As I indicated I would do, I offer the text/outline on which I based my talk of a few nights ago. It's not intended to be comprehensive (this would consume many, many books), but it does present the basic elements of the "history" of death as well as the essential fundamentals of each major religion's (and the non-religious) viewpoint on death.
Death and Dying
Religious and
Non-Religious Perspectives and Viewpoints
William E. Marsh*
The Fact of Death
• Death is inevitable: we all are going to die. Death is a part of life: to be born is to die, and to live is to die. For many, the fact of death drives
life
• Death is an idea, and death is an
experience: we think about it, we face
it, we taste it—but do we ever really know it? Indeed, how can we?
• Death is a terminal experience, that is, it’s
nothing that can be reversed, and nothing that can be otherwise. It represents a final extinction, an absolute
end to this present existence. Afterlife
or not, death vanquishes and ends, without appeal, present consciousness, awareness,
remembrance, space, time, morality, and value:
earthly sentience is gone and over forever.
• To repeat, for most people, there is a
connection, of some kind, between life and death
• For some, the fact of death gives life meaning,
be it a call to live this life wisely and fully, knowing that nothing will
follow it, or a call to live wisely and fully, knowing that something will
follow life, something whose parameters and conditions are shaped by how one
lives it.
• For still others, death is an interloper, an
intruder, a point of grief and anguish; for others, a necessary though perhaps
distasteful fact; for others, an entry way; for others, a welcome release; for
others, wholly nothing: it just happens;
for others, nothing that one wishes to ever image or contemplate; for still
others, a blend of all these and more
Death’s Connections
• In addition, most people see death as a medium
of connection with some larger purpose
• That is, most people die believing that in some
way they will live on, be it in the memories of loved ones, the real or
imagined impact of their offspring; the ecological cycles of the planet; the
acclaim or hatred of others; the works they have done; the people they may have
touched, and more. Many people tend to
think, perhaps want to believe that even if at death they are totally and
materially gone, the fact of their life is not.
Somehow, some way, they “live” on
• Many people draw connections between death and
religion and all that comes with it, including transgression, judgment, and
sin; sacrifice; the afterlife; and more.
For them, death carries a transcendent moral value, whereas for those
who do not see connections between death and religion, death carries a material
and worldly moral value
• Either way, most people view death in
moral—broadly speaking—terms
• In addition, religious or not, most people cope
with death according to the five stage process identified many years ago by
psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross:
denial, anger, negotiation, depression, acceptance (Elisabeth
Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying
A History of Death
• Since the dawn of humanity, every people group,
tribe, and civilization on the planet has dealt with death. Until the appearance of writing, however, we
had no good way to discern precisely how people were thinking about it. Archaeological evidence from east Africa,
east central Europe, and the ancient near east (generally acknowledged as the
epicenters of human emergence and activity) indicates that “primitive” human
beings engaged in a variety of funerary rites and rituals to mark the passage
from life to death. Although we do not
have written evidence of religion from early Africa or central Europe (we have
an abundance from the ancient near east), we can say with reasonable certainty
that judging from the artifacts left behind, religion, of some kind, was
implicit in these rites and rituals
• (See Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses; George
Roux, Ancient Iraq; Will and Ariel Durant, Civilization; The
Cambridge Ancient History; Olduvai Gorge, edited by George Leakey and
authored by Louis and Mary Leakey; W. H. McNeil, The Rise of the West; and
many more.)
• This brings us to the question of the appearance
and development of religion. Many
theories have been put forth to explain the appearance of religion in the human
race, ranging from Max Müller’s idea of “naturism” (the gods as personification
of natural forces); Edward Burnett Tylor’s notion of animism (the idea that
spirits inhabit all things); Emile Durkheim’s thought that totemism and ritual
constitute the bases of human activity; Sigmund Freud’s contention that
religion is a projection of a need for a father figure; and more recently Sam
Harris and Richard Dawkins’s (and others) view that religion is an irrational
crutch that people invent to feel better about their lives.
• More broadly speaking, however, it seems clear
that if religion is to be regarded, as most sociologists and anthropologists
think today, as a vehicle by which people seek meaning in their lives, then
religion’s connection with death should be apparent. In the face in the intractability of death,
human beings began to look outside of (and occasionally, even with religion,
within) themselves to find answers for it.
• (See James George Frazer, The Golden Bough; Max
Müller, The Sacred Books of the East; Emile Durkheim, The Elementary
Forms of the Religious Life; Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo, Ego and the
Id, Future of an Illusion, Moses and Monotheism; Ludwig Feuerbach, The
Essence of Christianity; Rodney Stark, Discovering God; Sam Harris, The
End of Faith; Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion; Christopher
Hitchens, God is not Great; James Henslin, Sociology; Philip
Weiner, ed., Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Volume I, Gregory
McMahon, Cultic Boundaries in Ritual; Eliad Mircea, A History of
Religious Ideas, Vols 1 -3, trans. Willard Trask; and many more.)
• The earliest written evidences of humanity’s
dealings with death appear in the inscriptions of the Old Kingdom of Egypt
(roughly 2575 – 2134 B.C.). Principal
among these is the Book of the Dead. This
is a lengthy set of prayers and rituals designed to ensure a supplicant’s safe
passage into the afterlife. It includes
penance, confession, petition, and thanksgiving.
• The first surviving genuine meditation (or as
some put it, the “discovery” of) on death is the Epic of Gilgamesh. Versions of Gilgamesh appear in
Akkadian, Sumerian, and possibly Hittite, in Sumer, Babylon, Assyria, and
Anatolia. Gilgamesh, likely named
for a historical king (king of Uruk) whose name appears in the Sumerian king
lists, tells the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu and their lives together. They meet after Enkidu, termed a “savage,”
finds, through a liaison with a woman, his humanity and, with Gilgamesh,
proceeds to roam about the earth. Their
quest is driven ultimately by their mutual anxiety about death and the
seemingly ineluctable fact of certain extinction. In numerous laments similar in form to the
early chapters of Job (written later; see chapters 5 - 9), the two men groan,
weep, even wail about death and its impact on them and the human race. Gilgamesh overflows with belief in the
presence and activity of the gods, and like the Book of Dead, underscores
that the gods ultimately have power over all human life. (Gilgamesh also contains an account of
a global flood, replete with the building of an ark.)
• (See Wallis Budge, trans., Book of the Dead; James
Pritchard, editor, Ancient Near Eastern Texts; and The Epic of
Gilgamesh, trans. N. K. Sandars.)
• Even as the peoples of the ancient near east
(and elsewhere in the world) tried to view death in the compass of some sort of
divine presence, the Greek culture and, later, that of Rome, produced history’s
first recorded dissents to this approach.
Although most Greek thinkers (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle) affirmed
the idea of God and an afterlife, they did not believe in a personal God,
setting the divine instead in their concept of the logos (Phaedo, Phaedrus,
On the Soul, and Metaphysics), several Romans rejected the notion of
a supernatural and another world.
• The most well known of these is Lucretius, whose
De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), along with Epicurus’ On
Nature and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations assert materiality as the
prime source of meaning (although Aurelius talked about the everlasting)
and reject any notion of heaven or hell or, for that matter, any afterlife at
all
• With the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in
476 and Europe’s descent into the so-called Dark Ages, the Christian Church
gained near universal control over the minds and hearts of the continent’s
inhabitants. Consequently, as monks in
France, Ireland, and the islands of Iona and Lindsfarne off the eastern coast
of England labored to preserve the learning of Greece and Rome, and kings like Charlemagne
and others were crowned Holy Roman Emperor, fusing church and state in a
lengthy and painful bondage, nearly everyone in Europe came to believe in an
afterlife. The Church taught its people
a doctrine of otherworldliness. This
life is unbearably difficult, it told its people, so focus on the next one and
see this life as mere prelude to one far better.
• (See Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline
of Magic; Arthur Lovejoy, The Chain of Being; Sidney Painter, Medieval
Society; Jacques le Goff, Medieval Civilization; Jeffrey Russell, Witchcraft
in the Middle Ages; Warren Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State
and Society; John Wippel, ed., Medieval Philosophy, and many more.)
• All this was to change with the
Renaissance. Although most Europeans
(and Asians as well) continued to believe in God and any afterlife he may
provide them, humanity’s focus steadily shifted from the next world to the
present one. Whereas during the Middle
Ages, people regarded God’s grace as superior to nature, during the
Renaissance, they set nature—themselves and the world—above God’s grace. Though most people still believed themselves
to be creations of God, they also dignified what they considered to be the
goodness and majesty of the human being.
Humanity was the crown of creation, able to do, with God’s help,
anything.
• (See Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of
the Renaissance; Frederick Artz, From the Renaissance to Romanticism; Thomas
Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization; Francis Schaeffer, How
Should We Then Live?; Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, The Dignity of Man;
Marsilio Ficino, The Soul of Man; Pietro Martire d-Anghiera, The
Golden World; James Saslow, trans., The Poetry of Michelangelo;
Julia Kristeva, This Incredible Need to Believe; and many more.)
• The Scientific Revolution accelerated this
trend. Although the leading scientists
of the age affirmed their belief in God, they came to view the world’s systems,
as they discovered them, as the primary impetus for the workings of the
planet. God and his afterlife were still
considered to be there, but were largely no longer discussed. The elements and patterns of astronomy,
cosmology, biology, chemistry, all came to be explained without recourse to
God. In addition, the advent of the
scientific method tended to render God an assumed yet unprovable assumption.
• This perspective laid the groundwork for the
pivotal event in Western history regarding belief in God and the afterlife, the
Enlightenment. With the Enlightenment,
many Europeans came to reject the necessity of God (David Hume and Denis
Diderot), the physicality of God (Immanuel Kant), the aseity of God (Voltaire),
and more.
• In due course, this viewpoint birthed the
American and French Revolutions and, eventually, the Industrial
Revolution. In addition, it encouraged
the rise of modernity at the close of the nineteenth century, whose ethos was
perhaps captured best by Friedrich Nietzsche’s memorable phrase, “God is dead.”
• (See Peter Gay, The Enlightenment; Isaac
Newton, Principia; Francis Bacon, Novum Organum; Immanuel Kant, Critique
of Pure Reason, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone; David Hume, On
Miracles, Dialogue Concerning Natural Religion; Denis Diderot, Encyclopedié;
Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary; Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay
Science; Birth of Tragedy, Will to
Power; Peter Watson, Ideas: A
History of Thought and Invention; Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to
Decadence; and many more.)
• In the aftermath of World Wars I and II,
modernity, along with its successor, postmodernity, has spawned numerous and
varied ways of looking at death without religion. These range from the existentialists (life is
meaningless, people are lonely, but they are to live nonetheless and see death
as just another authenticating experience); to the postmodernists (life is a
social construction in which people live as unknowing or absent selves, but
they are to cope responsibly with it); to the generally irreligious (life is
here, though we are not sure why, but we are to live it as best we can)
• (See Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness;
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time; Richard Rorty, Philosophy and
the Mirror of Nature; Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian; Jesse
Bering, Belief Instinct: the
Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life; Jacques Derrida, On
Grammatology; Don Cupitt, Taking Leave of God; Slavoj Žižek, The
Monstrosity of Christ; Peter Watson, ibid.; and many more.)
Death without
Religion
• Responses are varied and often depend on the
degree to which a person, irreligious or not, looks at “life” after death
• For the thorough going atheist, there is no
question that death is the final end of her conscious existence and that upon
death she, or at least her perception of herself, and everything she ever was,
will vanish into a vast nothingness (this is not to say that this person may well
believe that her life will, from a social or environmental standpoint, continue
to affect or shape the world)
• For the irreligious but perhaps not unbelieving
(in God) person, death is viewed in a countless number of ways, ranging from a
belief that she will occupy some type of “spirit” world; a conviction that she
will be consciously sleeping for eternity; the notion that she will be united
in some way with deceased loved ones; or many other scenarios and visions
• (See Victor Brombert, Musings on Mortality; Christopher
Hitchens, Mortality; Samuel Scheffler, Death and the Afterlife; D.
J. Enright, Oxford Book of Death; Carol and Philip Zaleski, eds., The
Book of Heaven; Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich; and many
more.)
• Some examples of these include Susan Sontag’s
admission that, “I’m going to die,” only to break down weeping (from Swimming
in a Sea of Death); Larry Miller’s (a friend of mine) opinion that, “After
I die, I look forward to talking with Albert Einstein;” Eddie Ostyan’s (another
friend of mine) thought that, “Now that I am dying, I will go into the spirit
world;” Karl Marx’s retort to his handlers, “Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven’t said
enough” (from Famous Last Words); John Keats’s, “If I had had time, I
would have made myself remember’d” (from a letter to Fanny Brawne); Jim Holt’s
suggestion that we have come from nothingness and one day “will go back into
nothingness” (from Why Does the World Exist?); to an North American
plains Indian who remarked as he passed away, “Nothing lives long, only the
earth and the mountains” (from Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee); and many,
many more.
Near Death
Experiences
• Opinion differs widely on the authenticity of
near death experiences. Most cases,
however, reflect some common themes.
These include visions of a bright or white light; feelings or
intimations of care and concern; some sort of reunion with loved ones;
unawareness of the passage of time; gardens; gates; and more
• Although it is clear that those who have had
these experiences indeed experienced them, what is not clear is whether that
which they experienced actually and factually happened. That is, it is uncertain as to whether what
these people saw in fact exists.
Moreover, it is also difficult to discern the degree to which their
prior beliefs shaped what they claim to have seen or experienced
• (See Susan Blackmore, Dying to Live: Near Death Experiences; Pim van Lommel, Consciousness
Beyond Life; Janice Holden et al, The Handbook of Near Death
Experiences; Lynn Vincent and Todd Burpo, Heaven is for Real; Cecil
Murphey and Don Piper, 90 Minutes in Heaven; Betty Eadie, Embraced by
the Light; and countless others from religious traditions across the globe,
including Hinduism, Catholicism, New Age, Native American, and more.)
Judaism
• Initially, as we have observed, humans
identified the gods with forces of nature.
Beginning around 1800 B.C., however, one sector of humanity, firmly
embedded though it was in this cultural ethos, took a different turn. In the Hebrews (and their modern day
representatives, the Jews), we see the first attempt of humans to understand
death with a belief in a God who was not a part of nature but rather the
creator of it.
• With a few exceptions, however, Judaism has
historically entertained a fairly undeveloped and hazy notion of the
afterlife. Beginning with the Hebrew
Bible (Tanakh) (Psalm 16, Isaiah 26, Daniel 12) and continuing into the
Dead Sea Scrolls, Talmud (with the Mishnah), and the present day, although most
of Judaism has affirmed the idea of an afterlife, it has not precisely defined
its contours and content.
• For some Jews today, the afterlife is
intertwined with belief in Messiah. That
the Messiah will appear one day confirms the possibility of an afterlife. For the Orthodox groups that believe Messiah
has already come in the form of deceased New York rabbi Menachem Scherr, it is
therefore even more incumbent on them to live righteous lives so that they,
too, will enter this afterlife.
• For most modern Jews, however, the afterlife is
relatively unimportant. Far more
important is that one lives righteously, that one does good deeds without any
thought of eternal reward. Most critical
is that one seeks what is best for the world (a conviction embodied in the
phrase tikkun olam, the “healing of the world”), to at all times do what
is best for all.
• On the other hand, many Jews would like to think
that an afterlife exists, that there is something beyond death. But it does not include Hell. For most Jews, people suffer their hells,
whatever they may be, in this life. The
next life is almost always positive and good.
As one rabbi remarked after Dr. Seuss died, “I imagine Dr. Seuss sitting
with the children before God (Shem: the
name) and telling everyone stories.” On
the other hand, many Jews will die believing in God (Yahweh) but not
necessarily that they will see him upon death.
The most important thing is to die with faith—even if it does not
produce eternal dividends—for affirming the fact of God is the most important
thing. Either way, faith in the “Name”
is the path to a good, even possibly eternal life.
• (See the Talmud, in particular, the
second and fifth orders (Mo’ed and Qodashim); Hebrew Bible; Tikkun
Olam (the journal); Robert Cole, The Spiritual Life of Children; Geza
Vermes, trans., The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English)
Hinduism
• Around the time the Hebrews began to coalesce as
a people, the Hindu religion started to take shape in India. Unlike Judaism, which in Abraham has a
definable founder, Hinduism has no known founder, but rather emerged gradually,
a mix of Indo-European religion (imported by the Aryans), the Indus Valley
culture, and indigenous Indian beliefs.
Hinduism’s theological bases are grounded in a series of writings called
Vedas (“knowledge). The Vedas
span from 1600 B.C. to A.D. 300, and are a mix of story, history, theology, and
instruction.
• As a polytheistic religion, Hinduism does not
hold to belief in one god, but many, all at once. Indeed, many Hindus participate in a
different festival for a different god every month of the year.
• Over and above all the gods, however, is
Brahman. Brahman is indefinable, the
unconditioned reality, the beginning and end of all things. Everything comes from Brahman and everything
goes into Brahman. Nothing is outside of
Brahman, and everything—good as well as evil, being as well as non-being—is in
Brahman.
• For the Hindu, to live is to strive, through
doing good deeds and accruing good karma (from a word meaning “to make”), to
become one with Brahman. The Hindu’s
goal is to become part of Brahman. If
one dies with insufficient amounts of good karma, she will live again in a
different life form. This cycle will
repeat itself over and over (reincarnation or eternal recurrence) until the
adherent achieves enough good karma to be holy before Brahman and consequently
subsist, as an atman (soul) with Brahman for eternity. For the Hindu, this is salvation (moksha).
• (A major question here is whether the Hindu is
aware that she is living with Brahman for eternity. Answers vary widely.)
• Unlike the monotheistic Jews, who viewed their
lot in the afterlife as dependent on how God judged them, the Hindus see
themselves as the arbiters of their eternal destiny. Their only judges are themselves and their
karma. While sin and holiness are
concepts in which they believe, Brahman does not judge the Hindu. Moreover, although Brahman expresses himself
in a personal way through avatars like Krishna or Jesus, Brahman himself is not
a personal deity.
• Rather than pursue harmony with a single god,
Hindus, like followers of other Asian religions, pursue balance between
themselves and the universe (in the beingness of Brahman). And they are pleased to use anything in other
religions to do this: Hinduism is eclectic,
open to a wide range of religious belief.
• (See Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternate History; Dominic Goodall,
ed., Hindu Scriptures; Mahabharata, Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads)
Buddhism
• Buddhism arose as a revolt against Hinduism in
the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. It
sought an alternative to what it perceived as the empty rituals of the
latter. Its founder was a prince named
Siddartha (“one who awakens”), now called the Buddha (a title that means
“enlightened one”) whose words, although he did not write them down, were
subsequently recorded and transmitted by his followers across the Orient.
• Buddhism’s primary goal is the cessation of
suffering. Its Four Noble Truths assert
that humans suffer because they crave what is impermanent and that they must
therefore pursue the permanent by following the eight fold path of the Buddha. For the Buddhist, to live is to, through
mindful acts and rightful meditation, gradually divest oneself of worldly want
or need, to divorce oneself of any attachment to this world and, eventually,
achieve salvation (moksha).
• (The Buddha came into his enlightenment after a
lengthy journey of inner conquest and self-abnegation. See Hermann Hesse’s Siddartha for an
intriguing, if fanciful look at the Buddha’s quest.)
• Like Hinduism, Buddhism believes in karma and
holds that those who through doing good deeds and avoiding the impermanent
accrue good karma will move ever closer to achieving Nirvana. Nirvana is a state of total nothingness (anitta),
a permanent state of detachment from all that is permanent. In this state of nothingness, the adherent
enters into emptiness (sunyata), the final and ultimate state and
foundation of being. To experience
emptiness is to experience the Absolute or Ultimate Void, the Original
Substance (the Pre-Socratic Urstoff), the ground of all that exists, the
heart of all that is real. There are no
more attachments. To be fully empty is
to in fact be completely full.
• Although some Buddhists worship the Buddha or
various ancillary deities, most Buddhists do not believe in God, nor do most
Buddhists believe in heaven or hell. For
the Buddhist, to die rightly is to enter into a blessed state of emptiness in
which one is totally free, that is, free from every possible attachment, so
free that one finds the beginning of freedom itself.
• Buddhism sees death as a glorious end of all
that one has known because only then will one be completely free. Unlike Hinduism, Buddhism does not believe
that each person is an atman, a soul, and that no one is permanent. When a Buddhist dies, she becomes what she
has been all along, but which due to sin and worldly desire, she could not yet
be.
• Will a Buddhist be aware that she is in
Nirvana? As with Hindus and Brahman,
answers vary, but the consensus seems to be that this person will have some
degree of awareness of herself but not in the way that she is presently aware
of herself. But it is not fully clear.
• Also, like Hinduism, Buddhism is in pursuit of
not necessarily harmony with the gods, but harmony with oneself and one’s
world. Again, unlike the monotheistic
traditions of the Middle East and West,
the Asian religions view universal balance as the most important thing. Taoism and Jainism echo this sentiment as
well.
• (See William de Bary, ed., The Buddhist
Tradition; Tibetan Book of the Dead; Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness;
The Universe in a Single Atom; the Purva and Agama (Jain
texts); the I Ching; A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, trans.
Wing-Tsit Chan; and Lao-Tzu, The Way)
Confucianism
• Confucianism arose around the same time as Buddhism,
but in China. Its founder, Confucius,
like Buddha, left no written record, but his followers recorded his sayings and
set them in the Analects.
• Confucius’ primary concern was maintaining
harmony and order (like most eastern religions). To this end, he advocated kindness and
respect in all relationships. Those in
relationships are to serve one another and be loyal to them. The goal of every man is to become a
“gentleman” (“Chün-tzu”) a person who is well read and studiously
helpful and kind and respectful to all.
• Confucianism’s three guiding principles are jen
(goodness); li (observing correct behavior); and i, doing
what is fitting or seemly.
• Although Confucianism was more a moral code than
a supernatural religion, Confucius talked often about heaven. Though he never fully defined it, he appeared
to frame it within the traditional Chinese commitment to the Mandate of Heaven
enjoyed by its rulers. Confucius likely
saw the idea of heaven as a way to connect doing well on earth with a larger
ethical ethos.
• (See Analects; Mencius, The Book of
Mencius; Stark, ibid.; Wang-Tsit Chan, ibid.)
Christianity
• As Hinduism and Buddhism were spreading across
eastern Asia, Israel had returned to Palestine after its seventy year exile in
Babylon, and the Roman Empire commenced, Christianity appeared in
Palestine. Jesus, a Jew and its founder,
left nothing written. His followers
recorded and transmitted his words after his death, resurrection, and
ascension, which occurred around 27 A.D.
• Although Christianity shares much common
heritage with Judaism, its vision of the afterlife is singularly more precise,
and includes Heaven as well as Hell.
According to Christian belief, if a person has placed her trust in Jesus
as Messiah and forgiver of her sin, that person can expect to experience upon
death a bodily resurrection and eternal communion in a visible, palpable heaven
with God. Unbelievers will be in Hell.
• Some Christian theologians believe that in the
end all people will spend eternity in heaven with God, and others believe that
one will enter heaven on the basis of faith and good deeds. Nonetheless, Christianity is unanimous in
affirming the idea of a material, visible (to those in it), and eternal
afterlife, be it Heaven or Hell.
• (See the Hebrew Bible, particularly Job
and Isaiah 40-66; New Testament, particularly
1 Corinthians 15; 1 Thessalonians 4; Revelation 20-22; John Calvin, Institutes;
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, and many more.)
Islam
• Founded by the prophet Muhammad (“one who
praises”) in 600 A.D., Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, is a religion of
the book (kitab). It is rooted in
the writings of the Qur’an (“recitation”), which Muslims believe
Allah (“God”) revealed, through an angel, to Muhammad over a period of twenty
years. Composed nearly six hundred years
after the New Testament and nearly a thousand after the completion of the Old
Testament canon, the Qur’an shares much in common with both. It reveres the same prophets, including
Moses, David, Isaiah, and others (along with Jesus), and continually affirms
the idea of one and only one God, Allah, who is, as the Qur’an puts it
in its opening lines, “Beneficent and Merciful.”
• For the Muslim, death means entrance into the
afterlife. For the most devout the
afterlife is Paradise (“pardes” or garden, a word borrowed from Persian). Paradise is the most beautiful place that
anyone could imagine, an idyllic land of green trees, copious fruits, still and
soothing waters, and eternal companionship.
Those who enjoy Paradise will experience it in bodily form and will be,
upon death, ushered into it by Allah and his angels
• Who will be in Paradise? On this, Muslims differ. Some say that all people who believe in God
(Allah), including Christians and Jews (people of the book) will be admitted
into the Garden. Others say that only
Muslims will enjoy it, and all others will be consigned to the “hellfire.” Either way, however, Muslims believe that all
people, unless they resolutely refuse to believe, will eventually gain entrance
into paradise. Except for a few, Hell is
not permanent. It is a place of
purification, a temporary setback on the road to eternity.
• In addition, although Muslims are to do good
deeds and thereby gain greater favor with Allah, in the end, Allah will
determine, on the basis of belief, who enters Paradise. If a Muslim sincerely believes and has done everything
she can to please Allah she will, even if she has stumbled along the way, gain
entrance. Like the Hebrew and Christian
God, Allah looks at the heart.
• Like Judaism and Christianity, Islam views the
afterlife as a reward for belief and good deeds.
• (See Qur’an (9:72, 10:10, 11:108), 6:128,
11:106,107, 29:7, 5:18; 6:164, 11:114); Albert Hourani, A History of the
Arab Peoples; and Fazlur Rahman, Islam)
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