Afterlife

When thinking about the Afterlife,

we really have to consider just what we mean by death,

and it turns out that death isn't particularly easy to define.

Well, in a way it is,

because almost everyone understands it to somehow mean the end of life,

and that's where the problem is . It's life that is the bit that is harder to define,

which makes it hard to say when it's not there,

but again, everybody seems to have an opinion.

Which comes from something that is even harder to define,

which is self awareness and human consciousness.

As muslims we know that life is complicated.

For a start we can distinguish between the Dunya and the Akhira,

as time functions completely differently in those places,

and we know that the body is like a vehicle for the soul,

the self, while it is in the Dunya,

But the body can't survive without that life force,

so the urge to cling to life is intrinsic to the body,

which will fight for it even when there is no consciousness

and even if it is beyond repair.

So dragging life away from the body

is going to be a seriously sore fight,

no matter how many painkillers are used to ease it.

So what do we usually mean by death?

We mean the detachment of the soul,

the life force

from the material body.

And does it have to be painful?

Like birth, the process involves pain of some kind,

but how it is felt is not necessarily clear,

as pain comes in many shapes and sizes.

The Qur'an says that death's agony comes in truth,

but it also comes with truth,

as we see all the things we have hidden from ourselves,

a painful encounter with reality,

with the pain being commensurate with our behaviour in life.

When the lungs stop breathing,

and the heart stops beating,

and the body's electrical system sputters to a stop,

the process of decomposition quickly gets under way,

flesh rotting on the bone,

and bone turning to dust,

as the body returns to the clay of which it was made.

The soul has no more need of a body

until Yaum-id-Deen,

when people will say that it somehow feels the same.

But the soul,

the immaterial self,

has other things to deal with at this point,

that are known as the questioning and punishments of the grave.

These are not spoken of in the Qur'an,

but appear in Hadith from numerous sources.

They take place in the Barzakh,

the crossover point between life and death,

a blurry kind of barrier, like that between fresh water and the sea,

where one side is almost fresh water,

and the other fully merged with salt sea.

But the barrier only permits movement in one direction.

When fresh water meets salt

the transformation can only operate in one direction,

the fresh becomes salt not the other way around.

Similarly the process of dying

only goes one way.

it is said that in the Barzakh

souls are visited by two angels,

named Munkir and Nakeer,

who ask three questions.

Who is your Liege?

What is your Way of Life?

Who is your Messenger?

For those who answer correctly the grave expands

and becomes a doorway to the Garden,

and they can smell its perfume beckoning them,

but for those who denied the existence of God,

and felt no gratitude for what they were given in their lives,

they will feel a squeezing of their bones being crushed together,

and a doorway will open to the fires of hell,

to give a taste of what they can anticipate on Judgement Day.

Whichever outcome we have to face

will depend on our state when we are dying,

which is why we always need to be prepared.

Death can come with years of warning,

giving us a chance to make sure that our lives are in order,

but death can also come as a surprise,

so we need to be ready to face the grave

at all times of our lives.

We need to go to sleep expecting not to wake,

and to rise expecting not to survive the day,

being prepared to die before we die.

Following a muslim way of life,

of surrender to the One God,

following the way of the Messenger,

with regular prayer to remind us of how we live our lives

in service to our Liege,

that is the best way

to achieve a state of mind that equips us for death and the afterlife.

In that way we are trying to live our lives

always in the best state possible,

looking on the world with mercy and generosity,

wishing blessings on the world, not anger,

and being in a constant state of gratitude

for all that we have been given in our lives.