IV Religion and the Life Hereafter

IV Religion and the Life Hereafter “T he crux of religion is indubitably the belief in the life hereafter.” So says Allama Shibli Nomani (1857-1914) under the heading of ‘Life after Death’ in his famous book, Al-Ghazzali. He goes on to say that it is because of this belief that religion has had an impact on human activities. Yet, despite its being the single most important belief in religion, it has been open to question. He quotes a Bedouin poet who, addressing his wife, expresses this most succinctly: Death, rebirth, My dear: it is all nonsense. Shibli feels that the first and most difficult hurdle to be surmounted is acceptance of the fact that the spirit survives as an entity in its own right, quite independently of the body. The materialists for their part think of the soul as being just one more ingredient in the body, in the way that a chemical element is inextricably a part of a compound, or they regard it as being a particular property of the faculties of thought and sense perception, on a parallel with the melody which results when notes of a musical instrument are struck in a particular sequence. Drawing extensively on two of Imam Ghazzali’s books, he observes that the description of the soul and the arguments which Ghazzali has mentioned are all derived from Greek philosophers. Aristotle in his Theology has said the same and Avicenna has reiterated this in his own language. But the strange thing is that Ghazzali has left out the point, which is of prime importance in the discussion of spirit or soul. Soul has no body. It is an essence. Its being purely non-material makes it of the first importance to prove its existence.