993
edits
User:CPO675/Sandbox 1: Difference between revisions
→Martyrs sidestep judgement day
| Line 111: | Line 111: | ||
The barzakh as the usual place after death | The barzakh as the usual place after death | ||
{{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.}} | {{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.}} | ||
== Similarities - but not exact parralels == | |||
{{Quote|Reynolds, Gabriel Said. Allah: God in the Qur'an (pp. 72-73). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.|The Sleep of Souls This notion that souls will fall “asleep” at death is vividly depicted in two qur’anic stories. The first of these is contained in one verse of Sura 2 and has to do with a man and his donkey: | |||
Or him who came upon a township as it lay fallen on its trellises. He said, “How will God revive this after its death?!” So God made him die for a hundred years, then He resurrected him. He said, “How long did you remain?” Said he, “I have remained a day or part of a day.” He said, “No, you have remained a hundred years. Now look at your food and drink which have not rotted! Then look at your donkey! [This was done] that We may make you a sign for mankind. And now look at the bones, how We raise them up and then clothe them with flesh!” When it became evident to him, he said, “I know that God has power over all things.” (Q 2:259) | |||
The man in this story (which is connected to a Jewish tale about Jerusalem)<sup>6</sup> has no sense that a hundred years has passed: he feels as though it has been only “a day or part of a day” since he died, or “fell asleep,” so he is surprised to learn that he has slept for one hundred years. According to the Qur’an this is what the experience of death will be like: we will fall “asleep” and will be “woken up” on the Day of Judgment. Yet even if a hundred (or a million) years have passed, we will experience this time as though it were “a day or part of a day.”}} | |||
footnote 6 from above: | |||
{{Quote|Reynolds, Gabriel Said. Allah: God in the Qur'an (p. 254). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.|6. This verse is related to an anecdote found in the Paraleipomena of Jeremiah (a Jewish text, also known as 4 Baruch, from the second century AD) by which Abimelech (see Jer 38:7–13) is made to fall asleep just before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and is awoken sixty-six years later, when Jerusalem lies in ruins.}} | |||
==Parallels in the hadith== | ==Parallels in the hadith== | ||