Islam is a conscious act of submission of the creature tothe will of the creator. I use the words "conscious act" deliberately to distinguish between inherent Islam, which is the law of God for all created things in nature, and voluntary Islam, which is the human faith-commitment to affirm the Oneness (tawhid) of God and obey His will. Faith and obedience, however, presuppose knowledge and knowledge requires communication. This communication of the divine will to humankind is what Islam callswahi, or revelation. Yet revelation is not simply the issuance of edicts which must be unquestionably obeyed. It is rather a relationship of intense involvement of God in human history and of man in the divine challenge as God"sviceregent (khalifa) in the earth.[1]

God, the Qur"an tells us [2], communicates to all creatures what we may call their instincts of survival. He communicates through normative laws to the sun and the moon, to the stars,and to day and night to follow a predetermined course and not to overstep their limits. [3]In this general sense, all things are "Muslims", submitters to the will of God. This universal Islam is presented in the Qur"an as a challenge to man"s willful rejection of faith.How would you, humankind, reject faith in God when to Him have submitted all that is in the heavens and on the earth voluntarily and by coercion? (3: 38). Thus what we term the laws of nature, such as the law of gravity, are according to Islam the ways in which nature expresses its Islam to God.
Angels, like the rest of creation, are Muslims by nature or, in some sense, by compulsion. They lack the faculties which distinguish man as a volitional being from the rest of creation. Angels cannot disobey God or commit acts of evil and sin.
I believe Satan was not an angel even though, under the influence of Jewish and Christian tradition, some Qur"an commentators and traditionists have argued this only as a possibility.[4] Nor is Satan"s power to do evil beyond the divine will and decree. He is simply given respiteto the day when they (humankind) shall be raised up (15: 28-35). Hence human evil-the only true evil in the world because it is an act of voluntary choice can be overcome by divine guidance which is the task of prophets, the recipients of divine revelation.
Islam insists, both in the Qur"an and prophetic,hadith tradition, that every human being is born with an innate knowledge of God. This knowledge is not so much awareness or information; rather it is a state of innocent faith, a state (fitra) of the original creation expressed anew in every child. "Every child," the Prophet is said to have declared, "is born in the (state) offitra; then his parents make him into a Jew, a Christian, or a Magian (i.e., Zoroastrian)." In another version of the same tradition, the Prophet adds: "And if (the parents) are Muslims, then a Muslim."[5] The Qur"an states, even more precisely, that this state is thefitrain which God created humankind; there is no changing of God"s creation (30: 30). Man is therefore created with a primitive but wholesome knowledge of God. The role of the prophets is to guide humanity through revelation to live the full implications of this knowledge.History is, according to the Islamic view of revelation, the history of God"s dealing with humanity through His prophets. Yet revelation in its primordial beginnings belongs to metahistory, the time when we were all in the realm of atoms, ideas in the mind of God. On that primordial day, the Qur"an states, Godtook from the children of Adam, from their loins, their progeny and made them bear witness against themselves, saying: "Am I not your Lord?" They answered: "Yes, we hear and we witness" (7: 172). This primordial act of divine revelation was the covenant which God made with all human beings to "hear and witness" to His absolute sovereignty and lordship over all creation. The rest of human history continues to echo, through the prophets whom God sent to every nation, this divine challenge. History is, moreover, the stage on which we act out our response to this primordial question.
In yet another Qur"anic verse we read: We have offered the trust (amana) to the heavens and the earth and the mountains, but they refuse to bear it and cowered before it. Yet man bore it, for man is truly wrongdoing, foolish(33: 75). This trust is, according to tradition, divine Oneness with all the implications of this knowledge for human life and history. Man is foolish not because he is unable to bear the trust he voluntarily chose to bear, but rather because he continuously wrongs his own soul by knowingly breaking his covenant with God through the sin of association (shirk) of other things with Him, yet God is All-Merciful and Compassionate. In His infinite mercy, He called man time and again back to Him. This He did through a long series of prophets from Adam to Muhammad whose number was, according to tradition, 124,000.
This divine insistence on our salvation through prophetic guidance implies two important but paradoxical principles. It implies first that man is a sinner, capable of great evil. The second principle is that man is nonetheless God"s viceregent in the earth whose ideal goal is prophetic existence. These two principles are dramatically expressed in the Qur"anic portrayal of Adam as the crown of creation before whom angels had to bow down in respectful obeisance. In contrast, the Qur"an portrays Adam and Eve as disobedient sinners begging for divine mercy andforgiveness.[6]
The story of Adam"s creation, fall and restoration as related in the Qur"an is an instructive commentary on the biblical account which the Qur"an accepts in its broad outlines.
When God decided to create Adam, He announced to the angels: "I am about to make a viceregent in the earth." The angels protested:"Will you place in it one who would spread corruption in it and shed blood while we proclaim Your praise and sanctify You?" Then Godtold Adam all the names, which may be regarded as the first act of divine revelation to man in history. God then challenged the angels to name the things whose identities He revealed to His viceregent, but they admitted their ignorance and sought God"s mercy. "Praise be to you, we have no knowledge save that which You taught us...." Adam, who was taught by God the art of language with all its symbolism, was higher than the angels. Thus they were ordered to prostrate themselves before him in veneration, not worship; they all didexcept Iblis (Satan) who refused and was puffed up with pride (2: 30-34)."[7]
In an interesting colloquy between God and Satan, reported in the Qur"an, we see both the reason for man"s exultation and for Satan"s pride. God asks Iblis: "What prevented you from prostrating yourself before one whom I fashioned with my two hands . . . ?"Satan answered: "I am better than he; you created him of clay and created me of fire" (38: 75).[8] Thus God expelled the arrogant Satan from his presence and placed Adam in thegarden of Paradise.
Adam, however, was made not for Paradise but for the earth. God therefore gave Satan authority over Adam and his descendants in order that the eternal battle between good and evil should rage on its legitimate stage, earth. Adam was tempted by Satan with eternal life, everlasting dominion and angelic existence. He fell and was sent with his spouse to the earth to exercise their true mission, God"s viceregency.
From the beginning, God created the human soul and inspired it with its evil and piety (91:6-7). Thus man is as prone to evil and destruction as he is to righteousness and good deeds. With this choice, however, go sin and repentance, and forgiveness and guidance. Adam did disobey his Lord, but then hereceived certain words from his Lord and He turned towards him, for He is truly relenting, compassionate (2: 36). Thus Adam sinned and was guided back to God by God through revelation. Adam was both the first sinner but also the first prophet. Every man and woman thereafter carries in him or herself the same potential. This is not to say that every human being is a prophet, but that the goal of humanity is life with God. Nowhere more powerfully and aesthetically has this ideal been interiorized and presented than in the lives and works of the mystics, the friends (awliya") of God, whom we call Sufis.
It has already been observed that every human individual is born in the state (fitra) of innate faith in God as the one and only creator and sovereign lord of all beings. What then, it must be asked, is the role of the prophets in human history? Their role is twofold, first to remind men of their covenant with God, or bring them back to the state of pure faith. Man, according to the Qur"an, is a forgetful creature. The Qur"an was sent, as were other scriptures, from God as a reminder. Indeed, one of the many names of the Qur"an is al-Dhikr (the remembrance). The second task of the prophets, or to be more precise, the prophet-messengers, is to transmit divine precepts or moral imperatives which are to regulate human conduct. In Islam, this is known as theshari"a, or sacred law.
Islam distinguishes between a prophet and a messenger, and between these and the righteous friends (awliya") of God. A prophet is one who receives revelation in dreams and by other indirect means. He may be sent to only a few people and for a specific purpose, or he may be a prophet in himself
. In contrast, a messenger is one who receives direct revelation through an angel, or even more directly from God, as was the case with Moses. A messenger, in addition, is a legislator. Every messenger (rasul) is a prophet (nabi) but not every prophet is a messenger. This is because the main distinction between the two rests not on revelation, but on the promulgation and application of sacred laws based on revealed divine principles.
Among the 124,000 prophets, tradition asserts that there were 313 messengers. The Qur"an refers to eighteen, five of whom are known asulu-al-"azm, or messengers with power or resolve. These are: Noah, the father of humanity after the Deluge; Abraham, the archetypal man of faith in the one God; Moses, the recipient of the Torah; Jesus, the Word of God and His spirit and the recipient of the Evangel; and Muhammad, the recipient of the Qur"an, the seal of the prophets and last messenger to humankind. Moses and Muhammad, however, occupy a special place in prophetic history because they were prophets and statesmen. They did not simply transmit the message, they implemented it in the life of a socio-political order.

[1] See 2: 30

[2] See 16:68
[3] See 36: 40
[4] See Ayoub,The Qur"an and its Interpreters, 1, New York: SUNY Press, 1983, ad 2: 30-34
[5]Sahih Muslim, 3rd ed.. Beirut: Dar al-Fikr. 1398/1978. XVI, 210
[6] See Ayoub,op. cit., 1, ad 2:30-38
[7] See the previous footnote
[8] See also 7: 12
[9] See 2:123
[10] Abu Ja"far Muhammad ibn Ya"qub ibn Ishaq al-Kulayni al-Razi,Al-Usul min al-kafi, 3rd ed., Tehran: Dar al-Kutub al-lslamiyya. 1388, I, 174 6

Source: tebyan