Akhirah, the Hereafter in Islam

Belief in the Last Day is one of the six articles of faith in Islam, alongside belief in God, the angels, the revealed books, the prophets and God’s decree. The Quran often pairs faith in God with faith in the Last Day, and its early chapters in particular speak with great force of the Hour, when the sky will be split, the mountains scattered like wool and the graves overturned. The hereafter, al-akhirah, is contrasted with al-dunya, the nearer life of this world, which the Quran calls a time of testing and passing enjoyment.

The Quranic cosmos has seven heavens, created ‘one above another’, and the earth below. Islamic tradition tells how the Prophet Muhammad was taken by night from Mecca to Jerusalem and then raised through the seven heavens, meeting earlier prophets in each, to the Lote Tree of the Furthest Limit, near which lies the Garden of Refuge. Paradise is therefore often pictured above the heavens, beneath the Throne of God, and hell below. Muslim scholars insist, however, that the hereafter belongs to al-ghayb, the unseen, which humans know only through revelation and cannot fully picture. The diagram on this page follows this traditional picture but is schematic, since the bridge, the grave and the Heights between paradise and hell are not places on a single map.

In Islamic belief, death comes at a time decreed by God, when the angel of death takes the soul. The Quran names him only as ‘the angel of death’; later tradition calls him Azrael or Izrail. Hadith describe the soul of a believer leaving the body gently, like water from a jug, and being carried up through the heavens, while the soul of a disbeliever is drawn out harshly.

Muslims bury their dead quickly, after washing the body and wrapping it in a simple white shroud, and the grave is aligned so that the dead person lies facing Mecca. According to hadith, once the mourners have left, two angels, named in a hadith collected by al-Tirmidhi as Munkar and Nakir, come to question the dead: Who is your Lord? What is your religion? Who is this man who was sent among you? The faithful answer rightly and their grave is widened and filled with light; others cannot answer and the grave becomes narrow and dark. Muslims often pray for the deceased to be made firm at the questioning.

The dead then remain in the barzakh, a ‘barrier’ or interval mentioned in the Quran, until the resurrection. Theologians such as Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya discussed how the soul and the body share in this state, and the idea gave rise to the practice of visiting graves, greeting the dead and praying for them.

Before the end, tradition speaks of signs of the Hour. The minor signs, described in hadith, include the spread of ignorance and injustice and people competing in building tall houses. The major signs include the appearance of the Dajjal, a deceiving false messiah, the return of Jesus, whom Muslims honour as a prophet, the release of Gog and Magog, and the sun rising in the west. Sunni and Shia traditions also expect the Mahdi, a guided leader, though they understand him differently: for Twelver Shia Muslims he is the twelfth imam, hidden since the ninth century. The Quran itself says that knowledge of the Hour’s timing belongs to God alone.

The Quran describes the end in a series of scenes. The trumpet is blown, which tradition associates with the angel Israfil, and all creation perishes; at a second blast the dead rise and are gathered on a vast plain. Hadith speak of the heat of that day and of people standing in long waiting. Each person receives the book of their deeds, those given it in the right hand rejoicing and those given it in the left lamenting. Deeds are weighed in the balance, al-mizan, and in Sunni belief the Prophet Muhammad is granted intercession for his community.

Then comes as-Sirat, the bridge over Jahannam. Hadith describe it as finer than a hair and sharper than a sword, and say that people cross it according to their deeds, some as fast as lightning, some like the wind, some crawling, while others fall. Beyond it lies Jannah, the Garden. The Quran describes it as gardens beneath which rivers flow, with shade, fruit, rivers of water, milk, honey and wine that does not intoxicate, and reunion with righteous family. Its highest level, Firdaws, lies beneath the Throne, and for many theologians the greatest reward is the vision of God.

Jahannam, the Fire, has seven gates in the Quran and is described in images of heat, thirst and regret. Mainstream Sunni teaching holds that believers who entered it for their sins will in the end be brought out by God’s mercy. The Quran also mentions al-Araf, the Heights, a place between the Garden and the Fire whose people can see both, which commentators explained in various ways.

Muslim writers have explored these teachings in many forms. Al-Ghazali’s Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife, the closing book of his great Revival of the Religious Sciences, gathered verses, hadith and sayings into a guide meant to soften the heart and turn the reader towards God. Philosophers such as Ibn Sina interpreted some descriptions as symbols of spiritual states, a reading that al-Ghazali criticised, while Sufis spoke of the vision of God as the true paradise.

Poets took up the theme as well. Abu al-Ala al-Maarri’s Epistle of Forgiveness, written around 1033, imagines a scholar touring paradise and meeting famous poets, some forgiven and some not, a playful and learned work. Accounts of the Prophet’s ascension spread widely, and one of them was translated into Latin and Old French in Castile around 1264 as the Book of the Ladder. In 1919 the Spanish scholar Miguel Asín Palacios argued that such texts influenced Dante’s Divine Comedy. Scholars still debate how far, and the question remains open. For Muslims today, the hereafter remains above all a call to live well, remembering that every deed, however small, will be seen.