What Happens at Death

Now death is the third stage. The Qurʾān says that some people die early and others Allah extends their life. If a person dies before puberty, they are not taken to account at all, and they are considered for paradise; generally that is the majority view. If they die after puberty, they are taken to account for their actions.

Now, to give a scenario of what the Muslims believe happens at death. At the initial point of death it is believed that the spirit leaves the body and hovers above the body. If you look at the word for spirit in Arabic, rūḥ, it comes from a word related to wind — and spiritus in Latin also comes from a word that means wind. The idea is that the wind is not something you see, but you feel its effects, you see its effects: you see the leaves moving. So the spirit is not something we can see, but we feel the effects of the soul.

The soul is powerful. When the soul departs from the body — and one of the things highly encouraged in Islam is to wash dead bodies, because you prepare them for the prayer — it is very powerful, especially if you know the person, because you are in the presence of the absence of the soul. You see the absence of the soul. The body is there, but it is not. The soul is missing. That is not the same person that you knew in your life.

Do animals have souls as well, according to Islam? Yes, definitely. All things in the world are animated by spirit — everything, including rocks. The Muslims believe that all the way down there is a penetration of this divine substance with which Allah has animated the world. That is why everything is a sign of God. If there were not this spiritual element within creation, then it would not be a sign of God; it would be absence, it would be death and other.

And Muslims believe that animals are raised up as well on the Day of Judgement, and that animals bear witness against people who abuse them. There is actually a hadith that the whole earth is raised up. And there is a hadith that people who oppress the earth will have seven earths around their neck on the Day of Judgement. The Prophet (peace be upon him) said that whoever pollutes a river, it is as though they are cursed — to do something like that, to spoil something. He cursed anyone who took hunting as a sport: in other words, they did not eat the food, they just went out and hunted animals. And he said that there is a reward in showing kindness to anything that has spirit.