Minerals — Plants — Animals — Jinn — The Human Being

جمادات — نباتات — حیوانات — جن — انسان

Minerals (Jamādāt): Minerals have extension in length, breadth, and depth. In them there is growth and form, but no apparent external life.

Plants (Nabātāt): In addition to extension, plants have qualities of nourishment and so on — the nutritive faculty. Plants have a kind of life — they grow, they cannot move voluntarily from place to place.

Animals (Hayawānāt): In addition to extension and growth, animals have apparent external life, sensation, and awareness, as well as the lower faculties. For the preservation of species, they produce offspring — nature provides them with what they need. Animals seem to be in a lower rank than the human being — indeed, the human being has one intellect as a substitute for a thousand instincts.

Rational Faculty (Dhū al-'Aql): This is the highest life — possessing will, perception, and awareness. Both humans and jinn share in this.

Jinn: Like the Universal Intellect, they have will and rational awareness. They are subtle in constitution and the element of fire is predominant in them. They can take any form and appear in any shape. In the World of Witnessing, when jinn take on physical form, all the signs and necessities of that form follow — so if a jinn appears in the form of a serpent, it can be struck with a stick and killed.

Jinn and humans (ins) are alike in having rational awareness and therefore carry religious obligations — this is why both are addressed in religious law as mukallafīn (those accountable). Jinn can live longer than human beings, though they remain in a lower rank relative to the human being with respect to the sensory world — because a large serpent lives much longer.

Impure Jinn (Khabīth Jinn): These are the devils — the shaytāns — who lead human beings astray. Every one of them has a shaytan accompanying them. Their leader is Iblis — who was created before Adam (peace be upon him) and will persist until the Day of Judgment. This is Allah's trial and test.

Satan has no access to the court of the Divine — our duty is to seek refuge in the Owner of that court and call upon Him. He will necessarily rebuke Satan. We seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Satan.

Pure Jinn (Ghayr Khabīth Jinn): Ordinary jinn who have not given themselves to evil. Among them are good and bad alike, and among them are Muslims too — some have even been honoured with the companionship of the Prophet (peace be upon him).

The Human Being (Insān): The human being is given the faculties of emotion, desire, and reason. If reason is overcome by emotion and desire, the human becomes lower than the animals. But if the higher rational and spiritual faculty gains dominance, and Divine knowledge and recognition of Allah are attained, the person is adorned with the character of Allah — then he becomes better than all, surpassing even the higher worlds and ruling over the lower ones.

Every particle less than a handful radiates with the lights of the Real to some degree — but apart from the human being, no created thing can become the complete mirror of all the Divine Names and Attributes. The human being individually also has great degrees of difference in the manifestation of perfections. The very persons (individuals) of human beings also retain great differences in the level of their perfections.