When the Excuses Are Lame

And then the next stage is what is called the reckoning. According to the Islamic tradition, your entire life will be placed before you. You will see all of your actions, and you will be called to account and asked to defend yourself. And according to the Islamic tradition it says that you will know when your excuses are lame:

On that day the human being knows very clearly all of his own case. If you want to look at it in psychological terms, all of your defence mechanisms are suddenly removed: your projection, your denial, all of these psychological mechanisms that we have used very well in this world to justify our actions are taken away from us. And it says in Sūrat Qāf that on that day the veil is removed from your eyes and your eyesight is piercing:

So you will see things very clearly. And there is an idea that we all know, in truth, if we will reflect, what we are up to.

So each person is taken to account. And the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said that every people will be behind their prophet: so the people of Moses will be behind Moses, the people of Jesus behind Jesus, the people of Muhammad behind Muhammad — and the people of Karl Marx behind Karl Marx. Everybody is going to be behind their imam, the one they took as their example in this world.

And it is interesting, because the Qurʾān says that the oppressed will say to the oppressors: you got us here. And the oppressors will say: we did not do anything, you followed us. And so there is this kind of conflict between them, and each one will say: I do not want anything to do with you, in the next world. So there is an idea that really everybody awakens to the truth of their own souls, to the truth of their own selves.