Afterlife

Now we know that everything dies at the end of its life,

including ourselves and everyone we know.

Sooner or later, our bodies lose their connection with the part of us that we know of as ourselves,

our souls,

the part that we use to choose what we want to do, to move, think and feel.

When we see a dead body

it is clearly not the person it was when it was alive.

So the spirit, the soul, the life-force goes,

and what we are left with is something that can no longer repair itself,

or protect itself from attack by all the tiny creatures that want to eat it.

Just like a piece of fruit we leave uneaten will eventually rot

and be eaten away by tiny bugs and fungi.

And slowly, with no life inside,

our bodies lose the water that has kept them soft and squishy

and they dry out and crumble into dust.

But as our dead bodies rot on their way to turning into dust,

they smell bad to warn us that during this time

the bugs inside them are dangerous to those who are still alive.

So what are we to do with all our bodies

to keep them from making the live ones around them sick?

Well, humans have come up with various ways

to keep the dead away from the living.

Sailors far from shore

will just put dead bodies into the sea,

to be eaten by the fishes.

But what about those who die on land?

Some people just leave dead bodies in special places

for the vultures to come down and eat them.

and some people think that

the best thing to do is to burn them

until there is nothing left but ashes.

But the most common thing for humans to do

is to bury their dead under the ground.

And that is what muslims usually do.

And one reason that muslims bury their dead is because some people used to say

that if someone's dead body was burned and turned to ashes

and then scattered far and wide,

that God would not be able to put that body together again

and that way it would escape any punishment that it deserved for the things it did while it was alive.

But of course, whatever we do to dead bodies

God can bring them back to life,

because God can do anything.

And in the Qur'an God tells us

that our souls will be reunited with our bodies on the Last Day at the end of time,

the day that muslims call Yaum-id-Deen.

And on that day we will be judged on the way that we have lived our lives,

and we will receive what we have earned during that time.

And our bodies will be witnesses as to what we have done,

and we are judged not on how much money we have made,

but on those acts that show whether we are good or bad.

And the reward for those whose good deeds outweigh the bad

is a life in the Garden of Paradise,

known in Arabic as Jannat,

where whatever we wish for is there for us.

And the reward for those whose bad deeds outweigh the good

is to feel pain in the way that they made others feel in life,

the pain of Hellfire, which muslims call Jahannum.

In the world that we live in things can sometimes seem to be very unfair,

with good people suffering through no fault of their own,

and bad people managing to avoid punishment.

But God made the Creation with balance,

and the balance of Justice finally comes

with the Judgement of Yaumiddin.