People tend to underestimate what a powerful impact fundamental beliefs can have on the world. This is part of why it’s difficult for some to understand how someone who seems to have good character could be punished with hell because of wrong beliefs. It’s not that good deeds performed by an idol worshiper don’t count— it’s that the severity of the sin of idolatry is such that it outweighs all of the good deeds.

Consider how much suffering a lack of faith, or misplaced faith, can cause. Many people who lack faith spend a lot of time worrying about the future, and as a result take actions to try to secure their future. This is a major factor that drives people to hoard wealth or amass power, and the process of seeking this wealth or power leads to a large number of criminal actions and wars. Conversely, someone who relies on Allah, subhanahu wa t’ala, will not have anxiety about the future, but rather can live according to the hadith:

عَنْ عُبَيْدِ اللَّهِ بْنِ مِحْصَنٍ الْخَطْمِيِّ قَالَ قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ مَنْ أَصْبَحَ مِنْكُمْ آمِنًا فِي سِرْبِهِ مُعَافًى فِي جَسَدِهِ عِنْدَهُ قُوتُ يَوْمِهِ فَكَأَنَّمَا حِيزَتْ لَهُ الدُّنْيَا

‘Ubaydullah ibn Mihsan reported that the Messenger of Allah, sal Allahu alaihi wa salam, said, “Whoever among you wakes up secure in his property, healthy in his body, and he has his food for the day, it is as if he were given the entire world.”

Sunan at-Tirmidhi, 2346

The present world order is shaped primarily by a combination of Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman beliefs. These belief systems, as most forms of polytheism, blur the line between the human and divine. Both Christians and Greco-Roman pagans worship humanoid statues, and both of them believe in the concept of the divine having children.

Likewise, the modern worldview of salvation through science is based on the notion that human beings have the power to reshape the natural order. There’s an idea that disease, hunger, natural disasters, war, and even death itself can be negated by human ingenuity.

One of the most grotesque manifestations of this is the Western obsession with youth. Plastic surgery, face lifts, botox and even stem cell research are expressions of this desire to defy and overcome death and achieve eternal youth. This obsession has a theological antecedent — if you look at Christian iconography, one of the most common images is that of baby Jesus, which carries the concept of God as a child. The Western obsession with youth has a Biblical basis.

‘And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Matthew 18:13

Christian civilization is also obsessed with the concept of “child prodigies.” This is also related to some notion of the divine manifesting in youth, in the form of children performing impressive feats of art or science. This may also be related to the deification of Jesus— one of the miracles of Jesus was the ability to speak articulately at a young age:

وَیُكَلِّمُ ٱلنَّاسَ فِی ٱلۡمَهۡدِ وَكَهۡلࣰا وَمِنَ ٱلصَّـٰلِحِینَ

He will speak to the people in the cradle and in maturity and will be of the righteous.

3:46

The problem is that the word “genius” is derived from “jinn,” which refers to an invisible entity which may or may not be malicious. In other words, this obsession can be an indirect path towards revering or worshiping demonic entities. For example, take child prodigy Amadeus Wolfgang Mozart. Already at a young age, Mozart was composing complex symphonies that outclassed the work of his adult contemporaries. He has now achieved a quasi-mythical status as an archetype of divine artistic inspiration for this reason.

However, if we look not only at the artistic prowess of his work but the broader social impact, there’s nothing divine about it. His work dazzled audiences at a time when the rise of secularism was in full swing. This was a period in which the role of religion and worship in people’s lives was relegated to the shadows, and music was one of the main areas where secularization was apparent.

There’s a long tradition of a Satanic connection to musical ability— Giuseppi Tartini, composed a violin piece of astonishing technical difficulty around 300 years ago, and reportedly said that he was inspired by a vision of the devil playing violin at the foot of his bed. A century later, Nicolo Paganini, a famed violinist renowned for his skill, was rumored to have gained his ability through a pact with the devil.

Robert Johnson was an American guitarist and founder of Blues music as a genre. He is credited with being the major inspiration for the Rock and Roll genre, and he sung a song about selling his soul to the devil at a crossroads in exchange for musical ability. Bob Dylan also referenced the theme of the crossroads, and once referenced making a bargain with a mysterious entity which resulted in him getting inspiration for his music.

Some famous inventors and scientists are also reported to have received demonic inspiration for their discoveries. An advisor to Queen Elizabeth, John Dee, spent much of his life communicating with invisible entities to derive scientific knowledge from them. He was one of the first proponents of an overseas British empire, and developed some of the mathematics and navigational techniques later used in the establishment of the British empire.

Later on Jack Parsons reported conducting a ritual in which he attempted to summon an entity named “Babylon” to help humans travel to the moon. He later developed a jet fuel which is used by NASA until today.

As Muslims, we know that there is an entire class of jinn, or demons, that try to dupe us into worshiping them or falling into idolatry by other means. The exact cause of child prodigies is unclear, but it can’t be ruled out that some element of possession by jinn is involved. This phenomena, especially in combination with the portrayal of divine children, can certainly reinforce the notion of the divine contained within the human, which could ultimately help Satan to achieve his goal of drawing humanity away from the worship of Allah and towards the worship of other things.