Month 10, Day 20: The Muslim Concept of Life After Death and Judgment Day

As promised, today I’m going to talk about Islam’s version of Judgment Day and what happens after we die. And also as promised, it’s really, really strange.

Most religions have some concept of what happens after death—usually, some form of punishment (like hell) if we’ve been bad, or reward (like heaven) if we’ve been good (unless, of course, the faith supports the idea of reincarnation, in which case the rewards and punishments take place during, not after, our lives).

Muslims say that right before death, the soul travels up to the throat. It’s the angel of death’s job to grab the soul and pull it out from the body. If you’ve been a good person, he takes the soul quickly, but if you’ve been a sinner, he yanks it violently—and that’s just the beginning of the suffering the soul will have to endure.

After death, once the soul has been removed from the physical body, it moves on to another, spiritual realm. But we still have some connection to the physical world, at least temporarily. Angels hold the soul above the corpse we have left behind, and we can watch the people who knew us as they prepare our dead body for burial.

When we see our own funeral, we will say one of two things to the angels. If we were good in life, we’ll ask them to take us forward. If we were bad, we’ll realize what’s happening and (understandably) freak out.

The angels then carry all souls to the gates of heaven, but the gates will only open for those who have accepted and loved God. If the gates stay closed, God (Allah) commands the angels to write the person’s name in the Sijjin—kind of a “hell registry.” If the gates do open, God writes the person’s name in the Illiyun—the list of people who get to go to heaven, but only after Judgment Day.

Until that day comes, all souls are returned to Earth and are more or less put in storage, until the world ends and we all meet our final destiny. Our souls hang out near our graves or wherever our physical body was last placed. The soul just lingers there, having no contact with anyone else—either living or dead—and with no awareness of anything except itself. This, I imagine, would be a nightmare for anyone who says they’re a “people person,” but me? I wouldn’t mind a little—or a lot of—alone time.

We do have some interaction with other beings while we’re in the grave. Two angels, Munkar and Nakir—the so-called “Questioners of the Grave”—come and visit us. Their job is to ask every dead soul three questions:

1. Who is your Lord?

2. What was your way of life?

3. Who was your prophet?

The first two questions have only one correct answer each: 1) God, and 2) surrender (or obedience to God).

The third question is a bit more complicated. Because Islam accepts prophets other than Muhammad as legitimate, a dead person might answer “Muhammad” or “Jesus,” “Moses,” or any number of others.

If our answers to all these questions are acceptable to the questioning angels, they open up two windows: One window shows us heaven, where we’ll go someday, and the other shows us hell, which we have avoided by being good during our lives. The angels then give us a larger storage space for our soul to enjoy—still on our own—until Judgment Day arrives.

For those souls who fail the angels’ pop quiz, it’s a very different story. As Yahiya Emerick writes in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Islam¸ “If we don’t answer the questions correctly, and only a true rebel against God will fail the test, then something horrible happens. They strike our spirit body with a heavy mace, and they command our soul storage bin to squeeze in upon us until we feel suffocated.”

Yeah. That would kind of suck, especially if you’re claustrophobic like I am.

When Judgment Day finally comes—and the Qur’an doesn’t say when that will be—all things and people that are still alive will die. Then, all the souls of the dead will be taken out of their storage spaces and will get brand-new bodies that look just like the ones they lived in on Earth, but without a single flaw. (I’m not quite sure what exactly constitutes a “flaw,” but I’d be glad to get rid of this flabby belly, flat chest, and way-too-big nose, so here’s hoping.)

We’ll all be left naked (another reason to hope I get rid of the belly), so we’re all perfectly equal, no matter what status we may have had during life. This part of Judgment Day is called the Resurrection.

The next step is a sorting process. We all line up behind whatever prophet we followed during our lives—whether it was Muhammad or Jesus or Moses or even Kali (if we happened to be Hindu in life).

People who didn’t believe in God at all—called kafirs—will be experiencing a bit of anxiety while all this is going on, since they’ll have no prophet to line up behind, and also because we’ll all be getting a glimpse of the pits of hell, where the bad souls—and the nonbelievers—are headed.

Although he’ll be hidden behind a big veil, God (Allah) will be presiding over the next part of the process: the judgment.

One by one, for as long as it takes, we will all step before God to have the record of our deeds reviewed and our faith in God measured. (This sounds absolutely horrible to me—I mean, I can’t even handle waiting in line behind more than one person at the grocery store, much less the whole of humanity.)

The thing I don’t understand is why we all have to wait in line. I mean, only the newly dead souls (those killed on the Last Day) should have to wait, since the rest of the dead have already been through the “gates of heaven” experience I described above, and supposedly they already know whether they’re going to heaven or hell. It just seems stupid to make everybody go through it all twice.

Once our deeds have been reviewed, God weighs our good and bad deeds on a scale. If the good outweighs the bad, we’re headed toward heaven. If not, then we’re in really big trouble.

The very worst sinners go straight to hell. The angels just hurl them into the burning fires, headfirst.

Everybody else has to go on a little trip. Whether we’ve been judged guilty or innocent, we all have to walk across a special bridge called the Sirat. It stretches across the fiery pit of hell and, on the other side, is heaven.

The bridge is pretty scary (although I think all bridges are scary in general): It’s as thin as a razor blade and there are spikes and jagged bits poking out all along the surface.

People who were really super good in life magically rush right across the bridge, without ever feeling the sting of the spikes. The rest of us, however, have to make our way slowly across, feeling every cut, every bump and bruise, along the way.

Some of us won’t make it all the way across the bridge to heaven. Those who were bad sinners will get stuck among the brambly spikes and will eventually fall off—into the fires of hell below.

The rest of us—the ordinary sinners who did some bad things but were good people at heart—will eventually make it across the bridge, a little worse for wear (but all wounds are healed when you reach heaven).

Anyone who was evenly balanced between good and evil goes to an elevated place, smack dab between heaven and hell. It’s called the Heights, and it’s a little like the Christian concept of Purgatory—a place where the soul suffers for a while, making up for past sins—before being admitted to heaven.

So, what are heaven and hell like? The Qur’an is extremely detailed in its descriptions of both places.

To me, the Muslim depiction of heaven sounds, well, a little boring:

“They [those who make it to heaven] will live among sylvan forests where there is neither thorn nor bramble, amidst wildly flowering trees that provide cool, expansive shade. There are flowering brooks and fruits of all kinds. . . . They will recline in places of honor, with specially created companions who are pure, undefiled, loving and of a similar age.”

Oh, yippee! If I make it to heaven, I get to hang out with special friends who are “pure” and “undefiled.” I don’t know. In my experience, the pure and undefiled aren’t exactly the most entertaining people to spend time with. But at least there’s wine in heaven. Even though it’s forbidden here on Earth, drinking is one of the perks of making it to paradise. Maybe enough wine will make even “pure” companions a little more fun.

If heaven sounds boring, then hell sounds absolutely awful. If we end up there, we have to wear clothes made out of burning pitch and we have to spend all of eternity in fire, with burning chains falling down on us and snakes and other creatures biting us all the time.

And the food sounds pretty lousy, too. As author Yahiya Emerick puts it, “Fountains of pus and blood and boiling muck will be the only refreshment. . . .” That may actually sound even worse than the food we have here in Pennsylvania. I guess I should stop complaining.

So, that’s heaven and hell, Muslim-style. I told you it was kooky.