divine in Islam. This video is sponsored by 17 Pages, a new featurelength documentary streaming exclusively on Nebula. It’s the story of a single biology paper only 17 pages long, that ignited one of the biggest scientific controversies of the 20th century. so big that it was dubbed the scientific Watergate. Think media frenzy, congressional hearings, bitter academic rivalries. Yeah, it was pretty intense as far as academic scandals go. This documentary also explores the role of bias, how our assumptions, politics, and perceptions distort the way we interpret evidence, especially in highstakes debates. It’s told through archival news coverage, actual congressional testimony, and never-beforeseen interviews. And it raises the question, when the truth is messy, who gets to decide what’s real? 17 Pages is a Nebula original, meaning that it’s exclusive content you won’t find anywhere else. And it’s part of the reason why I love being on Nebula. It’s not only a place where you can watch all of my content early and adree, but it’s also a home to thoughtful, well-ressearched content, and a place where independent creators tell bold stories like this. To watch 17 pages and a bunch of other exclusive content, use my link, nebula.tv/religionforre, TV/religion forre or just scan this QR code on screen to get 40% off an annual subscription. That’s just $36 a year or $3 a month. If you’re tired of subscriptions though, we also have a lifetime membership for $300. Pay once, get access forever. Again, that’s nebula.tv/religion for breakfast. Thanks, everyone.