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Islam: Submission to God and the End of Time
Guide us along the straight way
The way of those on whom You have bestowed your grace
Not of those who earn your anger
Nor of those who go astray
~ Quran 1:5-7
Overview
Each dawn across the globe, hundreds of millions of Muslims pray to God, some called to do so by the sound of a human voice echoing from on high: “Allah hu akbar” (“God is Great”). Known by some as “the straight path,” from the Quranic verse (surah) cited above, Islam is the world’s fastest growing and second largest religion. It centers upon the belief that God (Allah) is absolutely One, that there is no other God but Allah, and that we are created to submit to God, through which we will find peace and the assurance of eternal life in heavenly paradise. Reflective of this, the word Islam means “submission,” and one who submits to Allah is a Muslim, a submitter. The root of the word Islam, slm, is also the root of the most important greeting in the religion, salaam (a cognate of the Hebrew word shalom), meaning peace. Submission to Allah alone is thus a form of peace, from which the believer derives a sense of security, safety, and soundness in life and the promise of entry into heaven. The word for faith in Arabic, iman, literally translates as “security,” or “certainty,” with etymological roots in the notion of “ascent.” The righteous will reside eternally in a paradisiacal garden after the End of Time, the arrival of the Messiah (Mahdi), the resurrection of the dead, and judgment for one’s deeds, words, and thoughts in life. We explore Islamic eschatology in another section. First let us explore the history of this remarkable religion and consider it from the perspective of two of Ninian Smart’s “dimensions of religion”: doctrinal/philosophical and practice/ritual.
Historical Background
Although Islam is often called the youngest of the world’s great religions, founded by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in the seventh century C.E.,1 its prophetic lineage is traced back through Jesus Christ (Isa, a figure of major importance in Islam) and the great patriarchs and prophets of Judaism, like Moses (Musa) and Abraham (Ibrahim), all the way to Adam (Aadam or Âdam), the very first prophet (nabi). Following Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity, Islam is profoundly a religion of revelation and scripture. And although Islam’s interpretations of the lives and teachings of its earliest prophets and messengers sometimes significantly differ from those in Judaism and Christianity—Islam emphatically rejects the notion that Jesus is God, for example—the Quran calls Jews and Christians “people of the Book,” or people who revere the Torah as the first scriptural source of revelation. The Quran is the final revelation to humanity of the will of God. It surprises many Christians who might be unfamiliar with Islam to learn that, in this final revelation, the Quran, no man is mentioned more often than Jesus Christ and no woman more often than his mother Mary (Miriam). Just how, when, and where was this final revelation received?
In 610, a pious Arab in his forties retreated into a cave high on Mt. Hira to meditate and pray. Mystically inclined, he would often wander far, “out of sight of houses and into ravines,” when “every tree and stone he passed would say ‘Peace be upon him, Messenger of God.’”2 His name was Muhammad, and God was preparing him to be the Final Messenger and for his experiences on Mt. Hira, which would ultimately result in the reception of the Quran and forever change the world. The angel Gabriel (Djibril) visited him in the cave with a text on a scroll. It was a Monday during the holy month of Ramadan,3 and the angel implored him to recite what was before him. Though he was illiterate, Muhammad miraculously read the first words of the Quran, “The Recitation.” It was nighttime, and in Islam this first moment of recitation is thus known reverently as the Night of Power. Thus began Muhammad’s call to prophecy, placing him in the illustrious lineage outlined above, as prophet and messenger.4 Over the next two decades, he would return to the cave regularly, receiving more revelations there and anywhere else his life took him. Collectively, these recitations are the word of God as recorded in the Quran. Muhammad’s ministry and mission are summed up by Ruqaiyyah Waris Masood:
The Prophet Muhammad was a man specially selected by God to communicate His messages to humanity. For the 23 years of his mission he lived in almost continuous prayer, guided day by day by the presence of the angel Jibril (Gabriel). He was to show God’s will through the way he lived his life, with nobility, honesty, generosity, compassion, justice, humility, tenderness, courage and determination. He lived, loved, fought, suffered, knew joy, sorrow and frustration – but after his calling he was forever conscious of divine guidance and the responsibility laid upon him.5
It is important to note a distinction concerning revelation in Islam. Somewhat unlike the Christian notion that revelation is an “unveiling”—as reflected in the Greek etymology of the word apocalypse—in Islam, revelation is not an unveiling but a “sending down” from Allah, through the angels, prophets, and messengers, to all of humanity.6 Another key point in Islam is this: the revelation to the Prophet Muhammad was the final revelation, and there will be no others between his reception of the Quran and the End of Time.
The tribal society into which Muhammad was born, in what is today Saudi Arabia, was one of significant religious diversity. There were many Jews, Christians, and polytheists there, so as a young person Muhammad was close to people of all these faiths. As a child he lived for a time in what is today Syria, where a Christian monk foretold that Muhammad would one day be a prophet of great importance. (Later in life, the prophet would frequently visit a Christian monastery on Mt. Sinai, hence Christianity was a great influence on Muhammad throughout his life, as was Judaism). Among the polytheists of his own tribe, the Quraysh, and others, one of the most important divinities was called al-Lah, god of the sky and the highest deity in the Arab pantheon. These divinities were worshipped at shrines, the most important of which were cube-shaped sanctuaries (kaaba). In a desert with wide-open skies, one can well imagine the supplications made to al-Lah in ancient times—for rain, for shade, for light, for a bright moon on a night journey. The Kaaba in Muhammad’s hometown of Mecca was the largest in the area, dedicated primarily to al-Lah.7 What Muhammad would come to understand, during the reception of the Quran, was that this was the one and only God, al-Lah. There is no other. Allah is One, and there are no other gods but Him. The prophet sought to bring this message to the entire world. Muhammad and his followers would succeed in doing precisely that.
This insistent monotheistic realization was at first shared with those closest to the Prophet, especially his wife Khadijah and Abu Talib, an uncle who had raised him since Muhammad was orphaned as a young child. Abu Talib “was connected with the religious rituals of the Meccan sanctuary,”8 though it is unclear whether he ever actually became a Muslim. Khadijah was, however, one of the first in history to do so, and this, along with her closeness to the Prophet, amplified her importance to the emergence of Islam. Part of this was deeply spiritual and part of it material, for “it was her wealth that freed him [Muhammad] from the need to earn a living and enabled him to lead the life of contemplation that was the prelude to his prophethood,” Leila Ahmed explains. Furthermore, “her support and confidence were crucial in his venturing to preach Islam.”9
Abu Talib and Khadijah both recognized that Muhammad’s mystical experiences were divinely inspired and that the words that he recited should be faithfully written down exactly as they were received from Allah. Some of these experiences occurred in the cave, while others would overcome the Prophet at any time, at any place. There was always someone faithful nearby to serve as a scribe, to record Muhammad’s utterances when the Prophet fell into states of trance. In due course, Muhammad was inspired to preach publicly the Recitation, imploring leaders of his tribe, during his first sermon, to heed the following points, which to this day are epicentral to Islam:
“I am asking you to worship the One Almighty God!” he cried. “Give up your worship of idols, and your evil and corrupt practices. If you do this, you will find success; but if you refuse, you will suffer badly for it, and on the Day of Judgement it will be too late for you to save yourselves! O Quraysh, rescue yourselves from the Fire!”10
The earliest members of the umma (Muslim community) were deeply swayed by the power of his message and the validity of his prophecy, and soon Muhammad’s community of Muslim believers grew to such an extent that they garnered harsh political opposition in Mecca. Many left the city for other parts of Arabia, and by 620 few of Muhammad’s followers remained near him. That year is known as the Year of Sorrows in Islam, not so much for the persecution suffered by his followers as for the deaths of both Abu Talib and Khadijah, the people dearest to the Prophet. Two years later, Muhammad was forced into hiding and fled Mecca for Medina (a city formerly called Yathrib), an event called the hijrah (lit. “the emigration”). This also marks the first year of the Muslim calendar (622). Medina was home to a large Jewish community, whose leaders signed a covenant with Muhammad’s followers to ensure their acceptance in the city, which is one of the three holiest in Islam, along with Mecca and Jerusalem.
The Prophet would soon ascend to a position of political supremacy in Medina.11 He also gained considerable wealth and began plotting to reconquer Mecca and spread the faith that he so ardently believed was the ultimate truth for all of humanity. His influence had spread throughout much of Arabia by 624, making it the time to take up arms to bring Mecca into the Islamic fold. The Meccans, mostly people of Muhammad’s own tribe, the Quraysh, had twice attacked Medina while the city was under the Prophet’s rule. They were fearful that the growing Muslim power in the region would disrupt their regional trade, but their raids on Medina were far from successful. The military conflict between the Qurayshi Meccans and the Medinan Muslims escalated to its zenith in 624 at the Battle of Badr, which was a decisive victory for Muhammad. It is also the only battle mentioned in the Quran, and it soon enabled the Prophet and his followers to reconquer Mecca. In 629, Muhammad entered the Kaaba in the holiest of Muslim cities and destroyed the many idols of the gods of his polytheistic ancestors.
Mecca has been the axis mundi of Islam ever since, a place to which Muslims from all corners of the earth make pilgrimages and that they face while praying five times a day, from anywhere and everywhere in the world, however distant from the Kaaba. Within three years, per Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood:
the Prophet led some 140,000 pilgrims to Makkah, during which all the Islamic rules for Hajj followed by Muslims to this day were revealed to him. Pagans were now forbidden access to the Ka’bah, and Makkah became a city dedicated to God alone. After a very moving sermon of farewell, in which he told them of his premonition that he would never be among them again, the Prophet returned to Madinah, and en route was visited by the angel for the last time. The Qur’an was complete.12
The Prophet Muhammad died shortly thereafter in Medina.
The subsequent remarkable spread of Islam is far too complex for us to detail here, though several contributing factors should be noted: 1) commerce and the mobility of people and goods along trade routes, like the Silk Road; 2) Islamic military conquests; and 3) the utter power and accessibility of the principal teachings of Islam. On these factors and the “spread of Islam at a breathless pace since the time of Muhammad,” Stelios Michalopoulos and colleagues explain that “the mode of expansion has differed across time and space ranging from conquests, to trade, to proselytization and migrations.” Initially, “Islam expanded mainly through conquests within a certain radius around Mecca,” which “eventually resulted in Muslim-majority populations occupying large swaths of land,” including “the entire Arab World in the Middle East and North Africa, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and slightly further away in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.” And, in due course, Islam would spread into Asia along the Silk Road and into North Africa by way of trade routes along the Red Sea.13
The expansion of Islam was so prodigious that, over time, it would serve as the bedrock and inspiration for some of the greatest empires and dynasties (caliphates, led by caliphs, or rulers) that the world has ever known, along with some of human history’s most breathtaking art, architecture, science, places of worship, and cities. Among the most important of these were the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258), and the Ottoman Empire (1299–1922). It would not take long for the religion to reach the Atlantic Seaboard in North Africa, which it did during the Abbasid Caliphate (which also ruled most of Iberia for some 700 years). Then it captivated the masses in parts of Asia (especially Indonesia), home to roughly 70 percent of the world’s Muslim population today.
Such a remarkable, even stunning, spread across vast and diverse geographies, topologies, and indigenous religious cultures has resulted in the diversification of Islamic practices and episodes of inculturation, religious translation, schism, and syncretism. These processes had already begun in Islam during the prophet’s lifetime, as the religion had maintained, from the very beginning, elements of earlier Arab religious notions. Take, for instance, the jinn, supernatural beings who are either allied with God or with Shaytan (Satan). They are also invisible and take many forms, and they “are said to inhabit caves, deserted places, graveyards and darkness,” while they also “marry, produce children, eat, drink and die but unlike human beings have the power to take on different shapes and are capable of moving heavy objects almost instantly from one place to another.”14
The early umma relied upon the Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad to guide them as the religion moved forward and spread—a tradition referred to as the sunnah—but interpretive disputes among them soon emerged after the Prophet’s death.15 The most significant of these disputes concerned the succession of leadership and resulted in the only major schism in Islamic history. Thus, most of the world’s nearly two billion Muslims today are Sunni, and some 15 percent are Shi’a, which now comprise a majority of Muslims in Iran, Iraq, and Azerbaijan. Sunni and Shi’a differ on their interpretations of the sunnah, or the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, and in their understanding of the universal Muslim belief that Allah is a just God.16
That there has been only one such great schism in the history of Islam should not suggest that the religion is largely centralized or homogeneous. On the contrary, Islam is a remarkably diverse religion and has been interpreted and practiced in myriad ways, though the core beliefs and practices, which we discuss in the next section, are almost universal throughout the Islamic world. One of the most popular inflections, or forms, of Islam is known as Sufism, a mystically oriented, introspective, ecstatic tradition that consists of a wide range of tariqa (lit. path), or brotherhoods, whose members generally live by the teachings of a certain sheik (teacher). A Muslim who practices Sufism is known as a Sufi (devotee). Many of them identify the Prophet Muhammad as the first Sufi. In all its forms, this tradition is especially prominent throughout Muslim Africa, South Asia, and Turkey and is pervasive among Muslims in Europe.17
Other Islamic movements deserve attention, such as Ahmadiyya and the Nation of Islam,18 but spatial concerns compel us to move on to a consideration of two of Ninian Smart’s dimensions of religion, as applied to Islam: the doctrinal/philosophical and the practical/ritual.
Dimensions of Islam
Doctrinal/Philosophical
The quintessential doctrinal or theological tenet and belief in Islam is contained in a creed that is said by all Muslims each day. It is called the shahādah (“bearing witness to faith”): “I bear witness that there is no Lord but Allah; I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” This declaration of faith “is oft-repeated in al-Qur’ān and al-Hadīth as the basic theme of Islam,” Muhammad Abdul Haq explains. “It was formulated in its present form during the lifetime of the Prophet and the historical evidence of this fact is the daily call to prayer (adhān).”19 We discuss adhān in the following section, but for now let us add that the shadādah is usually also the first thing that a baby born into Islam hears and it is the last thing that a Muslim hears or utters while dying. Across the diversity that Islam has taken on as it has spread throughout the world and been embraced in “over 2300 language or ethnic subgroups,” this creed is the ultimate unifier, and even Muslims who do not speak Arabic, some 80 percent today, generally recite the shahādah in the language of the last Prophet.20
Two central ideas in Islam comprise the shahādah: 1) the absolute oneness of Allah, tawhīd; and 2) that Muhammad is the messenger (rasul) of Allah. Concerning the former, Haq states that the Muslim proclamation of the oneness of Allah makes the shahādah itself part of Allah’s very oneness: “The Shahādah as a formulation of Tawhīd means that I bear witness to the unity of Allāh because I see His signs and I feel His presence before and around me.” Allah is thus called in the Quran shahīd, the first to bear witness to His own absolute oneness. Furthermore—underscoring the centrality of prophethood/messengerhood in Islam from its very inception—because “the Prophet’s knowledge of Shahādah is the most perfect of all, he is also called ‘Shahīd in al-Qur’ān’ as the most perfect witness.”21
This is not to suggest that the Prophet Muhammad is understood in Islam to be divine. On the contrary, to attribute divinity to Muhammad or to any other human being is the gravest of transgressions, shirk. Shirk literally means “association,” for “the Qur’an specifies shirk or ‘associating’ partners to God as the ultimate doctrinal sin (Q 4:48),” as Josef Linnhoff points out. “The Qur’an stresses that shirk is the one sin that All-Merciful God does not forgive.”22
More generally, all things “forbidden” in Islam are called haram, as opposed to all that is “legal,” or halal. These notions are “very simple and clear,” Yusuf Al-Qaradawi explains:
Part of the great trust which Allah offered to the heavens, the earth and the mountains, which they declined but which man accepted. This trust requires man to carry out the duties placed on him by Allah as His viceregent on earth and to assume accountability concerning them. This responsibility is the basis on which the human will be judged by Allah and given his reward or punishment.23
Though these matters have been extensively debated in Islam’s long and rich history of legal scholarship (tafsir), the baseline of knowledge about haram is the Quran, which “forbids people to eat pork, carrion, blood, and food offered to other gods (Q 2:173). With respect to family law, it was forbidden to marry members of the immediate family or their spouses (Q 4:22–24).” Furthermore, “adultery, theft, highway robbery, apostasy, idolatry, consumption of alcohol, and murder” are haram, as are “usury, gambling, and making money related to illicit activities and substances.”24 As for tafsir, the origins of the term are unclear and it appears only once in the Quran, but Islam highly values human reason, while “Tafsir claims to ‘clarify’ the divine word, which serves to make the text ‘speak’ to current social, moral, legal, doctrinal, and political conditions.”25 It is closely related to the Islamic tradition of jurisprudence, or fiqh (“deep understanding”), a learned tradition that is highly esteemed in the religion.
Like Judaism, which it embraces as prophetic and as a fundamental part of its very self, Islam is a religion of laws. Some of the most cherished Muslim laws are ensconced in the Quran, while others derive from a later body of scripture, Hadith (lit.: “speech”; containing the authoritative teachings and doings of Muhammad and his companions). Hadith is the result of an almost mesmerizing tradition of legal and philosophical debate and interpretation.26 Law in Islam is called sharia, and “in principle it covers every possible human contingency, social and individual, from birth until death.”27 The word sharia literally means “the way,” and Islamic jurisprudence is centered upon the Quran and the sunnah, or the life and teachings of the Messenger Muhammad, as well as the recording thereof in the Hadith, “all of which are considered normative and binding sources of theological, legal and other Islamic beliefs.”28
Islamic beliefs are many, of course, yet the six most principal are these:
Belief in Allah
Belief in angels
Belief in divine books
Belief in the prophets
Belief in divine judgment
Belief in divine decree
Another important belief is jihad, or “struggle,” an idea that has been widely misunderstood and maligned in the West and rarely, but sometimes tragically, by Muslims themselves. The attacks of September 11, 2001, on the World Trade Center in New York were widely interpreted as part of a jihad against America, a holy war. Missing in such interpretations are three key facts, however: 1) that the Quran (4:29) prohibits murder and suicide, so the suicide pilots who orchestrated the attacks, though Muslims, were acting in a decidedly un-Islamic fashion that day; 2) that only a caliph can launch a jihad in the sense of holy war, and there has not been a caliph on Earth since the demise of the Ottoman Empire; and 3) that the more universal sense of the term jihad among Muslims connotes an inner struggle against sin, against anything and everything that might lead one astray from the straight path of submission to Allah, the one and merciful God. Across history, of course, many Muslims have been called to heroic acts on life’s battlefields when Islam is threatened, but all Muslims are called to the internal jihad, “the battlefield of spiritual struggle.”29
Let us now briefly consider the forms of practice in Islam that are based on these central beliefs. Then we shall proceed to a careful consideration of Islamic eschatology, how Muslim theology conceptualizes the end of the world as we know it, Judgment Day, and the afterlife. We will see that in this realm Islam has more in common with the other religions so far considered in this book, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity, than it holds in contrast. One key distinction is that Jesus Christ, Isa, though keeping a place of supreme importance in Islam and playing a key role on Judgment Day, is not God incarnate. Only Allah is divine in Islam, and we are all called to submit to Allah alone. To do so is to be a Muslim.
Practical/Ritual
The beliefs and ideas outlined above merely scratch the surface of Islamic philosophy and theology, but it is a foundation upon which to begin exploring the key ritual practices in Islam. As in Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity, prayer—whether communal or individual—is the ultimate form of devotional practice for Muslims. Islamic prayer takes multiple forms, one of the most cherished of which is dhikr (“remembrance,” as in remembrance of Allah). As Feryal Salem explains, dhikr is bequeathed in the Quran by Allah as a form of worship that has “primacy,” as in surah 21:50: “And this [Qurʾan] is a blessed reminder which We have sent down. Furthermore, the Quran itself, and the recitation thereof, is thus dhikr.”
The vital importance of prayer for Muslims is reflected in the second of the Five Pillars of Islam, which encapsulate the heart of Islamic devotional practice and are the chief guideposts for submitting to Allah:
Shahādah (also known as kalma): a decree or proclamation uttered by Muslims every day and considered to be the cornerstone of the faith. (Lit.: “bearing witness to faith”): “I bear witness that there is no Lord but Allah; I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” Per Mehreen Chida-Razvi, “By reciting this on a daily basis, Muslims are continuously reminded of the monotheistic nature of Islam and repeatedly confirm their association with and commitment to the Muslim community.”30
Salat: ritual prayer, five times a day for faithful Muslims: at dawn, at sunrise, at noon, at dusk, and at sunset. “When praying, it is required that one faces qibla, which is toward the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca. An act of ritual cleansing must take place before each prayer,” called wudu.31 In majoritarian Muslim countries, the adhān is ubiquitous, often called by muezzin from atop the minarets of mosques (or masjid) from Morocco to Mecca to Indonesia, etc.
Zakat: almsgiving. Islam promotes equality, social justice, and compassion, so all Muslims are called to be charitable, provide for the poor, and thereby embody the mercy of Allah. As recorded in the Hadith, when the Prophet Muhammad was asked what the “best Islam” is, he answered, “to feed the hungry and to spread peace among people you know and those you don’t know.”32
Sawm: Fasting from sunrise to sunset during the month of Ramadan, which also requires Muslims to refrain from drinking and sexual activity, avoid “evil thoughts,” and “act as humanely as possible.”33
Hajj – At least once in life, Muslims are called to make pilgrimage to the Kaaba in Mecca, normally over the course of several days during the last month of the Muslim calendar. Reflective of Allah’s mercy, though, people too poor or infirm to ever make the hajj are exempt from this ritual requirement. One of the highlights of the pilgrimage is to circumambulate the Kaaba seven times, a ritual called tawaf.
Just as Mecca is the destination of the hajj, it is also the geographic and spiritual orientation of Islam. The importance of this cannot be overstated and has no parallel in any other major religion in the world. Muslims pray five times daily facing Mecca because it is home to the Kaaba, a practice dating to the very origins of the religion. In the Messenger Muhammad’s time, “the real attraction of the kaaba to worshippers was a black stone of unfathomable age incased in its walls, whose cult the Prophet felt constrained to adopt into the ritual of Islam.”34 Islam teaches that this stone was sent to Earth by Allah to mark the spot where humans should erect the first altar for worship, making this the axis mundi, the center of the world. In Eliade’s words, it is “a primary religious experience that precedes all reflection on the world. For it is the break effected in space that allows the world to be constituted, because it reveals the fixed point, the central axis for all future orientation.”35
Every day a quarter of the earth’s population wakes up and prays facing this axis mundi, prostrate on a prayer rug (sajjāda), positioned toward the qibla (direction of the Kaaba). In doing so, one’s head touches the rug at times, hands down, and at times kneeling, all in devotional supplication to Allah. Such prayer can be performed almost anywhere. Congregational prayers at the mosque (or masjid) take place on Fridays, a communal ritual for Muslims throughout the world known as Al-Jumah, which also means Friday in Arabic. Friday is designated as sacred in the Quran, in surah 62. And each mosque ideally faces Mecca in such a way that those at prayer face the Kaaba, oriented by the central symbol of the masjid, the mihrab, a niche in the wall toward which one prays.
The Kaaba is also central to Islamic ethics. Dietary laws in Islam are oriented geographically: halal recommends that an animal slaughtered for food should be facing Mecca when killed, while Allah’s name is uttered and the most painless techniques are employed.36 But halal is comprehensive, not just concerned with food, as Yunez Ramadan Al-Teinaz explains:
To the non‐Muslim, it is a word that is often exclusively associated with the foods that Muslims are allowed to eat, but in reality it is a term that describes everything that it is permissible for a Muslim to do, both in deed and thought. Halal impacts every aspect of a Muslim’s life, from the clothes that can be worn to attitudes towards work, from relations between men and women to the treatment of children, from the way business is carried out to the treatment of a fellow Muslim, the principal [sic] of halal must be applied.37
One could thus say that Islam is a profoundly ethical religion, and rituals and dictates suffuse the life of the Muslim, from when and how one prays, to what one wears, to what one eats. On that note, pork and shellfish are strictly forbidden in Islam, as are intoxicants, all being considered haram. Furthermore, Allah alone establishes what constitutes halal and what constitutes haram, and the whole point is that through worship and mindful adherence to this distinction, “human beings may seek nearness to Him.”38 To be a Muslim is to be one who submits to Allah and whose every living day is about prayer and living in accordance with halal and in avoidance of haram.
Islamic Eschatology
There are no coffins in Islam. Nor is there any belief in original sin, for humans are not sinful by nature, but we are prone to forgetfulness. For this reason, Allah sent the Quran as a “reminder” (dhikr), “which the Quran calls itself.”39 One dies and is cleansed and covered in a white shroud for burial in a grave with enough space to sit up and speak with two angels. And then to await Judgment Day, in a sleeplike state. This is called barzakh, the period between death and resurrection. It is Arabic for “separation,” as in the distance between the world of the living and the dead and the world of God and pure spirit.40 Presently the Prophet Muhammad is in this state (as are all prophets and messengers). Hence, Muslims say “Peace be upon him” whenever uttering the final prophet’s name. All humans who have died and who will die before the End of Time will be in barzakh for a time determined by and known only to Allah, as none of us is divine and we are all in this together, this thing called life. And in death. And in the End. Muslims are buried quickly. Cremation is not an option because of the pending Day of Judgment. Usually only men attend the actual burial, and they toss dirt upon the deceased before the grave is closed. It is always open to angels though.
The angel of death who takes one from this life is named Azrael (or ‘Izrai’l, in Arabic). On the first evening of our interment, we are visited by two other angels, whose names are Munkar and Nakir.41 They ask us about our faith in God and our awareness of prophecy and scripture and are otherwise “responsible for maintaining the faithfulness or impiety of the dead in the first night of his or her death.”42 Our answers to the angels’ questions in the grave have serious consequences. Correct answers about one’s submission to Allah, reverence for the Quran, and the prophecies of the Prophet Muhammad result in a comfortable sleep until the End of Time in a spacious grave, while incorrect answers result in the shrinking of space in one’s grave and its infestation with dreadful creatures like snakes and spiders.
Islamic eschatology is, of course, rooted in the Quran, though also quite influenced by earlier Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian teachings. Fundamentally, it is “clearly apocalyptic in form and content,” as Todd Lawson explains, “focusing on ultimate judgment of the wicked and the good, another world, and an end to time, and so on.”43 It thus speaks warningly of “the Hour” (al-sā‘a), “or the day on which all good will be distinguished from all evil.”44 This will be catastrophically dramatic, but we have all been forewarned through prophecy across the ages to be prepared, and the Quran details a number of signs that portend the Hour and the resurrection of the dead (al-qiyama):
the splitting of the moon (Q 54:1), a massive earthquake accompanied by mass terror (Q 22:1–2), disbelievers surrounded by clouds of fire (Q 39:16), mountains crushed and scattered “like carded wool” (Q 20:105)… the earth illuminated by divine light (Q 39:69), the presence of all previous prophets (Q 39:69), the broadcasting of the deeds of all humankind (Q 39:69), universal judgment and dispensing of justice (Q 39:69), believers’ entrance into paradise, and polytheists abandonment by their gods (Q 30:12–16).45
The Hour is also referred to in the Quran as “the Appointed time,” a term that appears in the text nearly fifty times and foretells that “heavens and earth that humans experienced will be totally altered” (14:48). This is inevitable, its time known only to Allah, and it will occur suddenly.
The Hour, with natural catastrophes and social upheaval having signaled its arrival, is soon followed by equally cataclysmic cosmic struggles between good and evil at the End of Time, between the Antichrist (al-Masih ad-Dajjal) and the Mahdi, who in most Islamic theological schools is believed to be Isa. Andrew Waskey describes this period of tribulation:
The arrival of the Anti-Christ will bring a time of spiritual confusion, and many will be led astray. The Anti-Christ will promise to bring new light to the world but instead represents the incarnation of true unbelief. The reign of the Anti-Christ will be a time of self-centeredness in which most people will focus on themselves rather than on spiritual things. The Anti-Christ will also perform “miracles,” which in fact are actually magical illusions: sin becomes virtue and great social upheaval occurs. At this time, Jesus will suddenly appear, and the doors to both paradise and hell will be opened.46
Allah’s light is also sent upon the world to reveal the truth about all reality. For those who have been unrighteous or evil in life, this light will be painful to the eyes, though it will be of comfort to the righteous and those who submitted during their lives to Allah.
As is predestined by Allah, Isa ultimately will defeat the Antichrist, and the angel Israfil will then descend to Earth to sound the final trumpet from the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, signaling to all that resurrection and judgment are at hand. The dead leave their graves, emerging from that state of existence between death and resurrection (barzakh), and find themselves naked and facing Allah, their Creator. Resurrection day, al-qiyama, is also Judgment Day (Yawm al-Hisab). On this day, the living and the resurrected are brought before Allah to account for their actions in life. These are recorded on a scroll. Though Isa and Muhammad are present to assist in the judging of the living and the dead, the Quran indicates that there will be no intercession (shafā‘a) by Jesus or any other prophets or angels on Judgment Day. However, “Islam quickly expanded this to a more general belief in the possibility of intercession, particularly through the Prophet Muḥammad.”47
There is no need for anyone to read their scroll, for, as the Quran states (100:11), “Allah, the one God, sees into the inner being of each person and at the moment of truth will reveal each person, inside and out.” Furthermore, “the day of judgment is an ontological reversal,” Michael Sells explains. “What seems secure and lasting – the skies, the seas, the stars, the reality of death as contained in graves – is torn away. What seemed inconsequential . . . is revealed as enduring and real.”48 At the End of Time, even the moon splits in two, but our deeds, thoughts, and words remain, and it is upon these that we will be judged for all eternity. According to the Quran (3:30), one who receives this scroll of deeds in one’s right hand is bound for paradise, while one who receives it in the left hand is bound for the flames of hell.
The Quran (22:5–7) is, furthermore, adamant about the resurrection of the dead and the Hour:
O you people: If you are in doubt concerning the resurrection, know that We created you from dust, then from a sperm‐drop, then from a blood‐clot, then from an embryo partly formed and partly unformed, in order to make clear to you. We establish in the wombs whatever We wish for an appointed time, then We bring you out as an infant, then [sustain you] until you reach maturity. And among you are those who die and those who return to the infirmity of old age so that, after having been knowledgeable, they now have little understanding. You saw the earth lifeless, and then We poured down upon it water and it quivers and grows and sprouts forth all kinds of beautiful pairs. That is because God is the ultimately real [al‐ḥaqq]. He it is Who gives life to what is dead; He it is Who has power over all things. Truly the Hour is coming—there is no doubt of it—when God will resurrect those who are in the graves.
For Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazdak Haddad, this means that “all of human history, then, moves from the creation to the eschaton. Preceding the final judgment will come signs (both cosmic and moral) signaling the arrival of the Hour as well as the specific events of the resurrection and assessment.”49
Heaven (jannah) is depicted in the Quran as a lush green garden teeming with fruit, while hell (jahannam) is depicted as a blazing abyss. The former is for the righteous, of course, while the latter is for the unrighteous, and both have many levels and are, for the most part, eternal, though some Muslim scholars believe that, by Allah’s mercy, certain souls in jahannam might eventually be saved. In Islamic theology, as in the eschatological traditions of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity, however, heaven and hell are sometimes interpreted as “states, not localities,” as Muhammad Iqbal explains. “The descriptions in the Qur’ān are visual representations of an inner fact, i.e., character. Hell, in the words of the Qur’ān, is ‘God’s kindled fire which mounts above the hearts—the painful realization of one’s failure as a man. Heaven is the joy of triumph over the forces of disintegration.”50
And what is heaven like? It contains hundreds of levels and seven skies, and is referred to as a garden in the Quran, a place full of shade and fruit trees and water in many forms. As Muhammad Abdul Haleem explains: “The essential component of paradise is flowing water. This is logical since God says, ‘We made every living thing from water’ (Q 21:23).” “No garden can exist without water.” The Quran describes springs and fountains as “flowing” and “gushing,” and even beautifully indicates that “the righteous cause the springs to gush. Such verbs indicate life, energy, and plenty.”51 Adds Nerina Rustomji, “The Garden is not just lush flora and abundant water, but also a multitiered world filled with tents, pavilions, and market places.”52
The Quran (47:15) also speaks of rivers: “rivers of water, forever pure, rivers of milk forever fresh, rivers of wine, a delight for those who drink, and rivers of honey clarified and pure.” Hell, meanwhile, is quite the opposite, a place of searing heat, as Sebastian Günther and Todd Lawson remind us:
But there is also hell, “a wretched destination” (e.g., Q 8:16), and place of dire recompense – “Is there not ample punishment for the arrogant in Hell?” (e.g., Q 39:60), for “the disbelievers” (Q 39:32), and “the wicked” (Q 82:14), who will be roasting therein and branded with hellfire “on their foreheads, sides and backs they will be told, ‘This is what you hoarded up for yourselves! Now feel the pain of what you hoarded!’ ” (Q 9:35).53
This is all to be deeply feared by the living, and fear (khawf) is an important emotion and “pivotal concept in Islam,” one that has “a wide range of meanings from slight fear to horror, from caution to dread, or to a form of religiosity based on Allah.”54
The attentive reader who recalls the first chapter surely sees many Zoroastrian influences on Islamic eschatology. One of the most striking is the notion that upon being judged one must cross a bridge to arrive at one’s ultimate destination, heaven or hell. In Zoroastrianism this bridge is called chinvat; in Islam, it is called sirât al-jahim, “a bridge that reaches from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem across the great gulf of Jahannum to paradise.”55 In each instance, the bridge is as thin as a hair and as sharp as a razor. The unrighteous fall off it into the flames of hell, while the righteous successfully traverse to arrive in paradise. A key difference, however, is that in Islam the righteous are led across the bridge al-Sirât by the Prophet Muhammad, and in Zoroastrianism there is no fire in hell, only intense heat. Interestingly, the term sirât al-jahim does not appear in the Quran, which speaks more generally of “the way” or “the path” (sirât), but reflections on sirât al-jahim are legion in the Hadith.
As should be evident by now, the Quran is a deeply apocalyptic text, but more extensive Islamic eschatological teachings are found in the Hadith, like commentaries about the bridge. Also, the Hadith includes this important reflection from the Prophet Muhammad: “Remember often the destroyer of pleasure: death.” Here is an insightful reflection on Hadith eschatology from Lawson:
The hadith literature also portrays an urgent expectation of an end to history that must be faced by the community. A dramatic example of this is the ‘booth like the booth of Moses’ hadith, which features the Prophet instructing two of the faithful not to bother making overly sturdy mosques of brick and wood but rather counseling them to use more convenient thatch structures because the apocalypse (al-amr) was due to happen at any moment.56
In addition, the Hadith provides us with one of the most remarkable glimpses of heaven in the history of religions. Called the “night journey” (miʿrāj isrāʾ) of the Prophet Muhammad, this experience brought him from Mecca to Jerusalem and into all the heavens, accompanied in the latter by the Angel Djibril, where he spoke with previous messengers like Jesus and Moses and dined with Allah at the celestial summit. Traditionally, the night journey is understood in Islam to have taken place before the hijrah, and, though described in some detail in the Hadith, it is mentioned only briefly in the Quran (17:1):
Glory to Allah, Who took His Servant for a Journey at night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque, whose precincts We did bless, – in order that We might show him some of Our Signs: for He is the One Who bears and sees (all things).
In terms of eschatology—over and above the affirmation, in this remarkable mystical experience, that there are seven levels of heaven and that messengers speak with Allah—an important point is the Prophet’s vision “of evil being enclosed in Hell, and his mission to announce to Muslims that they were to pray five times a day.”57 That was mercifully reduced from the fifty that Allah had originally ordained, a reflection of divine mercy. The importance of the Prophet’s journey cannot be overstated, not only for its eschatology but for Islam as a whole, as put poetically and knowledgably by Annemarie Schimmel: “Beginning with Adam, the Prophet is now introduced by all the messengers of God into the mysteries of God’s beauty and majesty, for every prophet experiences the Divine Essence in a different way; Muhammad alone is granted knowledge of it in its fullness.”58
The Prophet Muhammad also had a powerful vision of hell, which is as elemental as his night journey to “one of the central motifs of the Islamic narrative,” the afterworld.59 The Hadith contains a discussion of his having fallen into prayer upon witnessing a solar eclipse, hence utterances coming to be known in Islam as the “eclipse prayer.” Though first reaching for the grapes of heaven, the prophet was drawn to a vivid glimpse of the fire of hell and those who would dwell there eternally, a vision in which the sinners mentioned are mostly women, including one Jew thus punished “because of her cruelty in starving a cat,” as Nerina Rustomji explains, along with rejecters of the faith and “thieves and the miserly.”60 As such, Muhammad’s “vision during the eclipse prayer not only provided an opportunity to send messages of reform by focusing upon sinners, but it also verified the existence of the afterworld that would be experienced at the end of time.”61
Islamic eschatology is complex and far more detailed than an introductory summary like this could possibly reflect. Because the Quran is a deeply apocalyptic text, furthermore, thousands of commentaries have been written on this matter. It is the perplexing subject of a wide range of interpretations and debate in Islam. So, in order to get some sense of this, we will discuss eschatological commentaries by two giants in Islamic intellectual history: Al-Ghazali (1058–1111) and Abu Abdullah Al-Qurtubi (1214–1273).62
Interpreters of Islamic Eschatology
Al-Ghazali (1058–1111)
Born in 1058 in Ṭūs (Mashhad), a Holy City that was then part of the Abbasid Empire in the northeast of what is today Iran, Al-Ghazali was a sage and a prolific writer who left deeply philosophical reflections on a range of topics, from God and Sufism to sex and knowledge.63 He had enjoyed “an education as good as any to be had in the Islamic world” at the time.64 This philosopher, jurist, mystic, and theologian so impressed authorities with his scholarship that he landed a professorship in Baghdad, where he attracted hundreds of students. Al-Ghazali is especially famous for his work on the relationship between faith and reason, for his wedding of philosophy and theology, and for his masterwork, The Revival of the Religious Sciences, which “made Sufism (Islamic mysticism) an acceptable part of orthodox Islam.”65
He was not always a Sufi, however, as early in his career Al-Ghazali’s thought was oriented by rationalism and a critical engagement of Greek philosophy.66 But, following “a spiritual crisis,” he turned to Sufism and embarked on an ascetic path to become closer to Allah. This entailed taking up a life of poverty and, as “(a) truly searching religious spirit,”67 quite a bit of wandering, through Damascus and Jerusalem, to Mecca. He “first rose to prominence as a teacher of kalam, an Aristotelian approach to metaphysical and theological knowledge,”68 but eventually Al-Ghazali became consumed by Sufism and would return to Ṭūs, attracting disciples and founding an austere, contemplative community there, eventually also returning to more formal methods of lecturing, dying shortly thereafter, in 1111.
It was a remarkable life of a mystic genius whose influence on Islam is surpassed by virtually no other thinker since the Prophet Muhammad. Few other sages, in any religious tradition, have so ably wed reason with faith, placing him on a plane in the history of “Western” religions with the likes of Augustine, Aquinas, and Maimonides. Some of his writings had considerable influence in contemporary European intellectual circles, and rightly so. In fact, as Montgomery Watt observes, Al-Ghazali’s book The Aims of the Philosophers, published in 1094, “was one of the first to be translated from Arabic to Latin.”69 Given the range of his teaching and writing, as well as his intellectual and spiritual meanderings, “Al-Ghazali has puzzled many a modern writer,” Fazlur Rahman explains. “Some have wondered whether he was essentially a mystic or a theologian, although he is described as both.”70 Rahman is not puzzled, however, claiming that ultimately Al-Ghazali “was in pursuit of . . . religious morality,” or “of moral purification and the war against the vice that degraded man.”71
Such vice and degradation have serious eschatological and eternal ramifications in Islam. Thus, it is not surprising that Al-Ghazali would pen one of the most extensive commentaries on these matters in the history of Islam. The last book of his forty-volume masterpiece, The Revival of the Religious Sciences, is dedicated entirely to death, dying, the resurrection, final judgment, and the hereafter. In this long treatise, titled The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife, Al-Ghazali writes chronologically across fourteen sections, listed here to more fully appreciate the complexity of Islamic eschatology:
The Trumpet-Blast, Which Signals the Day of Arising [i.e., Judgment Day]
The Land and People of the Concourse
The Perspiration of the Concourse
The Length of the Day of Arising
The Day of Arising, and Its Calamities and Names
The Inquisition of Sins
The Scales
The Adversaries, and the Restoration of Wrongs
The Traverse
The Intercession
The Pool
The Inferno, Its Terrors, Torments, Snakes and Scorpions
Heaven and the Varieties of Its Bliss
The Number of Heavens, and their Gates, Chambers, Walls, Rivers and Trees
The Raiment of Heaven’s People, Their Furnishings and Divans
Their Food
The Large-Eyed Houris and the Pages
The Vision of God’s Countenance (Exalted is He!)
A Chapter on the Wide Compass of God’s Mercy (Exalted is He!)
And Thus Shall Be Concluded the Book, If God (Exalted Is He!) So Wills72
Al-Ghazali’s writing on these matters is crisp, detailed, and gripping. Or, per Tim Winter, one of Al-Ghazali’s translators into English, the text “was written in a particularly powerful hortatory spirit, in a lucid and compelling Arabic that throughout appeals to the emotions of the God-conscious believer who ‘hopes for God’s mercy and fears his own sin.’”73 Fear is evoked in the opening paragraph, in fact, where Al-Ghazali writes of “the agonies of death and how perilous is his condition as he fearfully awaits his fate, as he endures the grave’s darkness and worms, and suffers the Questioning of Munkar and Nakīr, should he have incurred God’s wrath.”74 He continues, summing everything up quite powerfully:
More fearsome than all of this, however, are the perils which shall confront him subsequently: the Trumpet-Blast, the Resurrection on the Day of Arising, the Presentation before the Almighty, the Inquisition regarding matters both important and minor, the Erection of the Scales in order that men’s destinies might be known, and then the passage over the Traverse despite the fineness and sharpness of its edge. These things shall be followed by the awaiting of the Summons to final judgement, and either bliss or misery.75
In all of this, Al-Ghazali draws upon his erudite knowledge of the Quran, which he had long committed to memory, and of the voluminous Hadith literature, which he frequently cites. The topics touched upon in this text are too numerous for us to summarize here, but let us consider just a few details before moving on to the eschatological work of Al-Qurtubi. What, for instance, is “the Concourse” and why is an entire section of this text devoted to “perspiration”? Concourse does not refer to a place, per se, but the interaction between the souls of the living and those of the dead as each awaits the Day of Arising. As Jane Smith explains, it is akin to sleep, though sleep is much more than a metaphor for death in Islam. It is “a time when the living and the dead share a common circumstance, a time when the departed may communicate to the living information otherwise inaccessible to them as well as make their own wishes known.”76 It is quite an expansive notion in Islam, for the living receive such communications from the dead while the former are sleeping. For Al-Ghazali, it is also the moment when the dead and the living cluster to await resurrection and judgment.
It is in the latter vein that Al-Ghazali writes of the Concourse as follows:
After the Resurrection and the Arising, they shall be driven barefoot, naked and uncircumcised to the Land of the Concourse, which is white and perfectly smooth. . . . Bring to mind, then, an image of yourself, as you stand naked, uncovered, outcast and ashamed, bewildered and dazed, awaiting the Judgment which will decide your rapture or misery. Make much of this state, for it shall be momentous.77
One perspires on the concourse out of terror, and with reason, for everything is at stake. As the living and the resurrected dead gather to await judgment under a blazing sun, they perspire, creating a veritable sea of sweat and tears that is a measure of one’s fate:
The sun’s burning and the heat of their breath conjoin with the conflagration produced in their hearts by the flames of shame and fear, and perspiration pours forth from the root of every hair until it flows upon the plain of the Arising and rises over their bodies in proportion to their favor with God. It reaches to the knees of some, to the loins of others, and others still, while some well-nigh vanish into it.78
One could go on at length considering Al-Ghazali’s captivating, poetic, and graphic eschatological writings here, but instead readers are invited to keep this concluding statement in mind, along with a deeply meaningful parting thought: In the End, we shall have “glad news of the wide compass of God’s Mercy,” writes the sage. “It is our hope that He will not deal with us as we deserve but will rather grant us that which is appropriate to Him, in His generosity, abundant indulgence, and mercy.”79 Finally, in an article in which she considers Al-Ghazali’s teachings carefully, Mona Siddiqui offers the following observation about death, dying, resurrection, and eternity in Islam:
God is real, our sins are real, and divine forgiveness is real. The most dramatic aspect of the Islamic perspective on death, resurrection, and the afterlife is not the potent images of heaven or hell but the ultimate vision of God. However we make this journey to God when we die, and in whatever form, in this life we must always be conscious of and guided by the Qur’anic verse: ‘‘We belong to God and to Him we shall return’’ (2:156).80
Al-Qurtubi (1214–1273)
Abdullah Al-Qurtubi was born in Spain in 1214.81 Despite his “modest social origins,” he would receive an excellent education and go on to become the most important interpreter of Hadith (muhadith) in Iberia,82 as well as the most prominent commentator on the Quran and on Islamic eschatology since Al-Ghazali. He would further deepen his studies in Egypt, never to return to his native Andalusia. To this day, the two thinkers remain unrivaled as experts on eschatology and the apocalypse in Islamic thought. Like Al-Ghazali, furthermore, Al-Qurtubi studied under the finest scholars of his era. It was a golden age for Islamic learning in Iberia, and Al-Qurtubi took full advantage, becoming one of the peninsula’s leading Muslim scholars of all time. Also like Al-Ghazali, Al-Qurtubi left a voluminous collection of writings, none more widely studied than his Tasfir Al-Qurtubi, a twenty-volume treatise on Islamic jurisprudence and Quranic commentary.
By the time Al-Qurtubi was deeply investing himself in the study of the Quran and Hadith, Al-Ghazali had become famous throughout the Islamic world, and his disciples had brought his work from Persia to the far reaches of the umma, including Iberia. In fact, “one of al-Ghazali’s prominent students was Abu Bakr Ibn al-`Arabi (1076–1148) . . . who introduced al-Ghazali’s teachings to Muslim Spain . . . [and] was also one of the leading jurists of the Maliki school, as was al-Qurtubi.”83 This is not to suggest that Al-Qurtubi was slavishly devoted to Al-Ghazali’s teachings; on the contrary, at one point he accuses Al-Ghazali of heresy, while his own writings are critically analytical and original in their own right. Still, reading Al-Qurtubi’s eschatological treatise, like Al-Ghazali’s, is an altogether gripping experience, at times terrifying, poetic, and inspirationally hopeful.
Though more renowned for his work in Islamic jurisprudence, Quranic studies, and interpretation of Hadith literature, Al-Qurtubi also penned one of the most extensive commentaries on death, the grave, resurrection, and judgment in Islam, published during his lifetime, in the thirteenth century. Titled al-Tadhkirah fī Aḥwāl al-Mawtà wa-Umūr al-Ākhirah (Reminder of the Conditions of the Dead and the Matters of the Hereafter), it is paralleled in the history of Islamic eschatological thought only by the earlier work of Al-Ghazali, which is, in fact, cited twice in the text. In his preface, Al-Qurtubi explains his inspiration:
Praise be to Allah, the most High Who created the universe and ordained His creatures to perish, die, be resurrected to their final judgment and finally judged. . . . So, I intended to write a concise book that would benefit people after my death and remind me in this worldly life of the pains of death, the affairs of the dying people and the details of resurrection, heaven, hell, seditions, etc.84
For a “concise book,” it has many chapters, albeit quite short ones—167, to be precise. The first is titled “The Interdiction of Wishing for Death Owing to a Physical or Financial Calamity,” and the last is called “The Places Al-Dajjal Will Be Denied to Enter.” Al-Dajjal, as mentioned before, is the Antichrist. We will briefly consider four of these chapters below. But first an interesting reflection on Al-Qurtubi’s martyrology from Asma Asfuruddin:
al-Qurtubi ponders the meaning of “being alive” after having been killed. . . . Interestingly, among those whose “bodies are not consumed by the earth” (i.e., do not decay), al-Qurtubi includes the martyrs with prophets, scholars, callers to prayer, market protectors . . . and Quran reciters. . . . Additionally, he lists the various funerary practices (bathing the body, manner of praying over the deceased, and so on) that developed on account of the special status of the martyr. . . . Their souls will exult in the good things of paradise, a state which will be enhanced when their souls are eventually reunited with their bodies.85
The four chapters from Al-Qurtubi’s classic eschatological treatise to consider are, in chronological order: “The Attributes of Paradise and Hell Dwellers” (Chapter 74), “Seeing Allah, Glory to Him, is More Loveable and Delightful to the Dwellers of Paradise than Other Delights” (Chapter 136), “Events that Will Happen on Judgment Day” (Chapter 163), and “The Ten Signs of Doomsday” (Chapter 166). As with almost every chapter in his massive tome (the abridged English translation is 400 pages long and I cannot read Arabic), in “The Attributes of Paradise” Al-Qurtubi, like Al-Ghazali before him, frequently cites passages from the Hadith literature. This literature is especially important in Islam for its transmission of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, and here Al-Qurtubi opens his discussion with these observations about heaven and hell and their dwellers from the Final Messenger:
The dwellers of paradise are of three types: one who wields authority and adheres to justice, one who gives alms and who has been endowed with power to do good deeds; one who is kind-hearted towards his relatives and to Muslims; and one who is weak and does not stretch out his hand in spite of having a large family to support.86
As for “the dwellers of Hell,” they:
are of five types: the weak who lack power [to avoid evil], who follow others’ steps in regard to bad habits and do not have any care for their family or for their wealth; those dishonest people whose greed cannot be concealed even in minor things; and the man who betrays you morning and evening, with regard to your family and your property; the miser and the liar; and those who are in the habit of abusing people and using obscene and foul language.87
These teachings clearly convey that Islam is fundamentally a religion about devotion to God that inspires compassion and justice. How we respond to these callings will determine where we will ultimately dwell, whether in heaven or hell, eternally or quasi-eternally. (There have long been debates in Islam about the eternity and nature of hell).
In Chapter 136, “Seeing Allah, Glory to Him, is More Loveable and Delightful to the Dwellers of Paradise than Other Delights,” Al-Qurtubi treats the most glorious of all spiritual aspirations in Islam: being with God personally, seeing God, speaking with God, and being welcomed by God into paradise for all eternity. Here, once again, Al-Qurtubi turns to the Hadith literature, sharing this remark attributed to the Prophet Muhammad: “Allah would lift the veil, and nothing among the pleasures given to them, would be dearer to them than the sight of their Lord, the mighty and the glorious.” As discussed in Chapter Two, this is a stark contrast to Jewish teachings: Jews could not write the Lord’s name, and they could never see him, either here or in the afterlife. Later in this chapter, again citing the Final Messenger, Al-Qurtubi adds that the righteous in paradise will have their faces “lit up” by Allah, and “that will be greater than anything granted to them.”88
The chronology of events in Islamic eschatology is not sequenced consistently in Al-Qurtubi’s tome. He provides extensive details on heaven and hell in earlier chapters but reserves his discussion of Judgment Day and “doomsday” for later in the text. In reality, of course, one is accepted into heaven or cast into hell after Judgment Day, but Al-Qurtubi’s placing his discussion of doomsday near the end of the book does have a dramatic effect on the reader. It seems the author’s intention was, as Winter said about Al-Ghazali’s earlier eschatological writings, for this tome on eschatology to be “hortatory,” or as using language and tone that makes the text read much like an exhortation.89
“Events that Will Happen on Judgment Day” (Chapter 163) and “The Ten Signs of Doomsday” (Chapter 166), like much of Al-Qurtubi’s book, are composed of sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad in the Hadith literature. The former opens with Muhammad’s prophecy that before the “Last Day” there will be war between two factions, with “many casualties on both sides,” followed by “the appearance of about thirty liars” who claim to be among the prophets of Allah. Next: “earthquakes will increase in number; time will pass quickly; afflictions will appear; and killings will increase.” The sun will also rise in the west.90 Though we have seen discussions of earthquakes and afflictions as signs of the End of Days in earlier Jewish and Christian eschatological teachings, to my knowledge, the notion of the sun rising in the west is unique to Islam (as is the splitting of the moon). Though this is not mentioned in the Quran explicitly, several influential Quranic exegetes include reflections of the “Muslim Sunrise.” Most importantly, once the sun rises in the west, the “Door of Repentance” (Tawba) is closed forever.91 There is no turning back.
Al-Qurtubi’s penultimate chapter, “The Ten Signs of Doomsday,” is one of the shortest in In Remembrance of the Affairs of the Dead and Doomsday. It is essentially a single response attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. The Final Messenger heard his followers conversing and asked, “What are you discussing?” Their reply: “Doomsday”:
Thereupon he said: “The Last Hour would not come until ten signs appear: land-sliding in the east, and land-sliding in the west, and land-sliding in the peninsula of Arabia, the smoke, Al-Dajjal, the beast of the earth, Gog and Magog, the rising of the sun from the west, and the fire which will emit from the lower part of Aden and drive people to the Land of the Gathering.”92
Al-Dajjal is the Antichrist, while the Prophet’s mention of Gog and Magog, too, reflects an eschatological thread in Islam from Judaism and Christianity, as these evil beings are mentioned in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. In the former, they are “the prophesied invader of Israel,” while in the latter they are “evil forces opposed to the people of God.”93 In Islam, they are mentioned in the Quran and later become the subject of many Quranic commentaries and are often discussed in the Hadith literature. Terrifying and horned, they are “an essential part of Islamic eschatology” who rule over “wild armies” that will be unleashed at the apocalypse.94
Conclusion
The eschatological writings of Al-Ghazali and Al-Qurtubi are the most prominent in Islamic history, but they are far from alone. Apocalyptic ideas are legion in the Hadith literature, and both sages were deeply invested in the study thereof. Countless other interpreters of the Quran and Hadith have contributed to a massive and dispersed body of eschatological literature in Islam. Surely many other apocalyptic texts have been lost to history.
All of this is to say just two things:
This chapter has only scratched the surface of this intellectually and spiritually rich and sprawling history and literary repository of Islamic eschatological thought.
Islam is centrally concerned with the apocalypse, the resurrection, judgment, and especially submission to Allah, through which one gains peace of mind and soul in the here and now and the assurance of seeing Allah in paradise after the catastrophic tumult of Doomsday, the ravages of Gog and Magog and of Satan’s armies, the war between the Antichrist and the Messiah, the earthquakes and afflictions, the splitting of the moon, and the rising of the sun in the west.
To conclude with a key passage from the Quran (3:185):
Every soul shall have a taste of death: And only on the Day of Judgment shall you be paid your full recompense. Only he who is saved far from the Fire and admitted to the Garden will have attained the object (of Life): For the life of this world is but goods and chattels of deception.
Notes
It is a tradition in Islam that when uttering or writing the Prophet Muhammad’s name in English, in keeping with an ancient tradition in Arabic, one subsequently says “Peace Be Upon Him,” which is abbreviated in written form as “pbuh.” ↵
Muhammad Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, The History of al-Tabari, Volume VI: Muhammad at Mecca, trans. Montgomery Watt and M. V. McDonald, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988 (1915), 63–64. ↵
Ibid., 62. ↵
From an Islamic perspective, there have literally been thousands of prophets throughout the ages, and they are called nabi. Messengers (rasul) are much, much rarer and are usually associated with revelations that are recorded in scripture. All messengers are also prophets, and in Islam the most important are Noah (Nuh), Abraham (Ibrahim), Moses (Musa), Jesus (Isa), and Muhammad. ↵
Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood, Need to Know? Islam: Understand the Religion behind the Headlines, New York: HarperCollins, 2008. ↵
Asma Afsaruddin, “The Concept of Revelation in Islam,” in Georges Tamer (ed.), The Concept of Revelation in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2020, 144. Todd Lawson, The Quran: Epic and Apocalypse, London: Oneworld Academic, 2017, xix. ↵
John Baldock, The Essence of Sufism, London: Eagle, 2004, 16. ↵
Ibid., 17–18. ↵
Leila Ahmed, “Women and the Advent of Islam,” Signs 11, 4, 1984, 665. ↵
In Maqsood, n.p. ↵
Paul Casanova distinguishes between the Prophet’s “Meccan vision” that the world would soon end and his “Medinan vision,” in which his focus shifted from eschatology to community. This suggests that persecuted communities are more prone to eschatological reflections than communities who enjoy wealth and power, and, concerning nascent Islam, that Muhammad felt compelled to expand his community after achieving authority over Mecca. Paul Casanova, Mohammed et la fin du monde: Étude critique sur l’islam primitive, Paris: Librarie Paul Geuthner, 1911. ↵
Maqsood, n.p. ↵
Stelios Michalopoulos, Alireza Naghavi, and Giovanni Prarolo, “Trade and Geography in the Origins and Spread of Islam,” Working Paper 18438, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2017 (2012), 3, http://www.nber.org/papers/w18438. ↵
Najat Khalifa and Tim Hardie, “Possession and Jinn,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 98, 8, 2005, 351–353. ↵
Michael Sells, Approaching the Quran: The Early Revelations, Ashland: White Cloud Press, 2007, ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/templeuniv-ebooks/detail.action?docID=949115, last accessed January 8, 2021, 14. ↵
Najam Haider, Shī’ī Islam: An Introduction, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014, 18. There are, of course, many other differences between these two major sects of Islam, and even within them, but they are beyond the scope of this chapter. For a much fuller understanding of this question, Haider’s book is an excellent place to turn. ↵
Anonymous, “Sufi Orders,” Pew Research Center, Religion and Public Life, 2010, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2010/09/15/muslim-networks-and-movements-in-western-europe-sufi-orders/#:~:text=Sufism%20mixes%20mainstream%20 religious%20observances,the%20whirling%20dervishes%20in%20Turkey. last accessed August 14, 2023. ↵
For insight into these forms of Islam, see Yohanan Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous: Aspects of Ahmadi Religious Thought and Its Medieval Background, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989; and C. Eric Lincoln, The Black Muslims in America, Boston: Beacon Press, 1961. ↵
Muhammad Abdul Haq, “The Meaning and Significance of the Shahādah,” Islamic Studies23, 3, 1984, 171. ↵
Anonymous, “Muslim World Facts,” Encountering the World of Islam, 2018, https://www.encounteringislam.org/muslim-world-facts, last accessed December 25, 2020. ↵
Haq, “The Meaning and Significance of the Shahādah,” 173. ↵
Josef Linnhoff, “‘Associating’ with God in Islamic Thought: A Comparative Study of Muslim Interpretations of Shirk,” Ph.D. diss., New College, University of Edinburgh, 2020, 1–2. ↵
Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam, trans. Kamal El-Helbawy, M. Morinuddin Siddiqi, and Syed Shukry, Plainfield: American Trust Publishing, 1999 (1994), 5–6. ↵
Juan E. Campo, “Haram,” in Juan E. Campo, Encyclopedia of Islam (2nd ed.), New York: Checkmark Books, 2016, 291. ↵
Kathryn Kueny, “Tafsir,” in R. C. Martin (ed.), Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World. New York: Checkmark Books, 2016, 672-673. ↵
Christopher Melchert, “Introduction,” in Belul-Abu Alabbas, Christopher Melchert, and Michael Dann (eds.), Modern Hadith Studies: Continued Debates and New Approaches, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020, 1–8. Most of the multivolume Hadith was written in the seventh and eighth centuries C.E., though some of the texts were likely written much later, a subject of wide debate in Islam. Some Muslims today reject it outright as inauthentic and unauthoritative. On this matter, see Aisha Y. Musa, Ḥadīth as Scripture: Discussions on the Authority of Prophetic Traditions in Islam, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. ↵
Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, Volume 1: The Classical Age of Islam, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974, 74. ↵
Amr Osman, “The Quran and the Hadith as Sources of Islamic Law,” in Khaled Abou El Fadl, Ahmad Atif Ahmad, and Said Fares Hassan (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Islamic Law, London: Routledge, 2019, 128. ↵
Lawson, The Quran, 18. ↵
Mehreen Chida-Razvi, “Five Pillars of Islam,” in Cenak Çakmak (ed.), Islam: A Worldwide Encyclopedia, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2017, 490. ↵
Ibid. ↵
Muhammad Al-Sayed Muhammad, Islam’s Teachings and How They Solve Past and Current Problems, 2009, 99, https://www.almeshkat.net/books/archive/books/islam%20teachings.pdf, last accessed February 10, 2023. ↵
Chida-Razvi, “Five Pillars of Islam,” 491. ↵
Gustave E. von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam: A Vital Study of Islam at Its Zenith, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946, 68. ↵
Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1958, 20–21. ↵
Mehmet Haluk Anil, “A Practical Guide for Animal Welfare during Animal Slaughter,” in Yunez Ramadan Al-Teinaz, Stuart Spear, and Ibrahim H. D. Abd El-Rahim (eds.), The Halal Food Handbook, Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2020, 66. ↵
Yunez Ramadan Al-Teinaz, “What is Halal Food?” in Yunez Ramadan Al-Teinaz, Stuart Spear, and Ibrahim H. D. Abd El-Rahim (eds.), The Halal Food Handbook, Chichester, UK: Wiley Blackwell, 2020, 10. ↵
Al-Qarwadari, The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam, 16. Please consult this book for an exhaustive explanation of what is halal and what is haram today. It is widely read in the Islamic world and considered by many Muslims to be authoritative. ↵
Sells, Approaching the Quran, 17. ↵
B. Carra De Vaux, “Barzak̲h̲,” The Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edition, Volume I, E. J. Brill, 1986, 1071–1072. https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-islam-2/*-SIM_1249; last accessed August 14, 2023. ↵
Unless otherwise noted, these observations and the next few paragraphs of this chapter derive from the generous insights of my good friend and esteemed colleague Khalid Blankinship, who kindly shared with me his lecture notes on this topic. ↵
Majid Daneshgar, “Munkar and Nakir (Angels of the Grave),” in Cenak Çakmak (ed.), Islam: A Worldwide Encyclopedia, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2017, 1104. ↵
Lawson, The Quran, xxiii. ↵
Ibid., xxi. ↵
Ibid., xxiii–xxiv. ↵
Andrew J. Waskey, “Islamic Eschatology (Sunni),” in Wendell G. Johnson (ed.), End of Days: An Encyclopedia of the Apocalypse in World Religions, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2017, 188. ↵
Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, 141. ↵
Sells, Approaching the Quran, 14. ↵
Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, “Considerations of God, Man, Time and Eternity,” in Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (eds.), The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, 5. ↵
Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012, 98. ↵
Muhammad Abdul Haleem, “Quranic Paradise: How to Get to Paradise and What to Expect There,” in Sebastian Günther and Todd Lawson (eds.), Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam, Volume I, Leiden, NL: Brill, 2017, 57–58. ↵
Nerina Rustomji, The Garden and the Fire: Heaven and Hell in Islamic Culture, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, 63. ↵
Sebastian Günther and Todd Lawson, “Introduction,” in Sebastian Günther and Todd Lawson (eds.), Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam, Volume I, Leiden, NL: Brill, 2017, 13. ↵
Murat Ustaoğlu and Cenak Çakmak, “Fear (Khawf),” in Cenak Çakmak (ed.), Islam: A Worldwide Encyclopedia, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2017, 476. Later in this chapter, fear is discussed extensively, in the subsection on Al-Ghazali. ↵
Waskey, “Islamic Eschatology (Sunni),” 188. ↵
Lawson, The Quran, xxiv. ↵
Steven J. McMichael, “The Night Journey (al-isrāʾ) and Ascent (al-miʿrāj) of Muhammad in Medieval Muslim and Christian Perspectives,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 22, 3, 2011, 293–309, https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2011.586510, last accessed January 4, 2020. ↵
Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985, 197. ↵
Rustomji, The Garden and the Fire, 22. ↵
Ibid., 26. ↵
Ibid. ↵
There are many eschatological commentaries, interpretations, and debates in the history of Islam, though Al-Ghazali’s and Al-Qurtubi’s are the most influential. Meanwhile, “the oldest complete Muslim apocalyptic text that has survived to the present” is “Nu`aym b. Ḥammād al-Marwazī’s Kitāb al-fitan” (The Book of Tribulations), which dates to 820 C.E. David Cook (ed. and trans.) “The Book of Tribulations”: The Syrian Muslim Apocalyptic Tradition”: An Annotated Translation, by Nu’aym b. Hammad al-Marwazi. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017, xii. ↵
For analyses of these and other subjects on which Al-Ghazali wrote, see Georges Tamer (ed.), The Impact of Al-Ghazali: Papers Collected on his 900th Anniversary, Leiden, NL: Brill, 2015. ↵
W. Montgomery Watt, Al-Ghazali: The Muslim Intellectual, Chicago: ABC International Group, 2002, 22. ↵
William Montgomery Watt, “Al-Ghazālī: Muslim Jurist, Theologian, and Mystic,” in Encyclopedia Britannica, 2012, https://www.britannica.com/biography/al-Ghazali, last accessed January 11, 2021. ↵
The influence of classical Greek philosophy, especially Aristotle, has been profound in Islam, thanks in large part to Al-Ghazali. In fact, Aristotle’s work “has had an influence that is unsurpassed by any other philosophical work that is translated from Greek into Arabic. . . . Hence, Muslim philosophers adopted Aristotle’s definition of the soul.” Eiyad Al-Kutubi, Mulla Sadra and Eschatology: Evolution of Being, London: Routledge, 2014, 68. ↵
Fazlur Rahman, Islam, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979 (1966), 94. ↵
Matthew Levering, “Providence and Predestination in Al-Ghazali,” New Blackfriars, 2010, 59. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-2005.2009.01341.x , last accessed January 16, 2021. ↵
Watt, “Al-Ghazālī,” n.p. ↵
Rahman, Islam, 95. ↵
Ibid. ↵
Al-Ghazali, The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife (Book XL of The Revival of the Religious Sciences), trans. T. J. Winter, Cambridge, UK: The Islamic Texts Society, 2015 (1989), 171–172. Houris are purified wide-eyed virgin women understood as “companions in heaven.” ↵
Tim Winter, “Al-Ghazālī on Death,” in David Marshall and Lucinda Mosher (eds.), Death, Resurrection, and Human Destiny: Christian and Muslim Perspectives, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014, 161-166, 162. ↵
Al-Ghazali, The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife, 173. ↵
Ibid. ↵
Jane I. Smith, “Concourse between the Living and the Dead in Islamic Eschatological Literature,” History of Religions19, 3, 1980, 224. ↵
Al-Ghazali, The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife, 177, 179. ↵
Ibid., 180. ↵
Ibid., 261. ↵
Mona Siddiqui, “Death, Resurrection, and Human Destiny: Qurʾānic and Islamic Perspectives,” in David Marshall and Lucinda Mosher (eds.), Death, Resurrection, and Human Destiny: Christian and Islamic Perspectives, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2014, 36. ↵
I am most grateful to my esteemed colleague Khalid Blankinship for bringing the work of Al-Qurtubi to my attention and for having read an earlier draft of this chapter. Shuykran jazilan! ↵
Delfina Serrano Ruano, “Exilio y Desarraigo en la Vida (y Milagros) de Inb Farh Al-Qurtubi, un Exéget Andalusí Universal,” Philologia Hispalansis31, 2, 2017, 138. ↵
Khalid Yahya Blankinship, personal electronic correspondence, January 18, 2021. Bold type added to alert reader to glossary entry. ↵
Imâm Al-Qurtubî, In Remembrance of the Affairs of the Dead and Doomsday (abridged), trans. Reda Bedeir, Mansoura, Egypt: Dal AL-Manarah, 2004, 15. ↵
Asma Asfaruddin, “Dying in the Path of God: Reading Martyrdom and Moral Excellence in the Quran,” in Sebastian Günther and Todd Lawson (eds.), Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam, Volume I, Leiden, NL: Brill, 2017, 171–172. Martyrs, those who die in the name of the faith, are generally believed in Islam to be guaranteed entry into heaven, though the definition of martyrdom has been widely debated among Muslims. At times, tragically, the idea has been exploited by terrorists. On the topic in general, see David Cook, Martyrdom in Islam, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012; on the latter troublesome topic, see Meir Hatina, Martyrdom in Modern Islam: Piety, Power, and Politics, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. ↵
Al-Qurtubî, In Remembrance of the Affairs of the Dead and Doomsday, 197. ↵
Ibid., 197–198. ↵
Ibid., 325. ↵
Winter, “Al-Ghazālī on Death,” 162. ↵
Al-Qurtubî, In Remembrance of the Affairs of the Dead and Doomsday, 389. ↵
Anonymous, “Rise of the Sun from the West,” Discovering Islam, http://www.discoveringislam.org/rise_of_sun_from_west.htm, last accessed January 29, 2021; Naveed Malik, “The Meaning of the Prophecy ‘The Sun Shall Rise from the West’,” The Muslim Sunrise, April 2020, https://muslimsunrise.com/2020/04/13/the-meaning-of-the-prophecy-the-sun-shall-rise-in-the-west/, last accessed January 29, 2021. ↵
Al-Qurtubi, In Remembrance of the Affairs of the Dead and Doomsday, 395. “Aden” in this passage refers to a port city in what is today Yemen, on the Gulf of Aden, a place of considerable importance in Islamic history. On this, see Esther Pesekes, “Aden,” in Kate Fleet, Kramer Nawas, and Everett Rowson (eds.), Encyclopedia of Islam THREE, Leiden, NL: Brill, 2017, http://dx.doi.org.10.1163/1573-3912_SIM_0188, last accessed January 29, 2021. ↵
Anonymous, “Gog and Magog,” Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2020, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Gog; last accessed August 24, 2023. ↵
Emeri van Donzel and Andrea Schmidt, Gog and Magog in Early Syriac and Islamic Sources: Sallam’s Quest for Alexander’s Wall, Leiden, NL: Brill, 2009, xvii. ↵
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Glossary
Abu Bakr Ibn al-`Arabi (1076–1148)
Influential student of Al-Ghazali and prominent figure of the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence, who spread his mentor’s influential teachings throughout Muslim Iberia. ↵
Uncle of the Prophet Muhammad, who raised his orphaned nephew and encouraged him to take seriously the visions and messages from Allah that he was receiving (i.e., the Quran). ↵
The daily call to prayer for Muslims, emitted from a mosque five times a day by a muezzin. ↵
A highly influential text of Islamic philosophy published in 1094 by Al-Ghazali, one that, among many other things, helped center and/or dispute classical Greek thought in Islam. ↵
One of the greatest Islamic theologians and philosophers of all time, native of what is today Iran; author of the highly influential Revival of the Religious Sciences, which contains his important treatise on Islamic eschatology. ↵
Paradise, a garden. Heaven in Islam, as discussed in the Quran and the Hadith. The eternal abode in the afterlife of God and all of those who have lived righteously.
Congregational prayers at the mosque (or masjid) that take place on Fridays, a communal ritual for Muslims; also means Friday in Arabic. Friday is designated as sacred in the Quran, in surah 62. ↵
God, the one and only supreme Creator and the ultimate focus of Islam. In pre-Islamic times, the God of the sky and one of the most important in the pantheon of Arab polytheism. ↵
Literally “God is Great,” the most commonly stated prayer/proclamation in Islam. ↵
The Antichrist in Islam, the “Beast of the Earth” and false messiah who will appear at the end of time to tempt people into unrighteousness and battle with the Messiah, the Mahdi. ↵
Also called Yawm al-Hisab, Judgment Day in Islam, the time of the resurrection of the dead. ↵
Influential Andalusian Muslim philosopher and theologian. Author of one of the most important treatises ever on Islamic eschatology, Reminder of the Conditions of the Dead and the Matters of the Hereafter. ↵
“The Hour” when the end of time arrives and final judgment is at hand. ↵
A term coined by Mircea Eliade meaning the “Axis of the World,” around which religions and their adherents turn, ethically, spatially, and spiritually, like the Kaaba in Mecca. ↵
Or ‘Izrai’l, in Arabic; the angel of death in Islam who takes one from this life, escorting the soul and carrying a scroll concerning one’s ultimate fate. ↵
The period between death and resurrection, Arabic for “separation,” as in the distance between the world of the living and the dead and the world of God and pure spirit. ↵
Decisive 624 battle during the military conflict between the Qurayshi Meccans and the Medinan Muslims, which was a decisive victory for the Prophet Muhammad; the only battle mentioned in the Quran, and one that enabled the Prophet and his followers to reconquer Mecca. ↵
Umayyad (661–750); Abbasid (750–1258); Ottoman Empire (1299–1922). Muslim community ruled by a caliph (Arabic, lit: “successor”). ↵
Literally “remembrance” (as in remembrance of Allah); a cherished form of prayer and meditation in Islam that is bequeathed to Muslims in the Quran (21:50). Often takes the form of the repeated chanting or reciting of verses or prayerful mantras, sometimes accompanied by the handling of beads. Of especial importance in Sufism. ↵
Arabic name for the Angel Gabriel. A figure of major importance in Islam, especially for having visited the Prophet Muhammad to begin transmitting the final revelation and word of Allah to humanity through his prophecy, the Quran. ↵
Literally “deep understanding”; Islamic jurisprudence, a highly esteemed tradition and practice in the religion. ↵
Horned and terrifying forces of evil, first mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and later in the Quran, who have been prophesied to appear at the End of Time and lead savage armies during the apocalyptic war between good and evil. ↵
Literally “speech,” “discourse,” or “communication” in Arabic; a large body of Islamic scripture that details the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and those of his closest companions, as well as extensive interpretive commentaries and exegesis. Although not accepted by a small minority of Muslims, these texts were written during the Prophet’s lifetime and finally compiled in the mid-ninth century. ↵
One of the Five Pillars of Islam, the pilgrimage to the Kaaba in Mecca to which all Muslims are called at least once during their lifetimes; normally takes place over the course of several days during the last month of the Muslim calendar. ↵
Literally “permissible”; a corpus of principles of the right way for a Muslim to live, ranging from dietary restrictions and attire to interpersonal relations and business dealings. ↵
The opposite of Halal, meaning “prohibited.” Similar to the notion of sin in Christianity, unrighteous acts and deeds that Muslims are encouraged to avoid or refrain from. ↵
622 “emigration” of the Prophet Muhammad, when he was forced into hiding and to flee Mecca for Medina, which also marks the first year of the Muslim calendar. ↵
Learned community leader in Islam; one who leads communal prayers during services at a mosque or a masjid. A sage interpreter of the Quran, a counsel, and a guide for members of the umma.
The reception and adaptation of a cultural form, like a religion, in a society to which it is exogenous, where it changes over time due to local needs and languages, as well as indigenous religious traditions and cultural forms. ↵
Jesus in Arabic. A figure of major importance in Islam, who is mentioned more than any other human being in the Quran and who is prophesied to have a messianic role during the apocalypse, though he is definitively not equated with Allah, nor is he worshipped in Islam. ↵
An angel of major importance in Islam who is prophesied to descend to Earth to sound the final trumpet from the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, signaling to all that resurrection and judgment are at hand. ↵
Hell in Islam, a burning abyss in which the unrighteous are destined to find themselves for all eternity after the apocalypse, though some Islamic thinkers teach that they might have the chance to be eventually delivered and brought to heaven. ↵
Heaven in Islam, depicted in the Quran (e.g., 47:15) as a lush and joyful paradisical garden. The eternal resting place of all righteous Muslims. ↵
Literally “struggle,” something all Muslims are called to do, on an interior, spiritual level, against temptations to stray from the straight path and other evil forces; also, a military effort to defend the Islamic faith from aggression. ↵
Supernatural beings made of smokeless fire who are allied either with God or with Shaytan (Satan) and are invisible and take many forms. Unlike angels, they are not necessarily good or submissive to Allah, having free will, like humans, in whose lives they are often involved, whether beneficially or destructively. ↵
Also spelled ka’bah or kabah; literally “cube,” in reference to the large cube-shaped black shrine that is the holiest place in the Islamic world and believed to have been constructed by Ibrahim (Abraham). Located at the center of the religion’s most important mosque, Masjid al-Haram, in Mecca. The first place where Allah instructed humanity to build for Him an altar. Site of the annual Muslim pilgrimage, the hajj. ↵
An Aristotelian approach to metaphysical and theological knowledge in Islam, largely pioneered by Al-Ghazali. ↵
Beloved wife of the Prophet Muhammad and one of the first to accept his message, thereby becoming one of the first Muslims. Her wealth and encouragement helped enable Muhammad’s reception of the Quran and his preaching and political successes. ↵
Fear, an important emotion and philosophical/theological concept in Islam, one that takes many forms, the ultimate of which is fear of Allah and of damnation. ↵
Usually understood in Islam to be Isa (Jesus); the Messiah, who at the end of time will appear on Earth to defeat the Antichrist (Al-Masih ad-Dajjal), cementing the victory of good over evil and the entry of the righteous into eternal paradise. ↵
Founded in the eighth century in Medina, one of the most influential schools of legal thought and Quranic interpretation in Islam, as well as of commentary on the Hadith. ↵
The study of martyrs and their meanings, whether in Islam or in any other religion. ↵
Sanctuary and place of prayer in Islam; more commonly called a mosque in English, from a Romanized rendering of the term, which in Arabic literally means “place of ritual prostration.” ↵
A niche in the wall of a mosque or masjid that orients the faithful to face Mecca while at prayer. ↵
The mystical “night journey” of the Prophet Muhammad, which brought him from Mecca to Jerusalem and into all the heavens, where he spoke with previous messengers, like Jesus and Moses, and dined with Allah at the celestial summit. ↵
The Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus (Isa) and the most oft-mentioned woman in the Quran; a figure of major importance in Islam. ↵
Name of a learned scholar and interpreter of Hadith scriptures.
Mystic, diplomat, prophet, and messenger from what is today Saudi Arabia; the final prophet, who over the course of twenty-two years received the Quran, God’s culminating revelation to humanity. ↵
One of two angels who visit us in our graves shortly after we die to ask us about our faith in God and our awareness of prophecy and scripture, and our answers have serious consequences for our eternal fate. ↵
A prophet in Islam, a servant of Allah who communicates on His behalf to humanity, beginning with Adam and including Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and the Prophet Muhammad. ↵
One of two angels who visit us in our graves shortly after we die to ask us about our faith in God and our awareness of prophecy and scripture; our answers have serious consequences for our eternal fate. ↵
Sometimes also called the Night of Power and Excellence or the Night of Destiny, this was the first night, in 610 C.E., when the Prophet Muhammad was visited by the angel Djibril in a cave above Mecca to begin receiving the Quran. ↵
“Recitation,” the final revelation to humanity, as transmitted by the angel Djibril from Allah to the Prophet Muhammad, in Arabic, over the course of roughly twenty years. Believed in Islam to be the culminating scripture and the word of Allah. ↵
Arab ethnic group, or tribe, to which the Prophet Muhammad belonged. ↵
A month of fasting in Islam, from sunrise to sunset; a religious obligation for all Muslims and one of the Five Pillars of Islam. ↵
A “messenger” in Islam, the final of whom to appear was the Prophet Muhammad. Similar to a prophet (nabi), though much rarer in history and often associated with divine revelations that are ensconced in history, for example, Moses (Musa) and Jesus (Isa). ↵
The adaptation and reinterpretation of an exogenous faith tradition in a recipient culture and society in local terms and in local linguistics. ↵
The Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife
Eschatological commentary by Al-Ghazali, a single long section of his highly influential corpus of writings, The Revival of the Religious Sciences, first published in the eleventh century. ↵
Reminder of the Conditions of the Dead and the Matters of the Hereafter (al-Tadhkirah fī Aḥwāl al-Mawtà wa-Umūr al-Ākhirah)
Written by the Andalusian theologian Al-Qurtubi in the thirteenth century, one of the greatest Islamic treatises on eschatology. ↵
The Revival of the Religious Sciences
Al-Ghazali’s multivolume eleventh-century magnum opus, one of the most influential theological and philosophical treatises in Islamic history. First published in the eleventh century C.E. ↵
Literally “peace,” in Arabic; related to the word Islam itself and to the Jewish cognate “shalom.” Part of the greeting that Muslims share whenever they encounter one another: As-salamu alaykum (Peace be with you). ↵
A split, a separation between groups in a formerly unified religion, usually compelled by differences in theological interpretation. ↵
Intercession; the notion that the Mahdi or the Prophet Muhammad might intercede on behalf of some of the condemned on Judgment Day. ↵
The creed that is said by all Muslims each day; “bearing witness to faith”: “I bear witness that there is no Lord but Allah; I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” The most important form of devotion in Islam, its utterance and embodiment. ↵
Literally “the way,” Islamic law as centered upon the Quran and the sunnah, or the life and teachings of the Messenger Muhammad, as well as, for most Muslims, the recording thereof in the Hadith. ↵
Satan. The devil. ↵
Minority branch of Islam that emerged out of a schism over a number of theological issues, like the question of who would be Islam’s chief authority upon the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Roughly 15 percent of Muslims today are Shi’a, and this is the majority Muslim sect in Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Bahrain. ↵
The gravest of sins in Islam, literally meaning “making a partner,” as in associating anything or anyone with God, idolatry, or polytheism, in rejection of Allah’s absolute oneness (Tawhīd). ↵
Major historical trade route linking the East and the West; an important conduit for the spread of Islam. ↵
The bridge that spans from Jerusalem to paradise, to heaven, over which the righteous will journey after Judgment Day, while the unrighteous will fall off into an abyss of flames, or Hell. ↵
Emerging very early in Islamic history, some believe as inspired by the Prophet Muhammad himself, a mystically oriented, introspective, ecstatic tradition that consists of a wide range of tariqa (lit. “paths”), or brotherhoods and spiritual practices, including chanting, music, and perpetual prayer, often led by a sheik (teacher). A Muslim who practices Sufism is known as a Sufi (devotee). ↵
Foundational body of knowledge in Islam based on the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, a model for all Muslims to follow. ↵
The main form of Islam globally, comprising roughly 85 percent of all Muslims, as distinct from Shi’a Islam. Derives from the word sunnah. ↵
The blending of two or more religious traditions. ↵
Islamic jurisprudence; the long and rich discourse over the meaning of Islamic law. ↵
Literally “path”; an Islamic brotherhood and/or way of practicing the faith, especially in Sufism. ↵
The absolute oneness of Allah in Islamic belief. ↵
The global community of Muslims who are united in their faith. ↵