Is Hereafter Physical or Spiritual
Question:
Assalam alikum
Will we have physical bodies in heaven like now but just better ones or will we just be like a soul body spiritual body with no physical-ness with it?
Also, I was just wondering from your view will animals and pets go to jannah?
Answer:
Assalamu Alaykum,
As for your second question, if we go on the basis of the fact that heaven and hell are reward and punishment, then there is no room for animals there. This is simply because animals do not have that amount of intellect to make decisions like us human beings and therefore they do not deserve punishment or reward from that respect. There is also no references to animals being in heaven in the Qur’an.
As for whether after life is physical or spiritual, in principle my answer is, I don’t know. This is because I haven’t been there and I have not heard from those who are there.
Generally speaking there are three views on this:
I really cannot comment any further. As the Qur’an says (17:85), we are given very limited knowledge. Please note that all the specfic descriptions of the hereafter in the Qur'an are among the ambuogous verses (mutishabihat) and not all of them should be interpreted in a literal way.
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September 2016
Assalam alikum
Will we have physical bodies in heaven like now but just better ones or will we just be like a soul body spiritual body with no physical-ness with it?
Also, I was just wondering from your view will animals and pets go to jannah?
Answer:
Assalamu Alaykum,
As for your second question, if we go on the basis of the fact that heaven and hell are reward and punishment, then there is no room for animals there. This is simply because animals do not have that amount of intellect to make decisions like us human beings and therefore they do not deserve punishment or reward from that respect. There is also no references to animals being in heaven in the Qur’an.
As for whether after life is physical or spiritual, in principle my answer is, I don’t know. This is because I haven’t been there and I have not heard from those who are there.
Generally speaking there are three views on this:
- The majority view is that life there is physical. They say this because of many verses of the Qur’an that very explicitly talk about physical resurrection and physical presence in the hereafter.
- There is a very minority view that say life is only spiritual in the hereafter. The minority people who say this normally interpret all the above mentioned verses in a symbolic way. The main premise of this thinking is that since news of hereafter was to warn the primary addressees of the Qur’an at the time, they, with their very basic knowledge and understanding, could underestimate the significance of the hereafter if they were told that it was only spiritual.
- There is a middle view among some Islamic philosophers that the hereafter is physical (and spiritual) but that the body with which one is resurrected is not exactly the one that he has in this life, rather, it is like a shadow or an abstract of it. It will be perceived by any one as the same body, but it does not have the same physical and chemical mechanisms and it had in this world.
I really cannot comment any further. As the Qur’an says (17:85), we are given very limited knowledge. Please note that all the specfic descriptions of the hereafter in the Qur'an are among the ambuogous verses (mutishabihat) and not all of them should be interpreted in a literal way.
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September 2016
