Allama Badr al-Din bin Shibli, in his famous book "Aakam al-Murjan fi Ahkam al-Jan", narrates that there are 6 levels through which the accursed Satan attempts to harm a human being: (1) In the first stage, he works hard to involve the person in Kufr (disbelief) and Shirk (polytheism). If he succeeds in this, he no longer needs to make any further effort on that person, because there is no greater harm than Kufr and Shirk. (2) If the person (by Divine Grace) does not agree to Kufr and Shirk, then in the second stage, the accursed Satan entangles him in Bid'ah (religious innovations). Hazrat Sufyan al-Thawri (RA) says that Satan prefers Bid'ah over transgression and sin; this is because a person gets the opportunity to repent from other sins, but an innovator (Bid'ati) is rarely granted the guidance to repent (as he performs the innovation considering it a source of reward, so the thought of repentance does not even cross his mind). (3) If the person remains safe from Bid'ah as well, then in the third stage, Satan tries to involve him in transgression, immorality, and major sins (such as adultery, murder, lying, arrogance, jealousy, etc.). (4) If the person escapes major sins too, Satan's effort is to at least make the person habituated to minor sins; because these small sins sometimes accumulate to such an extent that the person becomes deserving of punishment due to them. The Holy Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "Beware of sins that are considered insignificant; for their example is like a group of people who halt in a forest, and each person brings a stick of firewood until they gather enough to light a large fire to cook and eat their food. Likewise, minor sins, when they accumulate, become the cause of great destruction." (Narrated by Ahmad, Al-Targhib wat-Tarhib, complete number: 3760, Bait al-Afkar). (5) When Satan's power does not work in any of the aforementioned stages, his desire is to engage the human in such permissible (Mubah) actions which carry no hope of reward. The result of this is that the time in which a human could have earned immense reward by doing good deeds passes away and is wasted without any benefit. (6) If the person manages to escape Satan's trap of deception at every above-mentioned stage, then in the final stage, Satan tries to divert him from a superior and more beneficial deed to an ordinary and less beneficial deed, so that he can deprive the human of the virtue's reward as much as possible. (Aakam al-Murjan fi Ahkam al-Jan, 126-127) It becomes clear that Satan does not want to waste any opportunity to harm humans. Sadly, today we are not only oblivious to such a worst enemy, but have actually become his close friends. Even highly religious people appear trapped in Satan's deception at some stage or another, and they do not even realize what tricks our enemy has played against us. (Rahman ke Khas Bande / p. 360-361)