15 - Islam and the Afterlife

The Muslim fundamentalist who hijacked and then flew jet airliners into the flanks of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, died believing that they were holy martyrs. This event motivated non-Muslims to take a closer look at Islamic conceptions about the afterlife. The consensus among mainstream Muslims was that the views and actions of the suicidal pilots were both eccentric and dangerous. The author states that the terrorists chose to martyr themselves because of their fundamentalist, extremist proclivities, a phenomenon that is not confined to Islam. Every religion includes a minority faction that is willing to die for the cause.

Islam was formed based on the doctrines of both Judaism and Christianity filtered through the lens of Muhammad’s revelations. Information contained in the Old and New Testaments that conflicted with the Holy Quran was regarded as having been corrupted. The Quran acknowledges both Moses and Jesus as true prophets but is regarded as being the final and definitive message from a monotheistic God to humanity. The revelations granted to Muhammed were not exclusively directed toward Arabs but indicated the correct path for every inhabitant of earth. Islam developed a more tolerant view of its predecessors than did Christianity, and worked just as hard, if not harder, than Christianity to convert nonbelievers to their faith. The term that the Quran most uses to designate Muhammed is “rasul,” meaning “apostle.” The revelation given to Muhammed mirrors what was given to Paul on the road to Damascus: a command to proselytize, conveying a specific message of salvation. Central to the mission of Islam was the Islamic conception of the afterlife, of paradise.

Revelations contained in the Quran, delivered to Muhammed by the angel Gabriel, range from short ecstatic utterances to much longer discourses on morals and the primacy of monotheism. The latter topic was significant for the polytheistic Arabs that Muhammed first addressed. Muhammed’s teaching soon created conflict with Jewish and Christian Arabian tribes, other Arab tribes, and even with the Arab tribe that he was born into, the Quraysh. Muhammed was both secular and religious leader of his early following, and since this era distinctions between secular and religious authority in Islam are rare. Religious conversion is associated with military conquests. Evangelical zeal led to the unification of, by force of arms, of the entire Arabian Peninsula. This resulted in the creation of an army in a part of the world that neither the Byzantine Christians not the Sasanian Persians expected to ever pose a threat to themselves. When the Arabs unexpectedly ventured forth from Arabia, they managed to conquer half of the Mediterranean world. Ultimately, subsequent conquests made through either force or persuasion established Islam as a universal world religion.

When the Muslim armies first emerged, the Byzantine Empire in Anatolia and the Sassanian Empire in Iran were exhausted from warring among themselves. Muslims took full advantage of this opportunity by capturing Syria, Jerusalem, and the Levant, and conquering large portions of North Africa. Islam eventually reached Spain where it staged forays into France. By the mid-fifteenth century Anatolia was overrun, and Byzantium was renamed Istanbul. In the sixteenth century (1529 CE) the Muslim army of the Ottoman Sultan of Istanbul were at the gates of Vienna. Like the rapid spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire, Muslims interpreted their military successes as a sign of God’s favor and as a demonstration of the truth of its doctrines. After stalling out after having effectively surrounded Europe, Islam faced a crisis of confidence.

The enormous and complex regional empires that emerged from these conquests were well governed, but the ecclesiastical organization of Islam remained, and remains relatively informal. There is no structure in Islam comparable to the hierarchical Roman Catholic church. This makes contemporary Islam more like Judaism than Christianity. An evolving variety of local clerical administrators of varying effectiveness oversees everyday operation. The true unifying factor of Islam is the Quran, a record of the revelations of Muhammad that embraces a multitude of topics.

A major focus of the Quran is resurrection and the afterlife. Second only in importance to the oneness of God is “The Day of Judgement” (Yawm al-Din) or “the Hour” (As-sa’ah), a day of reckoning (Hisab) for every human being. On the great Day of Judgement resurrection (Qiyamah) will be the reward for those who have faith and have acted justly. Quran 22:5-7 states:

O mankind! If you have any doubt concerning Resurrection, then know that it is surely We Who created you from dust, then from a drop of sperm, then from a clot of blood, then from a little lump of flesh, some of it shapely and other shapeless. (We are rehearsing this) that We may make the reality clear to you. We cause (the drop of sperm) that We please to remain in the wombs till an appointed time. We bring you forth as infants (and nurture you) that you may come of age. Among you is he that dies (at a young age) and he who is kept back to the most abject age so that after once having known, he reaches a stage when he knows nothing. You see the earth dry and barren and then no sooner than We send down water upon it, it begins to quiver and swell and brings forth every kind of beauteous vegetation. All this is because Allah, He is the Truth, and because He resurrects the dead, and because He has power over everything, (all of which shows that) the Hour shall surely come to pass - in this there is no doubt - and Allah shall surely resurrect those that are in graves.

As was the case with Christianity, this kernel of millennialism was soon integrated into mainstream Muslim institutions and doctrines. Muhammed did not begin to receive his revelations until he was 40 years old, and he lived for another two decades. His exercise of both temporal and religious power permitted him to build a movement that recognized the pending end of the world but exercised its authority in the present. Figuratively speaking, Muhammad was both the Jesus and the Paul of nascent Islam. Like Jesus, Muhammad stopped short of predicting when the end would come, but did describe it in vivid and unsettling detail. Quran 81:1-14 states:

When the sun is rolled up.

When the stars are dimmed.

When the mountains are set in motion.

When the relationships are suspended.

When the beasts are gathered.

When the oceans are set aflame.

When the souls are paired.

When the girl, buried alive, is asked:

For what crime was she killed?

When the records are made public.

When the sky is peeled away.

When the Fire is set ablaze.

When Paradise is brought near.

Each soul will know what it has readied.

These verses reflect Muhammed’s concern with the social evils of his day, including the practice of exposing unwanted infant females to the elements. At the end of time, the fires of hell are set ablaze even as Paradise is brought near. As was the case with the Christian Church Fathers, the terrors of hellfire aided efforts to convert pagans to Islam. The word Islam itself means “submission,” a figurative synonym for “conversion.” Christians and Jews would not have been offended by a message that promoted morality as the sole means of avoiding eternal punishment, but the pagans who lived in regions surrounding the birthplace of Islam were incredibly offended. Quran 22:5-7 is addressed to this hostile audience:

O people! If you are in doubt about the Resurrection - We created you from dust, then from a small drop, then from a clinging clot, then from a lump of flesh, partly developed and partly undeveloped. In order to clarify things for you. And We settle in the wombs whatever We will for a designated term, and then We bring you out as infants, until you reach your full strength. And some of you will pass away, and some of you will be returned to the vilest age, so that he may not know, after having known. And you see the earth still; but when We send down water on it, it vibrates, and swells, and grows all kinds of lovely pairs. That is because God is the truth, and because He gives life to the dead, and because He is Capable of everything. And because the Hour is coming - there is no doubt about it - and because God will resurrect those in the graves.

Peace and tranquility is depicted as existing within the Islamic community. Death and suffering pervade everything that lies outside of it. The author surmises that Muhammed learned from the missionary activity of the Jews and Christians of Arabia but tailored it to more effectively persuade Arabs to convert to Islam. Elaborate polytheistic temple rituals were suppressed in favor of simple daily devotionals and spoken sermons which both evangelized the unconverted and sustained the converts.

The chapters (surahs) and verses (verses) of the Quran consist mostly of sermons, lectures, and exhortations rather than the narratives of the Hebrew and Christian Bible. It would be difficult to reconstruct how the original message received by Muhammed became adapted by him in the concluding decades of his life. The author believes this was an opportunity for Muhammed to reject doctrine that proved to be impractical and to emphasize doctrine that had proved to be useful. An urgent millennial message may have been scaled back to better focus on institution building. By the time of the Prophet’s death, the Muslim community and the principles of it piety were firmly entrenched. Millennialism survived as the basis for an emphasis on purification, repentance, and submission as prerequisites for joining the community of believers.

Jews, Christians, Sabeans, and, eventually, Zoroastrians, were permitted to remain in their own communities as “people of the book” (‘ahl al-Kitab) but were subjected to taxation and social discrimination. Quran 3:83-85 is typically interpreted as denying salvation to all non-Muslims, but intervening verse 84 seems to leave the door slightly ajar for Jews and Christians:

Do they desire other than the religion of God, when to Him has submitted everything in the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly, and to Him they will be returned? Say, “We believe in God, and in what was revealed to us; and in what was revealed to Abraham, and Ishmael, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the Patriarchs; and in what was given to Moses, and Jesus, and the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and to Him we submit.” Whoever seeks other than Islam as a religion, it will not be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he will be among the losers.

Page 232 of Ishaq’s “The Life of Muhammad” accepts Jews as equal to Muslims in a section titled “The Covenant Between the Muslims and the Medinans and with the Jews:”

Believers are friends one to the other to the exclusion of outsiders. To the Jew who follows us belong help and equality. He shall not be wronged, nor shall his enemies be aided. The peace of the believers is indivisible.

Early Western scholars of the Quran mistakenly believed that it could be easily explained because it was created, as Ernest Renan stated, “in historical times.” Modern scholars of the Quran, however, admit that this field of study remains in its infancy. The present edition of the Quran was assembled in the reign of Uthman ibn Affan, the third Khalifa (“successor”). All versions that disagreed with it were destroyed. Some scholars feel free to attempt to reconstruct the content of Qurans that predated this “orthodox” compilation. Uthman’s redaction placed longer passages before shorter ones and was therefore not chronologically arranged, an approach similar to the New Testament’s disposition of the Epistles of Paul. Scholars believe that this is an inversion of the timeline of Muhammad’s revelation, with short, ecstatic utterances having preceded the longer prophetic writings. Muslims regard the Quaran itself as divine, rather than Muhammad, but an extensive corpus of hagiographies of the prophet nevertheless exists.

Some scholars believe that early Islam was practically indistinguishable from Judaism, a discredited approach which is termed Hagarism. In the Biblical account, Hagar was the Egyptian slave of Sarai, Abram's wife (whose names later became Sarah and Abraham). Sarai’s inability to conceive prompted her to enlist Hagar as her surrogate. Hagar, by Abram, bore a son named Ishmael who became the progenitor of the Ishmaelites, generally taken to be the Arabs. Later, Sarai and Abram later produced a son named Isaac. Determined that Ishmael would not share in Isaac's inheritance, Sarai demanded that Hagar and her son be exiled. She and her son wandered aimlessly until their water was completely consumed. In a moment of despair, she burst into tears. God heard her son crying and came to rescue them. An angel opened Hagar's eyes and she saw a well of water. The angel told Hagar that God would "make a great nation" of Ishmael. Hagar obtained an Egyptian wife for Ishmael and they settled in the Desert of Paran. The Quranic narrative slightly differs from the Biblical account: it is God alone who commands Abraham to take Hagar (Hājar) and Ishmael (Ismā'īl) down to the desert. Hājar is honored as an especially important matriarch of monotheism, since it was through Ismā'īl that Muhammad would be born.

Western perceptions that Islam expanded primarily due to the forced conversions of conquered peoples are overwhelmingly incorrect, despite this technique having been occasionally employed. Quran 2:256 proclaims:

Let there be no compulsion in religion, for the truth stands out clearly from falsehood. So whoever renounces false gods and believes in Allah has certainly grasped the firmest, unfailing hand-hold. And Allah is All-Hearing, All-Knowing.

Conquered nations did not immediately convert to Islam. In the case of the conquest of Iran in 656 CE, a significant increase in the number of believers did not occur until about 150 years later. Islams focus on winning new converts did not diminish its role as a guide for living with its call to prayer five times a day, its five pillars of pious deeds, its rites of passage, and its comprehensive and detailed theology. In the wake of millions of conversions, Islam became the religion of a large and stable population. As is the case with contemporary Christianity, present Islamic missionary activity is mostly undertaken by sectarian groups.

Muslim burial customs are very similar to those practiced by Jews. The dead are buried as soon as possible, and the performance of this task is regarded as virtuous despite belief in the uncleanliness of corpses. The dead are bathed, dressed simply, then enshrouded. Coffins are optional, and funerals are intentionally lowkey, like Judaic practices. Unique to Islam is a preference for nighttime burials in emulation of the burial of Muhammad. Presumably to avoid displays of excessive emotion, women are forbidden to attend. Like Jewish funerals, those of the Muslims were intended to counter the Near Eastern tradition of elaborate burial rites. It was believed that the senses of the bodies of the dead remained intact, and that pain experienced during the process of decomposition was an atonement for sins committed while living.

The Quran is largely silent about the period between the death and resurrection of a person. Quran 23:96-100 can be interpreted as alternately referring either to the condition of the dead or of the living who await judgement:

Respond to evil with what is best. We know well what they claim. And say, “My Lord! I seek refuge in You from the temptations of the devils. And I seek refuge in You, my Lord, that they ˹even˺ come near me.” When death approaches any of them, they cry, “My Lord! Let me go back, so I may do good in what I left behind.” Never! It is only a ˹useless˺ appeal they make. And there is a barrier behind them until the Day they are resurrected.

This passage describes a barrier, “barzakh” in Arabic from the Persian loan word “farsakh,” which can mean “physical barrier,” “hinderance,” or “separation.” These verses indicate that the inhabitants of earth have only one life wherein they may prove their worth, and that the dead will not have a second chance to make things right, an effective spur to repentance, conversion, and the performance of charitable works. A barrier separates the dead from the living, a condition that is also described by Jesus in the parable of the rich man and Lazurus. Luke 16:23-26 records the fruitless petition of a deceased rich man to a beggar he ignored while he was still alive.:

And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

Like their intentionally unelaborate burial practices, proclaiming that there is a barrier between the dead and the living also served as a countermeasure to the prevailing pagan belief that the living could communicate with the dead. The living could, however, journey to the afterlife in dreams and visions, primarily so they could inform others what awaits believers and nonbelievers in the afterlife. From the beginning, Islam proclaimed that only believers would be resurrected. Originally, the fate of nonbelievers was confined to their not being resurrected. An interim state was later developed in response to an apparent delay in Judgement Day, and Muslim traditions about hell also emerged which allowed imaginative writers to describe the fiery punishments that are reserved for infidels. As is the case with other religions, these refinements served to encourage the faithful and to gain new concerts. The dead that inhabit an interim period have gained their permanent identity, awaiting rewards or punishments in the final consummation.

The belief that a corpse retains its senses indicates that the essence of a person adheres to its body after the person has died. The readjustment of doctrine required by the delay of God’s judgement which led to the creation of an Islamic hell also led to the development of traditions that describe the intermediate state between death and resurrection, a Muslim version of Purgatory where sins could be expiated through contrition and punishments. Two synonymous terms, “nafs” (“self” or “soul”) and “ruh” (God's own spirit which was blown into Adam, and which is considered the source of human life) are used to describe an identity that exists apart from the body. Quran 39:42 opaquely alludes to this disembodied self:

Allah takes the souls at the time of their death, and those that do not die [He takes] during their sleep. Then He keeps those for which He has decreed death and releases the others for a specified term. Indeed in that are signs for a people who give thought.

Here is Islam’s standard commentary on the preceding verse:

In verse 42, it was said: (Allah fully takes away the souls [of the people] at the time of their death, and [of] those who do not die, in their sleep). The word: tawaffa literally means to receive, to take back, exact. In this verse, Allah Ta’ ala has stated very clearly and emphatically that the spirits or souls (arwah) of living beings are under the free will and discretionary dispensation of Allah Ta’ ala at all times and under all conditions. He can seize, exact and take them back at will. And there is at least one manifestation of this absolutely autonomous dispensation that every living being sees and feels every day when, once asleep, the ruh (spirit, soul) of a person is, so to say, taken away from the body, then, returned on rising from sleep, and ultimately, one such time is bound to come when this ruh stands seized, absolutely and conclusively, following which, this will never be returned.

Similar to preceding discussions of Judaic conceptions of the afterlife, the ultimate reunion of body and after resurrection enabled Muslims to experience a more intensified version of earthly indulgences such as food, wine, and sex in the afterlife. As was the case with Judaism and Christianity, later traditions that describe the afterlife filled in whatever details may have been missing from the fundamental texts. The angel of death, Izra’il, was believed to painlessly extract souls that were then conveyed to heaven in the company of angels. During the purgatory-like barzakh interim period, the pains of decomposition are inflicted on flesh that has been temporarily divested of its ruh, or soul. The angels Munkar and Nakir interview the deceased and determine, based on the quantity of good deeds performed, the extent of their punishments in the grave. The sounding of a trumpet by an angel (Gibril, or alternately Israfil) at the final judgement is an event that was extensively elaborated upon in later Muslim traditions. The dead are reunited with their flesh and sit upon their graves to await judgement.

The historical development of Islamic views of the afterlife is too vast and varied to summarize, but representative of these views is a work by fifteenth-century author al-Suyuti which, like the poems of Dante, describes the circumstances of both the blessed and the condemned after the final judgement. This writer considers heaven and hell to be parts of the existing cosmos. This permits the dead to wander throughout these domains and to visit the living through dreams and visions. Often, the faithful dead are portrayed as birdlike, winged creatures. Martyrs are described as being green (an auspicious and favored hue) birds inhabiting the highest heaven, surrounded by lush foliage and abundant water. Conversely, the unfaithful dead are condemned to be consumed by enormous black birds in hell. Reincarnation is rejected as being antithetical to good morals, but the influence of this pervasive Platonic doctrine sometimes (as it does in Jewish mystical meditation and speculations of the Christian Fathers) can be discerned in various Islamic mystical or sectarian writings. Ultimately Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, accepted the Neoplatonic cosmology with its hierarchical, nesting spheres of goodness while rejecting its doctrine of reincarnation. As also the case with Judaism and Christianity, the incorporation of Neoplatonism into Islamic doctrine gave rise to mysticism. Neoplatonist concepts validated ecstatic states wherein goodness and divinity could be apprehended through meditation, and also served as the source for Islamic conceptions about the immortality of the soul.

Muhammad’s “Night Journey,” termed the Mi’raj, is only briefly alluded to in the Quran, 17:1:

Glory be to the One Who took His servant ˹Muḥammad˺ by night from the Sacred Mosque to the Farthest Mosque whose surroundings We have blessed, so that We may show him some of Our signs. Indeed, He alone is the All-Hearing, All-Seeing.

Elaborate travelogues were created based on this short description of an ascent to heaven by Muhammad. In the Mi’raj tradition, Muhammad is prepared for his meeting with God by the archangels Jibrīl (Gabriel) and Mīkāl (Michael) one evening while he is asleep in the Kaʿbah, the sacred shrine of Mecca. They open up his body and purify his heart by removing all traces of error, doubt, idolatry, and paganism and by filling it with wisdom and belief. Later traditions add that he is then transported in a single night from Mecca to Jerusalem by the winged mythical creature Burāq. From Jerusalem he is accompanied by Jibrīl to heaven, ascending possibly by ladder or staircase (miʿrāj). Muhammad and Jibrīl enter the first heaven and proceed through all seven levels until they reach the throne of God. Along the way they meet the prophets Adam, Yaḥyā (John), ʿĪsā (Jesus), Yūsuf (Joseph), Idrīs, Hārūn (Aaron), Mūsā (Moses), and Ibrāhīm (Abraham) and visit hell and paradise. Moses alone of all the inhabitants of heaven speaks at any length to the visitors. Moses tells Muhammad that is more highly regarded by God than himself, and that Muhammad’s following outnumbers his own.

Based on a later tradition of the prophet’s sayings, the Hadith, the soul, once separated from the body, experiences a journey similar to Muhammad’s ascent from Jerusalem. The Mi’raj attributes a degree of importance to Jerusalem that is absent from the Quran. Jerusalem thus became an important Muslim pilgrimage site shortly after its capture. In 691 or 692 CE, the conquerors demolished an existing Byzantine church and constructed a mikdasa (a sanctuary, rather than a mosque) upon the Temple Mount. Inscriptions in this mikdasa emphasized the oneness of God, and the primacy of Islam over its incompletely enlightened predecessors, Judaism and Christianity.

The Hadath, along with other post-Quranic stories of Mohmmad’s ascent, inspired the establishment of several Islamic religious practices. Muhammad has an audience before the divine throne where he is commanded that Muslims pray fifty times a day. Moses advises Mohammad to repeatedly return to the throne to have this number reduced. Islam ultimately ordained that Muslims pray five times a day, more than the Jews were required to but equal to the number of prayers offered daily by Zoroastrians. The Quran prescribes three daily prayers, but the story of Muhammed’s success in having reduced the initially mandated fifty prayers makes five per diem seem like a relatively light obligation. Additionally, Muhammad’s early detractors had objected to his ordinariness, aside from his role as a revelator. Al-Isra 17:90-93 records these objections:

They challenge ˹the Prophet˺, “We will never believe in you until you cause a spring to gush forth from the earth for us, or until you have a garden of palm trees and vineyards, and cause rivers to flow abundantly in it, or cause the sky to fall upon us in pieces, as you have claimed, or bring Allah and the angels before us, face to face, or until you have a house of gold, or you ascend into heaven—and even then we will not believe in your ascension until you bring down to us a book that we can read.” Say, “Glory be to my Lord! Am I not only a human messenger?”

The Quran itself recommends that such objections can only be countered with statements that describe God’s majesty. Al-Isra 17:96 is a representative rebuttal:

Say, “Sufficient is Allah as a Witness between me and you. He is certainly All-Knowing, All-Seeing of His servants.”

Before the advent of Islam, stories of heavenly ascents were a theme common to most religions. This theme was domesticated to better serve the Islamic cause, much as the city of Jerusalem was drawn into its doctrine. As noted, Muhammad’s own Mi’raj served as inspiration for other ascent traditions. Al-Qasd Ila Ilah (“The Quest for God”) is attributed to A’bul Qasim al-Junayd. Its ninth chapter contains the Mi'raj of Bisṭāmī, a ninth-century Persian Sufi Muslim from north-central Iran. The Mi'raj of Bisṭāmī seems as if Bisṭāmī is going through a journey toward self-knowledge as he ascends through each heaven, communicating with angels who increase in number as he rises higher. Bisṭāmī is one of the expositors of the state of fanā, the notion of dying in mystical union with Allah. Bastami was famous for "the boldness of his expression of the mystic’s complete absorption into the mysticism." Many "ecstatic utterances" have been attributed to Bisṭāmī, which lead to him being known as the "drunken" or "ecstatic" school of Islamic mysticism. His utterances are more provocative than those of Muhammad recorded in the Quran, chiefly his proclamation, “Glory to me,” wherein he claims divine status in the tradition of earlier accounts of angelic transformation. Like the Mi’raj of Mohammad, Bisṭāmī is granted a vision of God, cementing his status as a safi (“chosen one”). Pages 248-249 of Michael A. Sell’s 1996 book “Early Islamic Mysticism” replicates the story of Bisṭāmī’s theophany:

I continued to cross sea after sea until I ended up at the greatest sea on which was the royal throne (‘arsh) of the Compassionate. I continued to recite his praises until I saw chat all that there was - from the throne to the earth, of Cherubim (karibiyyin), angels, and the bearers of the royal throne and others created by Allah Most High and Glorious in the heavens and the earth - was smaller, from the perspective of the flight of the secret of my heart in quest for him, than a mustard seed between sky and earth. Then he continued to show me of the subtleties of his beneficence and the fullness of his power and the greatness of his sovereignty what would wear out the tongue to depict and describe. Through all that, I kept saying: O my dear one! My goal is other than that which you are showing me, and I did not turn toward it out of respect for his sanctity. And when Allah Most High and Glorious knew the sincerity of my will in quest for him, he called out “To me, to me!” and said O my chosen one (safi), come near to me and look upon the plains of my splendor and the domains of my brightness.’’ Sit upon the carpet of my holiness until you see the subtleties of my artisanship I-ness. You are my chosen one, my beloved, and the best of my creatures.

Upon hearing that, it was as if | were melting like melting lead. Then he gave me a drink from the spring of graciousness (lutf) with the cup of intimacy. Then he brought me to a state that I am unable to describe. Then he brought me closer and closer to him until I was nearer to him than the spirit is to the body.

Then the spirit of each prophet received me, saluted me, and glorified my situation. They spoke to me and | spoke to them. Then the spirit of Muhammad, the blessings and peace of God be upon him, received me, saluted me, and said: O Abu Yazid: welcome! welcome! Allah has preferred you over many of his creatures. When you return to earth, bear to my community my salutation and give them sincere advice as much as you can and call them to Allah Most High and Glorious. I kept on in this way until I was like he was before creation and only the real remained (baqiya) without being or relation or place or position or quality. May his glory be glorified and his names held transcendent!

Parallels with Mesopotamian, Jewish, Christian, and Hellenistic ascent stories are evident in the preceding passages. The adept enters an ecstatic state, journeys to heaven, and is greeted upon arrival. The traveler then encounters saints and prophets, and, ultimately, God. A state of ecstasy is sustained throughout the narrative. In the presence of God, the adept attains the immortal status of a saint or angel. The content of these stories is a blend of physiological experience and cultural expectations.

In recent times Islam has become increasing associated with martyrdom. The initial success of Islam can be attributed to a martyr-like ethos, but the earliest martyrs were restrained by rules of engagement written in the Quran. It was revealed that those who die for the faith need not molder in their graves, awaiting the final judgement. Al-‘Ankabut 29:57-58 states:

Every soul will taste death, then to Us you will ˹all˺ be returned. ˹As for those who believe and do good, We will certainly house them in elevated˺ mansions in Paradise, under which rivers flow, to stay there forever. How excellent is the reward for those who work ˹righteousness!˺

The term “shahid” is commonly used in Arabic to mean "martyr,” but it literally means "witness" in Quranic Arabic. Its development closely parallels that of the Greek word martys, the origin of the term martyr used in the New Testament which may have inspired the Islamic designation. Terms shared by different religions, however, cannot be universally defined. An interpretation common to all religions is that martyrs enjoy a special reward in the afterlife. Muslims augment this common view with the belief that martyrs await the day of judgement in a specially prepared aljamia (“pleasure garden”). Like Rabbinical Judaism, Muslims identify this waiting area as the garden of Eden. Those who die in holy wars, Jihad, are also entitled to await judgement in this portion of heaven. The greater Jihad described in the Quran refers to a personal, interior battle to acquire good morals, but the lesser Jihad, or holy war, is the Quran’s principal topic of discussion. The term mujahid (“striver”) designates the soldier-warriors of holy wars. Every Muslim is obligated to serve as a mujahid. The Quran specifies what is allowed and what is forbidden during a holy war. The random killing of civilians, or terrorism, is forbidden, and so is suicide.

For Muslims, martyrdom should be actively sought and earnestly prayed for. The Hadith states:

Whoever honestly asks Allah for martyrdom, Allah will grant him martyrdom even if he dies in his own bed.

Holy war and a penchant for martyrdom fueled the early Muslim conquests of the Middle East and significant portions of Asia and Europe. The tradition of immediate translation to heaven for soldiers slain in combat began with the battle of Badr in 624. Muhammad’s small band of Muslims was vastly outnumbered by forces comprised of members of his own tribe, the Quraysh. Prayer revealed that the angel Gibril would be fighting alongside the Muslims. Muhammad’s army scored a complete victory, and many prominent Meccan opponents were killed. The victory at Badr was a watershed so momentous for the nascent Muslim community that it was believed to be miraculous. In 630, after years of struggle, the Quraysh surrendered Mecca to Muhammad and became Muslims. Quran 37:41-49 describes the augmented felicity of the 15 original mujahidin who died in battle that day, and of the many thousands of martyrs who have followed them to paradise:

For them awaits a known provision, a variety of delicious fruits; and they shall be honored in the Gardens of Bliss. They will be seated upon couches set face to face; a cup filled with wine from its springs, will be passed around to them; white, sparkling (wine), a delight to the drinkers. There will neither be any harm in it for their body nor will it intoxicate their mind. Theirs shall be wide-eyed maidens with bashful, restrained glances, so delicate as the hidden peel under an egg's shell.

The pleasure garden reserved for Muslim martyrs resembles those of oriental potentates, complete with women and wine, indulgences forbidden to youth in the circumscribed setting of the Near East. Later theologians and mystics described the garden as a blend of pleasure and piety. It remains a lively tradition in Islam and remains especially relevant to those who aspire to become martyrs. For the sake of Muslims from cultures less receptive to the ideas of hedonism as a heavenly reward, Islam provides a variety of more sophisticated portrayals of the afterlife where physicality is reinterpreted as a metaphor for a more philosophical or mystical condition.

Islam as originally devised does not recognize any means by which the dead can intercede on behalf of the living, or the living can improve the condition of the dead. Preceding mythologies describing heavenly ascents to obtain these improvements such as the Merkabah and Gnostic traditions nevertheless influenced Islam and became fully developed in Sufi and Marabout Islam. This led to the creation of the Muslim equivalent of Christian saints, agents of divine intercession which seem to be common to every world culture. The Kabod figure, named Melatron by the Rabbis, was reimagined in mystical Islam to represent the principal bridge between God and humanity. Quran 9:30 contains this warning:

The Jews say, “Ezra is the son of Allah,” while the Christians say, “The Messiah is the son of Allah.” Such are their baseless assertions, only parroting the words of earlier disbelievers. May Allah condemn them! How can they be deluded ˹from the truth˺?

Despite this warning, the doctrine of intercession by intermediaries first appears in Islam in the ghulat, or ghuluww (meaning “exaggerating about something”), extremist Gnostics and mystical Shi’s (the forerunner of Sufism, and viewed as heretical by mainstream Muslims). According to these traditions, God did not create the world, but relegated this task to a lesser, created deity. This was the role of Metatron for the Rabbis, and of Salman al-Farisi (who is based on Metatron) in the “Umm al-Qitab,” an eighth century Persian Gnostic apocalypse. In the tenth century, Islamic historian al-Masudi is first to write about the Karaite Jews, a sect that began to coalesce in the Muslim setting of eight century Iraq. The Karaites were the likely transmitters of Samaritan traditions. Al-Masudi ascribes the origin of Metatron not only to Enoch 3, but also to an early Jewish tract entitled “Shi’ur Qoma” (“The Measure of the Divine Stature”) which was condemned for its anthropomorphic descriptions of bejeweled, measurable God. Later Jewish rationalists like Maimonides were exceptionally offended, but the evolving Kabbalists were not ashamed of the Shi’ur Qoma. On the contrary, they regarded it as a repository of divine mysteries.

Binitarianism, the belief that the one true God exists as two persons (the Father and the Son, or in the case of Islam, God and the Mahdi) not only continued to influence Jewish mysticism but is also evident in Islam as late as the era of Iranian Shi’ite cleric Muḥammad Bāqir b. Muḥammad Taqī al-Majlisī (circa 1627 – March 29, 1699). Taqi al-Majlisi is regularly critiqued for his close relationship with the Safavid Shah Abbas II, for his rejection (or, for some, persecution) of Sufism, and for popularizing an uncritical, accessible sectarian version of the Shia faith. Mirzā Ḥosayn Ṭabarsi/Ṭabresi Nuri (d. 1902), who sharply criticized the belief in miracles as credulity, reported a great number of dreams in which scholars were visited by Majlesi.  In several of these accounts Majlesi is presented as the apotheosis of an Imamite scholar who is one of the intermediaries facilitating access to the imams and therefore to divine knowledge. On a much more exalted note, Shia Islam believes in a messianic figure, the hidden and last (of a series of twelve) Imam known as "the Mahdi" (a figure mentioned in the Hadith, but not in the Quran) that will one day return and fill the world with justice. It has been suggested that the concept of the Mahdi may have been derived from earlier messianic Jewish and Christian beliefs. Not only for Shi’ites, but for millions of Muslims, the return of the Mahdi, (the “Hidden Imam”) is the culmination of, and the underlying purpose for every event of human history.