The Obligation of Belief in the Angels
Allah glory be to Him and may He be exalted! says:
"It is not devotion to turn your faces towards the East or the West. Rather, true devotion is when someone believes in Allah, and the Last Day, and the Angels, and the Book, and the Prophets." (2:177)
Allah glory be to Him and may He be exalted! says:
"The Messenger believes in what has been sent down to him from his Lord, and so do the believers. Each one believes in Allah and His angels and His Books and His Messengers. We do not differentiate between any of His Messengers." (2:285)
The Almighty says:
"Anyone who rejects Allah and His angels and His Books and His Messengers and the Last Day has gone very far astray." (4:136)
In these blessed ayats, the Noble Qur'an guides us to the fact that belief in the angels is a basic tenet of belief. It stands at the very root of the revelation of Allah and His Messengers because the revelation of Allah Almighty only reached the Prophet by means of one of the angels named Jibril, the Trustee of the Revela- tion. Thus if a person denies the existence of the angels, he also denies the revelation of the Divine Books and consequently the message of the Messengers. That is why the Qur'an mentions belief in the angels before belief in the Divine Books and the Mes- sergers.
Anyone who rejects the existence of the angels, according to the way that the Qur'an has clearly described them, is an unbeliev- er since Allah, the Blessed and Exalted, says:
"O you who believe! Believe in Allah and His Messen- ger, and the Book which He sent down to His Messenger, and the Book which He sent down before. Anyone who rejects Allah and His angels and His Books and His Mes- sengers and the Last Day has gone very far astray." (4:136)
Thus the Qur'an makes clear the obligation of belief in the angels in these two ways. Firstly by confirming the belief of those who believe in them in the ayat of Surat al-Baqara: "The Messen- ger believes...", and secondly by denying belief to those who reject them in the ayat in Surat an-Nisa'. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said in a hadith transmitted by Muslim, when he was asked about belief:
"It is that you believe in Allah, His angels, His Books, His Messengers and the Last Day, and that you believe in the Decree, both the good and the bad of it...."