Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

Eschatology 319
the most pious person might commit a grave sin before the last moment
of life. At the same time, in the case of the sinner, God’s mercy is said to
outweigh His wrath, 20 and a particular good deed may carry salvific
weight beyond any human expectation. A balance of hope and fear is
therefore the general Muslim attitude towards one’s eternal state, serving
as both a deterrent against wrongdoing and an assurance of divine
mercy. For some, the very notion of reward and punishment as a sufficient
motivation for human behaviour has been open to critique. For
example, al-Ghazalı states, ‘‘It is not proper that the bondman’s quest for
Heaven should be for anything other than meeting with his Lord. As for
the rest of Heaven’s delights, man’s participation in them is no more
than a beast let loose in a pasture.’’ 21
resurrection
On the question of the nature of resurrection, issues engaged are the
nature of the spirit or soul, and what exactly is to be resurrected. On this
Muslim opinions have varied, with the great majority stressing the
physicality of resurrection, given that nothing is impossible for God
(cf. Qur’an 36:81).
A complete denial of resurrection is heretical, since it runs counter
to the Qur’an’s clear pronouncement in 75:1–6 and elsewhere. However,
a denial of physical resurrection was upheld by certain Mu‘tazilites and
by falsafa practitioners such as Farabı and Avicenna. 22 One aspect of the
insistence on bodily resurrection arose from the fact that Islam rejected
the usual Western body–mind distinction.
paradise and the fire
More than any other key postulate, the nature of heaven and hell has
been subjected to a range of interpretations stretching from the purely
literal to the utterly allegorical. Hell is a place of just chastisement for
sin, which forms a temporary purgatory for sinning believers; whether
any punishment there would be truly eternal was a matter of considerable
dispute. 23 Paradise is presented as a garden (janna) arranged in levels,
a verdant place where all wishes are fulfilled, and where the believers will
enjoy celestial food and drink and be accompanied by beautiful clear-eyed
maidens (h _
ur) who remain perpetually virginal. Some have suggested
that the presence of earthly pleasures in heaven is to indicate the transformation
of human nature in the next life so that those things forbidden
in this world will no longer be sources of corruption and conflict. In fact,
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