User:CPO675/Sandbox 1: Difference between revisions

=== Martyrs sidestep judgement day ===

{{Quote|Reynolds, Gabriel Said. Allah: God in the Qur'an (pp. 71-72). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.|In other words (and unlike Christian thinking), according to the Qur’an the reward or punishment of humans does not take place immediately upon death. At death, the soul falls into a sort of sleep. The period between the death of humans and their resurrection from the dead—a period known as barzakh in Islamic tradition—is merely a time of waiting for the Day of Judgment.5 This does not mean, however, that nothing will happen to the dead during this time. In fact, certain Islamic traditions relate that a “torture of the grave” will take place during barzakh. According to these traditions two angels known as Munkir and Nakir (not found in the Qur’an) will impose punishments upon sinners in their tombs. Some accounts relate that these angels will ask certain questions of the dead about the Islamic faith, and for each wrong answer the angels will strike them with a hammer. Another tradition relates that while bodies lie in the tomb, souls will be taken away and dwell mysteriously all together under the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem—in a spot known as the “Well of Souls.” One legend reports that if you descend into the chamber below the rock in the dome and put your ear to the rock wall, you will hear the dead speaking. What the Qur’an itself teaches is that on the Day of Judgment the soul will be awoken, the body will be raised, and the two will be united. At this, the individual, regaining consciousness, will feel as though only a moment has passed. Thus, if most Christians believe in something that might be called “immediate retribution” (that souls will be sent to heaven or hell after an individual judgment after death), most Muslims believe that a “delayed retribution” will take place only after the collective resurrection of the dead on the Day of Judgment.}}

=== Souls are taken away at night ===

''At the same time, the Quran also compares death to the “common sleep” that people experience on a daily basis. This seems to be the case in the cryptic statement found in Q 39:42 (cf. Q 6:60), “God takes the souls at the time of their death (ḥīna mawtihā), and [He takes] that which has not died, in its sleep ( fī manāmihā); He withholds that against which He has decreed death, but sets loose the other until a stated term”. This obscure passage appears to indicate that sleep is a death-like state; sleepers resemble the dead since their souls enter into a state similar to that which they will experience at the moment of death. However, unlike the souls of the dead, which will be raised only on the Day of Resurrection, the ordinary sleeper’s soul is sent back when he awakens―that is, of course, until the time of his death. This parallel between death and “common sleep” finds a fairly close correspondence in the poetical language used by Ephrem, who in the Nisibene hymns (7:15) affirms that: “The one who lies down to sleep resembles the departed and death resembles a dream, and the resurrection the morning”. In these passages the Quran’s eschatological discourse is particularly close to that formulated by Babai, in whose ideas the belief in the soul’s sleep is intimately connected to the strong affirmation of the physical resurrection of the body on the Day of Judgment.'' </ref> with this idea taken literally by Muhammad.