What Role Do Angels Play in Our Lives?

■ What Role Do Angels Play in Our Lives?

I love how you see these incidents online where a person is walking on the street and doesn’t notice a bunch of cars coming, and a huge truck is about to collide with them. Suddenly, it’s as if an arm pulls the truck away, and it goes in a completely different direction. Or someone narrowly misses four cars as they collide, and that person just stands there unharmed.

In some situations, you witness someone involved in a freak accident, like the person jogging on the beach, suddenly hit by a plane. It’s as if you witness divine decree and precision, seeing the perfection of Allah ﷻ’s control. When you reflect on your own life, you might remember driving on the highway, distracted, and just missing a car accident. In that moment, you think, “Subhan Allah, Allah ﷻ protected me.”

Those who have seen their children fall might think, “If they had fallen just a little differently, it would have been so much worse.” These moments remind us of Allah ﷻ’s overwhelming power, but they also involve the role of angels.

Allah ﷻ says in the Qur’an:

لَہٗ مُعَقِّبٰتٌ مِّنۡۢ بَیۡنِ یَدَیۡہِ وَ مِنۡ خَلۡفِہٖ یَحۡفَظُوۡنَہٗ مِنۡ اَمۡرِ اللّٰہِ ؕ

❝For each one are successive angels, before and behind him. They guard him by the command of Allah.❞ (13:11).

Every single person has a guardian angel in front of them and behind them, protecting them by Allah ﷻ’s decree.

Reflect on this concept. Often, we are paranoid about the devils and the Shayateen (devils) around us, but proportionally speaking, every human being has four angels assigned to them, while only one devil (Shaytan) is assigned to each person. Two angels protect you, and two angels record your deeds. Any additional angels or devils in your life are invited by your good or bad deeds.

The guardian angels are always with you—during the day, while you sleep at night, and during significant or insignificant moments of divine decree. As Mujahid and Wahb ibn Munabbih said, these angels protect you from wild animals, riding beasts, harmful people, and even small insects like ants. If it is not decreed for you to be harmed, these angels will shoo away bugs and objects, keeping you safe.

Sayidina Ali ibn Abi Talib (رضي الله عنه) was once informed of a tribe planning to attack him. He said,

❝They cannot harm me unless Allah ﷻ has decreed it. For Allah ﷻ has set guardian angels for each person, and the only time harm befalls someone is when those angels are commanded to step aside.❞

Sayidina Ibn Abbas (رضي الله عنه) similarly said that these angels protect you out of obedience to Allah ﷻ and only step aside when it is decreed otherwise.

This is a powerful concept to reflect on, especially when we think of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ and Saydina Jibril (Gabriel) protecting him from enemies, or the Muslims during the Battle of Badr, where angels were sent to protect them. The Muslims witnessed their enemies being thrown off their horses, hearing the crack of a whip but not seeing who was doing it.

Even at the end of times, the Dajjal (Antichrist) will try to enter Madinah, only to find angels guarding its gates, protecting the city from all sides.

In our individual lives, these angels protect us unless Allah ﷻ has decreed otherwise. As Saydina Ibn Abbas (رضي الله عنه) said, the only time they step aside is when Allah ﷻ has decreed harm, something written for us in the womb by an angel—our date of death, our lifespan, and that moment for our souls to depart. When the decree of death comes, these angels move aside, allowing the soul to be transferred to another group of angels, either wrapped in the shroud of paradise or the shroud of Hellfire.