The standard picture of Qur’ānic eschatology is in terms of the joys of the Garden and the punishments of Hell. The Qur’ān does frequently talk about these, as about reward and punishment in general, including "God's pleasure and anger"—something which we shall have to elaborate in detail. But the basic idea underlying the Qur’ān's teaching on the hereafter is that there will come a moment, "The Hour [al-sā‘a]" when every human will be shaken into a unique and unprecedented self-awareness of his deeds: he will squarely and starkly face his own doings, not-doings, and misdoings and accept the judgment upon them as a "necessary" sequel (necessary within quotes because God's mercy is unlimited). That man is generally so absorbed in his immediate concerns, particularly selfish, narrow, and material concerns, that he does not heed the "ends" of life [al-ākhira] and constantly violates moral law, we have had occasion to point out. We stressed in Chapter III that for the Qur’ān the goal of man- in-society is to build an ethically-based order on the earth but that cultivation of taqwā or a true sense of responsibility is absolutely necessary for man-as-individual if such an order is to be built. The Qur’ān repeatedly complains that man has not yet come up to this task.

Al-ākhira, the "end," is the moment of truth: "When the great cataclysm comes, that day man will recall what he had been striving for" (79.an-Nāzi‘āt:34-35) is a typical statement of this phenomenon. It is an Hour when all veils between the mental preoccupations of man and the objective moral reality will be rent: "You were in deep heedlessness about this [Hour of self-awareness], but now We have rent your veil, so your sight today is keen!" (50.Qāf:22). Every person will find there his deepest self, fully excavated from the debris of extrinsic and immediate concerns wherein the means is substituted for ends and even pseudo-means for real means, where falsehood is not only substituted for truth but really becomes truth, and even more attractive and beautiful than truth. Man's conscience itself becomes so perverted that, through long habituation with particularized interests and persistent worship of false gods, the holy seems unholy, and vice versa. This is what the Qur’ān terms ghurūr, multi-layered self-deception. If man is to be freed from this grave-within-a-grave structure, nothing short of a cataclysm, a complete turning inside-out of the moral personality, is needed. Here are certain utterances of the Qur’ān about this event from the early Meccan years of the Revelation:

This is a typical representation of the grinding pains of that hour. Although, as we shall see below, this judgment will involve communities and their prophets, the judgment itself will be primarily upon individuals. Each individual will be alone that day, without relatives, friends, clans, tribes, or nations, to support them: "We shall inherit from him [man] whatever he says and he shall come to Us alone" (19.Maryam:80). Whereas a person’s wealth and possessions may go to his children or other inheritors, the moral quality of his sayings and deeds is "inherited" or passed on to God and remains with Him until He produces it on the Day of Judgment before the performer himself. On that day, God shall say, "You have, indeed, come to Us [today] alone—as alone as We had created you in the first place" (6.al-An‘ām:94; cf. also 19.Maryam:95). This state of not just loneliness but forlornness from all that was worldly association is depicted with hair-raising effect: "[It will be] the day when a man shall flee from his brother, his mother and father, his wife and children—for every man on that day, shall have a preoccupation that will release him from all these" (80.‘Abasa:34-37; cf. 70.al-Ma‘ārij:10-14, which repudiates tribal, i.e., national, ties as well).

On that day, one would wish if one could to buy release with an "earthful of gold," but such offers will be rejected (3.Āli ‘Imrān:91; also 5.al-Mā’idah:36; 10.Yūnus:54; 13.ar-Ra‘d:18; 39.az-Zumar:47; 57.al-Ħadeed:15; 70.al-Ma‘ārij:11). As we have elaborated, the Qur’ān both rejects the idea of an intercession and allows nothing else to help a person in that state of helplessness except God's own mercy, which, the Qur’ān repeats, is absolutely unlimited. But, although the Qur’ān, particularly in the early and middle Meccan periods, persistently details the horrors of the Judgment Day for evildoers, the real punishment will undoubtedly be the irremediable pain suffered by those who have perpetrated evil in this life when they realize that there is no "going back" and that they have lost the only opportunity in the life of this world to do good. They will be the real losers (10.Yūnus:45; 22.al-Ħajj:11; 40.Ghāfir:78; 7.al-A‘rāf:9, 53; 8.al-Anfāl:37; 9.al-Tawbah:69, etc.): the standard Qur’ānic terms for the ultimate sequel, as we underlined in Chapter II, are not salvation and damnation so much as success (falāh) and loss (khusrān), both for this life and the hereafter.

This is why the Qur’ān continues to exhort people to send something for the morrow" (59.al-Ħashr:18), for whatever accrues to a person is the consequence of previous deeds; it frequently says that whenever an evil strikes someone for what his "hands have prepared for what is ahead," frustration seizes him (see for example, 2.al-Baqarah:95; 3.Āli ‘Imrān:182; 4.an-Nisā’:62; 5.al-Mā’idah:80; 8.al-Anfāl:51; 18.al-Kahf:57; 22.al-Ħajj:10; 28.al-Qaşaş:47; in connection exclusively with the hereafter: 2.al-Baqarah:95; 62.al-Jumu‘ah:7; 78.an-Naba’:40; 82.al-Infiţār:5). Indeed, the essence of the "hereafter" consists in the "ends" of life (al-ākhira) or the long-range results of man's endeavors on earth.

"Al-dunyā" (the immediate objectives, the "here-and-now" of life), on the contrary, is not "this world" but the lower values, the basal pursuits which appear so immediately tempting that most men run after them most of the time, at the expense of the higher and long-range ends. In Chapter II, we quoted 13.ar-Ra‘d:17 to the effect that in a torrent of water rushing down the hills, a higher layer of foam is formed, but when waters pass through the plains, the thick foam disappears without a trace, while that which benefits mankind in a lasting way, i.e., the alluvial earth, stays in the ground. The show of this foam is the "dunya," the lasting alluvium is the "ākhira." (We also quoted there the verse that criticizes the Meccan merchants' skill at "making money" to the neglect of the higher values of life—the ends of life: "They know well the externalities of this life but are heedless of the higher ends" (30.ar-Rūm:7).

It is because of al-ākhira or the end-values that the "weighing" of men's acts takes on its crucial significance. There is here, of course, sarcasm against the Meccan merchants—in the hereafter, deeds shall be weighed, not gold and silver and other trade commodities. Later, the Mu‘tazilite theologians took this weighing of deeds too literally and developed a strict quid pro quo doctrine; they got themselves into the intractable difficulties connected with any theory of strict retribution. Instead of accepting God's infinite mercy as real and as seriously modifying their quid pro quo theory of retribution, they did grave violence to religion in trying to get around it and explain it away. There is no doubt that the Qur’ān speaks of a palpable weighing or scaling, of spreading out people's deed-sheets before them (as is apparent from the following quotations), but there is also no doubt that this is a holistic idea, not a strict quid pro quo. There are references galore to weighing of deeds; the following will serve as sufficient illustrations: "So for him whose scale [of good acts] shall be weighty, he shall lead a happy life; but he whose scale is light, his mother shall be the Ditch" (101.al-Qāri‘ah:6-9). Good people will be given their deed-sheets in their right hands, while the evil will receive theirs in the left hand:

There is, indeed, no refuge from a situation where one's mind becomes transparently public and where one's own physical organs begin to bear witness against one! But, then, this is exactly the state of mind which the Qur’ān wants men to achieve amidst the conduct of this life. This is what taqwā is, a coalescence of the public and the private life. And this is what the Prophet showed by his own example—while he lived his life in Madina, the closest possible community life, among his companions—and yet he had nothing whatever to hide from others. It is such transparency of the heart that the Qur’ān wants man to achieve, if he is to achieve success and is not to burn in Hell.

Further: There will be a great deal more questioning and answering on that day. The guards of the Fire shall ask its prospective inmates why they were there and whether Messengers had not come to them to warn them against the impending doom:

The latter part of this passage is remarkable, i.e., "God . . . has given us the earth as inheritance; we will make our abode in its Garden wherever we will." Although usually Qur’ānic descriptions of the Last Day speak of a general and complete upset of the present cosmos, a dislocation of the earth and the heavens, a complete shaking of the earth—indeed, of "the earth being in His hand-grip on the Day of Resurrection and the heavens being wrapped up in His right hand" (39.az-Zumar:67) and "mankind being like scattered locusts and mountains like carded wool"—all these descriptions really intend to portray the absolute power of God. Those who think that the earth and the heavens—the cosmos—is a self-created, unauthored, and ultimate being must understand that it is the all-powerful, mighty, and absolute God Who has brought forth the cosmos out of His sheer mercy; nothing can therefore get outside His control and governance. The Qur’ān talks not of the destruction of the universe but of its transformation and rearrangement with a view to creating new forms of life and new levels of being. When it says, "Everything is destructible except His person" (28.al-Qaşaş:88) or "Whosoever is on the earth shall perish and His person alone—the majestic and the noble—shall remain forever" (55.ar-Raħmān:26-27), this, first, speaks not of the universe as a whole but of its contents and, secondly, depicts the absolute and eternal majesty of God.

Certainly, from the verses we are commenting upon, it is quite clear that this earth will be transformed into a Garden which will be enjoyed by its "inheritors." That the Qur’ān is speaking not of total destruction of the earth but of its transformation (except insofar as every re-creation or transformation requires a certain destruction), is also clear from such verses as: "The day when the earth shall be transmuted into something else and the heavens as well [i.e., their nature will become different from what it is now]." (14.Ibrāheem:48) The Qur’ān also repeatedly speaks of a new form or level of creation: "We have appointed for you the death and none may excel Us in that We shall transmute [nubaddilu] your models [amthālakum] and re-create you in [forms] you do not know. You already know the present [form of] your creation, so why do you not take a lesson [from this]?" (56.al-Wāqi‘ah:60-62); "God will then create the next creation" (29.al-‘Ankabūt:20; cf. 53.an-Najm:47); "Strange indeed is their statement, Shall we be in a new creation after having turned to dust?" (13.ar-Ra‘d:5; 32.as-Sajdah:10; 34.Saba’:7); "If He wills, He can destroy you [all] and bring out a new creation" (14.Ibrāheem:19; 35.Fāţir:16); "Have We become fatigued by the first creation that they are in doubt about a new creation?" (50.Qāf:15, and all those verses that speak about the first creation and re-creation, nabda’ al-khalqa thumma nu’īduhū).

Similarly, the females (the houris!) and the males of the next world will be created anew (56.al-Wāqi‘ah:35). Further, about Hell it is said, "It is God's Fire that is blazing and that lights upon the hearts [of men] in lofty columns" (104.al-Humazah:6-9). In a passage that speaks of successive peoples and communities entering Hell (the later ones having been misled by the evil legacies of the earlier ones and thus encumbered by them), the Qur’ān makes it clear that the effect of punishment in Hell depends upon the sensitivity of the guilty and hence involves a conscience. The punishment is thus basically moral or spiritual:

But the happiness and the torture of the hereafter is certainly not just spiritual The Qur’ān, unlike Muslim philosophers, does not recognize a hereafter that will be peopled by disembodied souls—in fact, it does not recognize the dualism of the soul and the body and man, for it is a unitary, living, and fully functioning organism. The term nafs, which later in Islamic philosophy and Sufism came to mean soul as a substance separate from the body, in the Qur’ān means mostly "himself" or "herself" and, in the plural, "themselves"; while in some contexts it means the "person" or the "inner person," i.e., the living reality of man—but not separate from or exclusive of the body. In fact, it is body with a certain life-and-intelligence center that constitutes the inner identity or personality of man.

The Qur’ān, therefore, does not affirm any purely “spiritual” heaven or hell, and the subject of happiness and torture is, therefore, man as a person. When the Qur’ān speaks—so repeatedly so richly, and so vividly—of physical happiness and physical hell, it is not speaking in pure metaphor, as Muslim philosophers and other allegorists would have it, although, of course, the Qur’ān is trying to describe the happiness and punishments as effects, i.e., in terms of the feeling of physical and spiritual pleasure and pain. The vivid portrayals of a blazing hell and a garden are meant to convey these effects as real spiritual-physical feelings, apart from the present psychological effects of these descriptions. There are thus literal psycho-physical effects of the Fire, without there being a literal fire.

While physical punishment and happiness are literal, not metaphorical, however, the Qur’ān makes it clear that it is their spiritual aspect that is supreme. Thus, we are told, "God has promised believing men and women Gardens, underneath which rivers flow, wherein they shall abide, and pleasant abodes in the Gardens of Eden—but the pleasure of God with them is greater and that is the great success" (9.al-Tawbah:72). While believers and the virtuous have their greatest reward in the pleasure (ridwān) of God, unbelievers and evil persons will earn His displeasure and alienation (sakht) as their greatest punishment: "Is the one who goes after the pleasure of God like the one who earns His displeasure and whose abode is Hell?" (3.Āli ‘Imrān:162; cf. 5.al-Mā’idah:80; 47.Muħammad:28; also see verses under ghadab, "anger of God," and further verses under ridwān, though these do not refer entirely to the hereafter but also to this world). On the Day of Judgment, "God will not so much as talk to or even look at" those who sell God's covenant and their solemn oaths (certain Jews are meant here) for a paltry sum of money (3.Āli ‘Imrān:77). The faces of the believers on that day will be "fresh with joy and will be looking at their lord" (75.al-Qiyāmah:22, a verse from which arose the notorious and foolish controversy in medieval Islam (it lasted for a millenium) as to whether or not God will be literally physically visible to believers in the hereafter; also 76.al-Insān:11; 80.‘Abasa:39; 83.al-Muţaffifeen:24; 10.Yūnus:26), while the faces of disbelievers "will be covered in dust, subdued in darkness" (80.‘Abasa:40-41; 10.Yūnus:27; 68.al-Qalam:43; 70.al-Ma‘ārij:44).

To return to the questioning and answering of that day, the people of the Garden, those of the Fire, and those dwelling in "the Ramparts" who are neither in Hell nor yet in the Gardens shall all exchange views and review their past performance:

Every community shall be judged by the standards set for them by their prophet and in accordance with the teachings of their respective Revelations—although according to the Qur’ān while they are essentially identical since their source is identical, yet, a community from the ancient past cannot be judged by the standards set for new communities: "How about when We bring out a witness from every community and We call you [O Muħammad!] to give witness upon these people?" (4.an-Nisā’:41); "We shall pull out a witness from every community and We shall say, Bring your proof [i.e., for your misdeeds, particularly for polytheism which you practiced]" (28.al-Qaşaş:75). The prophets themselves will also be questioned as to whether they gave the Message truly to their people and particularly whether what the latter believed and practiced after these prophets were gone was in accordance with their proclaimed Messages: "We shall surely ask the people to whom missions [of the prophets] were sent and We shall equally surely ask the prophets themselves. And then We shall certainly relate to them [their deeds] on the basis of knowledge [so ascertained, i.e., for the sake of those upon whom judgment is to be passed]" (7.al-A‘rāf:6-7). Jesus will be asked on the Day of Judgment whether he had taught Trinitarianism to his followers, and he shall reply, "Glory be to You! I could not say something that was not for me to say. If I did say it You know it already" (5.al-Mā’idah:116); generally, about all prophets: "The day when God shall gather all the prophets and say, How were you responded to?, they shall reply, We have no knowledge [of this], You are the One who knows the unseen things (5.al-Mā’idah:109). The last two verses both belong to the last phase of the Prophet's life—as does sura 5.al-Mā’idah generally—and, therefore, must be considered as a warning not only to Christians and other communities but equally, though somewhat indirectly, to the Muslim community itself. Already in Mecca, the Qur’ān had declared, "And the Messenger [Muħammad] shall say, O my Lord! my very people abandoned this Qur’ān" (25.al-Furqān:30).

Finally, the Qur’ān speaks persistently about a bitter questioning and answering between the socially weak and the rich; the weaker shall accuse the rich and influential of their society of having led them astray by undue influence and threats: those condemned in the Fire shall say to their comrades when a new group of the condemned enter:

Resurrection or the final accounting was an idea which the secular Meccan pagans found very hard to accept. In fact, besides the doctrines of monotheism (and the consequent removal of their gods) and of Revelation itself (for they persistently called the Qur’ān a siħr, a piece of sorcery, or the result of the Prophet's mental disturbance, etc.), this doctrine was the most difficult for them to accept. It is quite likely that the "changes" they demanded from the Prophet in the Qur’ān included, besides recognition in the new system of their "gods" as intermediaries between man and God, elimination of the Last Day, and particularly of physical resurrection. They said they and their fathers had heard of resurrection before (no doubt, from Jews and Christians) but that this idea was no more than "a fiction of the earlier communities" (23.al-Mu’minūn:83; 27.an-Naml:67-68). Still less, of course, would the idea of "moral responsibility" and abstract "ends" of life be comprehensible to them—any more than they tell now upon secular societies of our own day.

For the Qur’ān, the Last Judgment was crucial for multiple, fundamental reasons. First, moral and just as the constitution of reality is for the Qur’ān, the quality of men's performance must be judged, else fairness cannot be ensured merely on the basis of what transpires in this life. Secondly, and this we have underlined in the early pan of this chapter, the "ends" of life must be clarified beyond doubt, so that men may see what they have been striving for and what the true purposes of life are. This point is absolutely crucial in the entire doctrine of resurrection in the Qur’ān, since the "weighing of deeds" presupposes and depends upon it. Thirdly, and connected closely with the second point, is the idea that disputes, dissensions, and conflicts of human orientations must be finally resolved. There is little doubt for the Qur’ān that whereas there is such a thing as an honest difference of opinion, there is nevertheless very little of it; for the most part, human differences are plagued with extrinsic motivations of selfishness, of group or national interest, of congealed inherited traditions and myriad other forms of fanaticism. And the worst human moral plague is that one often does even good things through wrong and extrinsic motivations. The resolution of these differences of "belief," therefore, will be practically identical with the manifestation of the motivations of these beliefs. Since on that day all the interior of man will become transparent, these motivations will too. But apart from this, truth will show through in that Hour of Truth, and to this the Qur’ān makes frequent reference:

It is notable that the Qur’ān often calls that day "The Day of Decision" (i.e., between right and wrong, not only deeds, but beliefs, life-orientations, etc. [37.aş-Şāffāt:21; 44.ad-Dukhān:40; 17.al-Isrā’:13-14; 78.an-Naba’:17]. Directly relevant to this point are also the frequent verses that generally speak about the "settling of all matters that were under dispute" (3.Āli ‘Imrān:55; 2.al-Baqarah:113; 5.al-Mā’idah:48; 6.al-An‘ām:164; 16.an-Naħl:39, 92, 124; 22.al-Ħajj:69; 10.Yūnus:93; 32.as-Sajdah:25; etc.) It is said, to Muħammad (PBUH), "You will die and they [your opponents] will, too; you will then dispute before your Lord on the Day of Resurrection" (39.az-Zumar:30-31).

To overcome these objections of the Meccans and the difficulties they felt in accepting the idea of Resurrection and the Day of Accounting, the Qur’ān also brings arguments from God's power in general. The God who created the heavens and the earth and who has created man and innumerable forms of life in this universe is capable of creating man anew, and other hitherto unknown forms of life:

That God can make death and life succeed each other, just as He can bring out sparks of fire from green wood, is also evidenced by the fact that He causes light and darkness, day and night, to follow each other, as indeed He does the rise and fall of nations; and just as these latter two phenomena are "natural" so that we ask no questions about them, so must the phenomenon of resurrection and creation of new modes of life be regarded as a natural fact, given the moral constitution of the universe:

A specific example of reviving the dead given by the Qur’ān is the quickening of the earth in spring after its "death" during the winter: "He quickens the earth after its death" (30.ar-Rūm:19, 24, 50; 57.al-Ħadeed:17). Here is a translation of sura 50.Qāf, the theme of which is the resurrection of man and which represents the lengthiest single treatment of the subject in the Qur’ān:

Since God is present everywhere and at all times, there is obviously nothing hidden from Him. Man thinks he can hide his thoughts, motivations, etc., from other men and, indeed, he often tries to hide things from himself, does not wish to face the truth of his own situation starkly; but his inner being will become public, for nobody in that Hour will be able to "reserve" anything mentally. All Qur’ānic statements about evidence on that day and about the transparency of one's hidden being lead to the one point that one must bear responsibility for one's deeds, thoughts, and intentions. But that day will be the day of judgment; one will have no opportunity to change anything, to offer a new performance, or to redeem one's failings, for the only opportunity for that is here, now, in this life, which is given only once (for the Qur’ān does not believe in the karma or cycles of rebirths and deaths). This one life, then, is the only life where man can work and earn or sow those seeds that will bear fruit "in the end."

This is why it is imperative, according to the Qur’ān, to take this life seriously and to recognize fully that no matter how much one may hide one's negative intentions and one's failings. God "is well aware of them," as the Qur’ān often puts it. Hence one must develop that inner torch which can enable one to distinguish between right and wrong, between justice and injustice, which the Qur’ān calls taqwā—a crucial term, indeed one of the three or four most crucial terms. Although the final judgment upon man's conduct does lie outside him, as does the final criterion by which he is to be judged—and recognition of this fact is an essential part of the meaning of taqwā—such recognition already implies a certain development of the conscience of man to a point where this inner torch is lit. Like torchlight, taqwā is undoubtedly capable of gradations, from a zero-point of naive self-righteousness to a high point where one can almost completely X-ray one's state of mind and conscience.

The kind of being "made public" of the inner self so poignantly portrayed as occurring on the Day of Judgment is what the Qur’ān really desires to take place here in this life; for a man who can X-ray himself effectively and hence diagnose his inner state has nothing to be afraid of if his inner being goes public. It is only those who hide their inner being here—largely unsuccessfully, of course, for they really succeed not so much in hiding themselves from others as from themselves—who have every reason to fear the Day of Accounting. This is why the Qur’ān says in sura 50.Qāf, "You were sunk in heedlessness of this [accounting, X-raying], but now that We lifted the veil from you, your sight today is keen!" The central endeavor of the Qur’ān is for man to develop this "keen sight" here and now, when there is opportunity for action and progress, for at the Hour of Judgment it will be too late to remedy the state of affairs; there one will be reaping, not sowing or nurturing. Hence one can speak there only of eternal success or failure, of everlasting Fire or Garden—that is to say, for the fate of the individual. As Jalāl al-Dīn al-Rūmī puts it: