I wrote my Q&A this week on angels, so I thought I might blog about it as well (apologies, Professor Silliman, if this is repetitive!)

For most of my life, I always thought that angels were these sweet, beautiful, divine beings, and was never taught otherwise. Last semester, I was watching a documentary on angels and demons, that explained that in order to do evil, it would serve demons better to appear as extremely beautiful. Although it wasn't a conscious choice, I always believed demons in their purest forms would be extremely, for lack of better words, ugly. This completely altered my view of demons, the way our book and pamphlet have altered my ideas surrounding angels. When the angel was described in the handout we received this week as doing things such as torturing Muhammad into reciting, I was really taken aback. I thought an angel, from what I've been taught, would not have been capable of such things. I guess it just goes to show that mindlessly accepting what you've been taught isn't always going to reveal the true nature of the world - the way reading about something is never the same as experiencing it firsthand.