Compared with non-believers, the fact that Muslims all believe in the reality of souls and that our lives are eternal, places a different emphasis on the value of life on earth, as it also does for a true Christian. Muslims accept that the purpose of human life is to test us. All people will suffer at some point or another, some appallingly. Occasionally, you hear ignorant people suggest that their suffering or misfortune is in some way a punishment from God for something they have done, or even something that someone else did.
Suffering should not be regarded as a punishment from God, or the result of a lack of faith, or of not praying hard enough. One has only to think of the appalling sufferings inflicted on the Prophet (SAW), or on the Prophet Jesus (AS). Our suffering is certainly not caused by God but the natural result of living on a physical plane in the natural world. Moreover, Islam teaches that through physical and other sufferings, Allah remits the minor sins of the believers.
What is important to Muslims is how they bear the test. They strive to cultivate the quality of sabr, or patience. If a Muslim gets cancer, for example, because he is human, he will ask to be made better. Still, because he is a Muslim he will also accept that if this is not to be, he should be able to give an example of patience and cheerfulness in adversity, and not cease to love the God who is his only real support in time of trouble, and in whose presence he lives every moment of the day.
God does not take away the storm for us, but He gives us peace amid the storm. After our earthly lives have run their course, which is known only to God, Muslims believe that they do not cease to exist, but will enter a new state of existence known as akhirah, or the afterlife. Once again, such a belief cannot be proved, although most religious people will argue that a fair deal of circumstantial evidence exists.
Whether or not you believe in the afterlife plays an important part in your early life, because belief provides a very real motivation for conduct. It is the biggest deterrent of all to any Muslim who contemplates doing wrong.
So what if you steal and have your hand cut off? You can live with one hand. But what about your fate in the life to come? When you believe that God sees and knows everything you not only do, but also think, it alters every aspect of life. The true Muslim motivation, however, is not fear or to earn ‘pie in the sky’, but genuine love for God. Those motivated by fear, or by desire for reward, are not fully aware of the nature of God as expressed in Islam.
Muslims believe that after death, the soul enters a period of waiting time, the length of which may be centuries in earth time, but for the ‘dead’ will pass without a sense of time. Life does not just cease to be, even though the fate of the body is to rot away and disintegrate by one means or another. Whether the human body is buried, burnt, drowned, or blown up, it makes no difference to what goes on in the world of the soul, or at what time in the future the human body will be resurrected. Muslims, like Christians, believe that no one knows the day of the hour – only that it will come at an unexpected time.
Some people feel that once a body dies, the human experience stops. All sufferings cease in a peaceful oblivion. The body is resting in peace. Others suspect, from accounts of people who have had ‘near-death’ or actual ‘death-bed’ experiences, that life does not cease at all, but when it enters an entirely new sphere of existence, which will be pleasant or unpleasant depending on the sort of person you were when you died.
Muslims believe in the state known as barzakh, the waiting period that comes between the moment of physical death and the resurrection that comes at the time of judgement. During this period, people experiences will be different; its is believed that those who lived good lives will be able to travel enormous distances in soul-state, enjoying various pleasant and enlightening experiences; whereas those who were bad will be confines to the grave, a terrible fate, but worse may come, of course.
The Day of Judgement, or Day of Resurrection, is the time when souls are united with their bodies – not their earthly bodies, but an entirely new creation, beyond our present understanding. The Qur’an teaches that we will be created in forms we know not of. Even if people scoff at this idea or reject it, Allah says that He can restore us “even to our fingerprints” (Al-Qiyamah 75: 4).
At this stage, many of the bad and unrepentant will be terrified and will now realize that. In contrast, on earth they had the free will to believe in Heaven and Hell, or whether or not to believe in the reality of God – that free will is no longer available to them; they are in the future state, whether they like it or not, and will be obliged to face up to everything they did.
For the first time, they will truly realize the significance of everything they did and the effects of their actions on others. It may be delightful or horrendous, a moment of enlightenment. No one will be able to protest – each soul will have its book recorded by the angels. This book will be opened – not to inform God, who knows everything anyway – but to justify what will come next to each soul involved. (to be continued)
Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood
