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political islam 4212.3.all inhabitants of this world. However, in order to be realshuhad§", the condition is that they are alive. If they are killed andgiven their lives for the defence of their shah§da, they must nothave killed anyone for this and should not have purposefullyintended to be dead! We heard the condition stated in the Bookthat a shahÊd is an eyewitness who must be alive. If he dies, hiswitness ends and after which, as the example of Jesus tells us,God takes over as ‘watcher’ and ‘witness’ (5:117). 88If we accept a literal reading of 3:169 (‘those who have beenkilled are still alive with their Lord’), and thus follow the exegetes,we would commit the sin of anthropomorphism. Moreover,we would contradict logic. If we, for example, understandliterally that those killed in God’s way are not really dead butlive ‘with their Lord’, we would assume that they physicallyfound a place ‘with Him’. Such a reading not only anthropomorphizesGod, it also divinises mortal souls, and both of thesethings are theologically untenable. The notion that these peopleare only seemingly dead also contradicts the clear evidence ofthe decay of their bodies in the grave. It is absurd to claim thatthey possess ‘holy’ bodies which remain fresh and free from anydecomposition until the Day of Judgement, when evidenceproves the opposite.For a correct interpretation of 3:169 we must avoid the confusionbetween ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’. It is the soul (nafs) that returnsto dust, that is, to its original state (‘It is God that takes the souls(of men) at death…’, Al-Zumar 39:47). But the spirit (råÈ)returns—not necessarily ascends—to God, its Creator, whobreathed it into His creatures when they developed into rationalhuman beings who are able to think in abstract terms. Deathhas, therefore, two meanings: 1) a material, physical meaningthat implies decay and decomposition (‘every soul shall have ataste of death…’, Al-Anbiy§" 21:35); and 2) the symbolic, figurativemeaning of absence or lack of something, for example, oflight when ‘death’ means darkness: ‘Is a dead person broughtback to life by Us, and given light with which to walk among88‘…and I was a witness over them while I dwelt amongst them; when you didtake me up you were the watcher over them, and you are a witness to all things’( Al-M§"ida 5:117).