Death, the grave and what follows

This lesson asks you to explain how ideas about death and the afterlife reflect a tradition's idea of the spiritual journey. The museum can show the Islamic part, in a creed's account of the grave and in the prayer for the dead; your class adds other traditions' ideas. ¹

Read the expectation closely: it links ideas about death to a picture of life as a journey. Ask what the prayer for the dead says about the community's view of the person who has died, and compare them with another tradition's.

Read what two texts say about the dead, as the two records give them. Al-Tahawi, in the creed that the record of the hereafter presents, believes in the questioning of Munkar and Nakir in the grave about the Lord, the religion and the Prophet ﷺ, "as the reports have come from the Messenger of God and from the Companions", and says: "The grave is a garden of Paradise's gardens, or a pit of the Fire's pits" ². In the same creed he says that in the living's prayers and alms there is benefit for the dead ³. The record of the funeral prayer reports from the Kuwaiti Encyclopaedia of Fiqh that among its sunnas is supplication for the deceased, oneself and all Muslims after the third takbir, and that among the transmitted words are: "O God, forgive him, have mercy on him, keep him well and pardon him…" ^{4 5}. The Encyclopaedia of Islam says the supplication is not said aloud and has no fixed formula, and the article does not give its wording ⁶.

The record of the funeral prayer reports from the Encyclopaedia of Islam that, on the basis of a Qur'anic verse the article cites, 9:84, and of diversely interpreted prophetic traditions, jurists have tried to decide which Muslims should be denied the prayer ⁶. The article cites al-Qurtubi, who asserts that the prayer should be said over all Muslims, even those guilty of serious sins, except heretics and declared rebels ^{6 7}. As an example from the fourth century it gives the judge Abd al-Jabbar, a Mu'tazili who was nevertheless a Shafi'i, who in 385/995 declined to pray over the vizier Ibn Abbad, because of extortions the vizier had committed and for which he had shown no repentance ⁶. The record gives no verdict between the two.

The statements of belief come from creed texts. The record of the hereafter presents al-Tahawi's creed, Ibn Qudama's Lum'at al-I'tiqad, Ibn Taymiyya's al-Wasitiyya and what al-Ash'ari related of the people of hadith and sunna, each attributed to its book, and says that the sayings of the Maturidis and the remaining Sunni and non-Sunni schools have not yet been added and that the entry needs specialist review before promotion. Al-Tahawi himself says that what he holds about the questioning in the grave is as the reports have come from the Messenger of God and from the Companions ². The funeral-prayer record rests on the Encyclopaedia of Islam and the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia, and the transmitted wording of the supplication comes from the latter, not the former ^{5 6}. The record does not summarise the rest of the Encyclopaedia's short entry on the funeral, because the museum's copy of it is broken ⁸.

Al-Tahawi says that in the living's prayers and alms there is benefit for the dead ³, and the Kuwaiti encyclopaedia gives among the transmitted words of the supplication after the third takbir "O God, forgive him, have mercy on him" ⁵. Using only these two texts, how would you explain that the supplication in the funeral prayer expresses the belief the creed states, and what would you need to know about either text to be surer of your explanation?

• The hereafter: what al-Tahawi's creed, Ibn Qudama's Lum'at al-I'tiqad, Ibn Taymiyya's al-Wasitiyya and al-Ash'ari's Maqalat say, and the Encyclopaedia of Islam's account of the word.
• The funeral prayer: how it is performed, the schools' differences on its integrals and conditions, and what the Encyclopaedia of Islam says of whom it is said for.

Read the records on the hereafter and the funeral prayer. Write down the two pictures of what follows death that they give, one from a creed and one from a prayer.