(Life After Death) Must Read
(Syed zeeshan Ali shah, Karachi)
Allah says
Muslims believe that the
present life is a trial in preparation for the next realm of existence. When a
Muslim dies, he or she is washed and wrapped in a clean, white cloth (usually by
a family member) and buried after a special prayer, preferably the same day.
Muslims consider this a final service that they can do for their relatives and
an opportunity to remember that their own existence here on earth is brief.
The question of whether there is life after death does not fall under the
jurisdiction of science, as science is concerned only with classification and
analysis of sense data. Moreover, man has been busy with scientific inquiries
and research, in the modern sense of the term, only for the last few centuries,
while he has been familiar with the concept of life after death since time
immemorial.
All the Prophets of God called their people to worship God and to believe in
life after death. They laid so much emphasis on the belief in life after death
that even a slight doubt in it meant denying God and made all other beliefs
meaningless.
The very fact that all the Prophets of God have dealt with this metaphysical
question of life after death so confidently and so uniformly - the gap between
their ages in some cases, being thousands of years - goes to prove that the
source of their knowledge of life after death as proclaimed by them all, was the
same, i.e. Divine revelation.
We also know that these Prophets of God were greatly opposed by their people,
mainly on the issue of life after death, as their people thought it impossible.
But in spite of opposition, the Prophets won many sincere followers.
The question arises: what made those followers forsake the established beliefs,
traditions and customs of their forefathers, notwithstanding the risk of being
totally alienated from their own community? The simple answer is: they made use
of their faculties of mind and heart and realized the truth.
Did they realize the truth through perceptual consciousness? They couldn’t, as
perceptual experience of life after death is impossible. God has given man
besides perceptual consciousness, rational, aesthetic and moral consciousness
too. It is this consciousness that guides man regarding realities that cannot be
verified through sensory data. That is why all the Prophets of God while calling
people to believe in God and life after death, appeal to the aesthetic, moral
and rational consciousness of man.