Is Satan's Scheme Succeeding?
You have made an assumption that Satan is God’s archrival. That certainly is not the case. Satan is God’s creation (a jinn) who was granted respite till the day of judgement as a result of the incident mentioned in the Quran verses 7:11-25 and elsewhere. God’s scheme of selecting humans for His paradise on the basis of their worldly tests would have remained the same regardless of whether the Satan incident took place or not. Please listen to the lecture in the following thread to understand the basis of the Adam and Eve incident as well as Satan’s challenge: Discussion 14431 • Reply 14462 Satan has no control over human free will – all he can do is try to lead us astray by whispering impure thoughts to us. We get these impure thoughts through various other means as well. The final decision to act upon such thoughts is always subservient to our own free will.