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Reflections on Aspects of Immortality in Islam

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Jane I. Smith
Jane I. Smith
Affiliation:
Harvard Divinity School, Cambridge, MA 02138
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Extract

As many of you know, I have been engaged for some time in a study of Islamic conceptions of life after death. It was for purposes of research in this area that I spent last spring in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East. There I had the opportunity not only to consider contemporary writings on this subject but to talk with a number of persons who have been concerned with Qurʾānic exegesis and the formulation of Islamic theology. With reference to this modern perspective I would like to think with you today about some aspects of the Islamic experience of the divine in relation to the human—in this world as well as in the world to come.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 70 , Issue 1-2 , April 1977 , pp. 85 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1977

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References

* This essay was delivered as Ingersoll Lecture on Immortality on March 1, 1977, at Harvard Divinity School.

1 My colleague in this research here and in the Middle East has been Yvonne Haddad of the Hartford Seminary Foundation.

2 In Sneath, E. H., Religion and the Future Life (New York: Revell, 1922) 295–320.Google Scholar

3 An unpublished personal communication from W. C. Smith, Harvard University, May 1969.

4 Niẓam al-Islam (Beirut, 1970) 148.Google Scholar

5 Galloway, Dalton, “The Resurrection and Judgment in the Korʾan,” The Moslem World 12 (1922) 350.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Islam, its Meaning for Modem Man (New York: Harper, 1962) 184.Google Scholar

7 Versions of this, related in eschatological manuals, are based on traditions such as those cited in the following: ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 51:75; al-Sunan (Nasāʾī) 21:9; al-Sunan (Ibn Mājah) 37:31; Musnad (Aḥmad ibn ḥanbal) II:364, IV:287, 295, VI: 139; Musnad (Tayālisī) Nos. 753, 2389.

8 Cf. Qutub, Sayyid, Mashāhid al-Qiyāmah fīʾ l-Qurʾān (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1961) 37: “Between the two worlds there is little distinction and at times there is no distinction at all. Sometimes God will show you that this world and the next are co-existent. At times the story takes place in this world and then it continues in the hereafter. …”Google Scholar

9 See Qurʾān 54:44; 20:52; 72:55; 22:56.

10 al-Baghawī, , Mishkat al-Masābīh (trans. Matthews, A. N.; Calcutta: Hindoostanee Press, 1809) 2. 621–26.Google Scholar

11 See, e.g., al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ (Bukhārī) 81:48, 52; 97:24; ṣaḥīḥ Muslim I:302; Musnad (Aḥmad ibn ḥanbal) II:275, 368; III:11, 16, 25, 383; IV: 14. The bridge is not specifically mentioned in the Qurʾān, but many commentators suggest it is that to which 19:71 refers.

12 The basin (ḥawḍ) is also not mentioned in the Qurʾān but is referred to with great frequency in traditional materials and is attested to by such creeds as the Fiqh Akbar II (Art. 21) and the Sharh al-ʿ Aqāʾid al-Naṣafīyah.

13 Many traditions attest to the intercession of the prophet Muḥammad; see, e.g., al-Jamiʿ al-ṣahiḥ (Bukhārī) 8:56; 24:50; 60:3, 8; ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 1:322, 326–29; Musnad (Aḥmad ibn ḥanbal) I:4, 281, 295; III:116, 247; IV:416.

14 Found in Qurʾān 23:100, 25:53 and 55:20, barzakh has been interpreted to mean, among other things, the physical barrier between the Garden and the Fire or between this world and the life beyond the grave, as well as the period of time separating individual death and final resurrection. The most comprehensive English work on the subject is Eklund, Ragnar, Life Between Death and Resurrection According to Islam (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1941).Google Scholar

15 Non-Qurʾānic and seldom mentioned by name in the canonical traditions, these angels are referred to frequently in the medieval Islamic texts and are part of such credal statements as the Waṣīyat Abī ḥanīfah, the Fiqh Akbar II (see note 17 below) and the Sharḥ al-ʿ Aqāʾ id al Naṣafīyah.

16 Reminiscent of the female daena of Zoroastrian mythology, the personification of one's deeds who visits the third day after death in the form of a beautiful maiden or ugly hag, this figure in Islamic lore is portrayed as a male personage whose appearance corresponds to the quality of the deeds represented.

17 See, e.g., the Waṣīyat Abī ḥanīfah (Art. 18): “We confess that the punishment in the tomb shall take place without fail,” and the Fiqh Akbar II (Art. 23): “The interrogation of the dead in the tomb by Munkar and Nakīr is a reality and the reunion of the body with the spirit in the tomb is a reality. The pressure and the punishment in the tomb are a reality that will take place in the case of all the infidels, and a reality that may take place in the case of some sinners belonging to the Faithful.”

18 A recent study of contemporary Egyptian beliefs about life after death by sociologist Sayyid ʿUways (Min Malāmiḥ al-Mujtamaʿ al-Maṣri aī Muʿaṣir [Cairo: al-Markaz al-Qawmī, 1965]) suggests that such beliefs are still held by a large portion of Egyptian society.Google Scholar

19 Riḥlat min al-Shakk ʾiláʾl-Īman (Cairo: Dār al-Nahḍīyah al-ʿ Arabīyah, 1971). Muṣṭafá Maḥmūd is a Cairo journalist, a self-styled theologian whose writings on questions of life after death and other religious subjects are readily accessible and widely read in his part of the Islamic world.Google Scholar

20 Yawm al-Qiyāmah (Cairo: Dār al-Shaʾb, 1969) 77–80.Google Scholar

21 Cf. Abuʾl-ʿAlá al Maudūdī, al-ḥaḍārah al-Islamīyah (Beirut: Dār al-ʿArabīyah, 196-?) 247ff.

22 See, e.g., Muḥammad Ibn Raṣūl al-ḥusaynīal-Barzinjī, al-Ishāʿ ah li-Ishrāṭ al-Saʿah (Cairo, 1384 A.H.) 70–76.

23 Leipzig: G. Kreysing, 1877 (Arabic text and French translation by Lucien Gautier).

24 Author's unpublished MS, pp. 38–39.

25 Qurʾān verses such as 55:26–27, “All that is upon (the earth) will perish, but the face of your Lord will abide forever,” are being interpreted by many contemporary Muslim exegetes to refer specifically to this eschatological moment of God's aloneness. See, among others, ṭanṭāwī Jawharī, al-Jawāhir fī Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-Karīm 24:15; ʿAbd al-Karīm Khaṭīb, al-Tafsīr al-Qurʾānī 14:675; M. ʿIzza Darwaza, al-Tafsīr al-ḥadīth 7:135; M. Maḥmūd al-Hijāzī, al-Tafsīr al-Wadīh 27:129–30.

26 al-Qurʾān (Beirut: Dār al-Shurūq, 1970) 96.Google Scholar

27 Author's unpublished MS, pp. 39–40.

28 Saḥīḥ Muslim 51:60–62; Musnad (Aḥmad ibn ḥanbal) II:70,105, 112, 125, 418; III:90, 178; IV:157.

29 Durrah, MS pp. 64–65.

30 Qurʾān 69:18–37; cf. 17:71–72.

31 La Future Selon le Coran (Paris: Vrin, 1971) chap. 1, pt. 7.Google Scholar

32 Hayāt al Ukhrá (Cairo: Maktabat al-Anglo al-Masriyah) 106–7, 114, 122; Yawm al-Qiyamah 44.

33 See, e.g., al-Kik, Mustafa, Rasāʾ il ʾ Illayhim (Alexandria: Maktab ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn, 1972) 101–3.Google Scholar

34 Latif, Syed Abdul, The Mind al-Qurʾān Builds (Hyderabad: Academy of Islamic Studies, 1952) 59–62Google Scholar; Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, Islam, 196–97; Shaltūt, Maḥmūd, al-Islam: ʿAqidah wa-Shariʿa (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 1975) 43–44.Google Scholar These projections, too, are not without their base in QurDanic promise and are meant to explicate such verses as 11:108.

35 al-Munqidh min al-Dalāl (trans. Watt, W. M. in The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazālī, London: Allen and Unwin, 1967) 57.Google Scholar