The Barzakh

In Islaam there is no support for the Hindu belief in reincarnation or the transmigration of souls wherein souls inhabit new bodies after bodily death.^[1] Some of those who embrace this doctrine believe in a principle known as Karma,^[2] that the deeds which a person accumulates in this life will determine the state in which he will be reborn. If he was bad, he is reborn in the womb of a woman from a lower level of society (caste) and he has to do good deeds so that he may be reborn on a higher level. If, on the other hand, he was good, he is reborn in the womb of a higher caste woman as a pious or holy man and continues to be reborn to successively higher caste women more pious and holy until he reaches perfection as a member of the Brahmin caste. When he becomes perfect, the cycle of rebirth ends with his soul dissolving and reuniting with the world soul, Brahma, in a process known as "Nirvana".

According to Islaam and all divinely revealed religions, when a person dies on earth he will not be reborn until the Day of Resurrection. After the destruction of the world, all of mankind will rise up from the dead to be judged by Allaah, the only God worthy of worship and the Greatest of Judges. From the time a man dies until he is resurrected, he remains in a suspended state known in Arabic as the "Barzakh". ""It should not seem strange to think that someone who died thousands of years ago, may be waiting for thousands of years before finally being brought back to life, because the Prophet (SAW) had said that everyones death is the beginning of his resurrection. Time only exists for those living on earth. Once a man dies, he leaves the time zone and a thousand years becomes a blinking of an eye. Allaah illustrated that reality in a story which He related in Soorah al-Baqarah about a man who doubted Allaahs ability to resurrect a village; to bring it back to life after its death. So Allaah caused him to die for a hundred years and when he was resurrected, questioned him as to how long he had "slept". He replied, "A day or a part of a day."^[3] Similarly people who awaken from long comas often think that little or no time has passed. Often one sleeps for hours yet on awakening he feels as though he had only just closed his eyes. So there is no point in trying to imagine waiting for centuries in the Barzakh, because time in that state has no relevance.

Pre-Creation

Although Islaam rejects the notion of the souls continuous rebirth, it does, however, recognize that the soul of each child came into existence prior to its birth on earth.

The Prophet (SAW) related that when Allaah created Aadam, He took a covenant from him in a place called Namaan on the day of Arafah,^[4] then He extracted from him all of his descendants who would be born until the end of the world, generation after generation, and spread them out in front of Him in order to take a covenant from them also. He spoke to them face to face saying: "Am I not your Lord?" and they all replied, "Yes, we testify to it." Allaah then explained why He had all of mankind bear witness that He was their creator and only true God worthy of worship. He said, "That was in case you (mankind) should say on the Day of Resurrection, "Surely we were unaware of all this. We had no idea that You, Allaah, were our God. No one told us that we were only supposed to worship You." Allaah went on to explain that it was also in case you should say: "It was our ancestors who made partners (with Allaah) and we are only their descendants; will You, then destroy us for what those liars did?"^[5] This was the Prophets (SAW) explanation of the Quranic verse in which Allaah said:

The verse and prophetic explanation confirm the fact that everyone is responsible for belief in God and on the Day of Judgement excuses will not be accepted. Every human being has the belief in God imprinted on his soul and Allaah shows every idolator during the course of his life, signs that his idol is not God. Hence, every sane human being is required to believe in God beyond His creation and not manifest in it.

The Prophet (SAW) then went on to say, 'Allaah then placed between the two eyes of every human a flash of light showing their Eemaan and showed them all to Aadam. Aadam was awed by the sight of all these countless numbers of beings with flashes of light between their eyes so he asked Allaah, "0 Lord, who are they?" Allaah told him that they were all of his descendants. Aadam then began looking closely at one whose flash of light amazed him, then he asked who he was and Allaah said, "That is a man called Daawood from the last of the nations among your descendents." Aadam then asked how old he was and when Allaah informed him that he was sixty, he said, "0 Lord, increase his age by taking forty years from my age." But when Aadams life span reached its end and the angel of death came, he said, "Is there not forty more years of my life still remaining?" The Angel replied, "Did you not give them to your descendent Daawood?" Aadam denied that he had done so and his descendants denied their promise to Allaah. Aadam later forgot his covenant to Allaah and so did his descendants and they all fell into error."^[9] Aadam ate from the forbidden tree due to his forgetting his promise to Allaah and Satans deceptive prodding, and most of mankind have ignored their responsibility to believe in God and worship Him alone, and have fallen into the worship of the creation.

Following that, the Prophet (SAW) said, "Allaah then pointed to some of the descendants which He had extracted from Aadam and his children and said, "I have created these people for Paradise and they will do the deeds of the people of Paradise. "He then pointed to the rest and said, "/ have created these people for the Hellfire and they will do the deeds of the inhabitants of Hell." When the Prophet (SAW) said that, one of his companions asked, "O Messenger of Allaah, what then is the point of doing good deeds?" The Prophet (SAW) replied, "Verily, if Allaah created one of His servants for Paradise, He helps him do the deeds of the people of Paradise until he dies doing one of their deeds, then He places him in Paradise because of it. But if He created a man for the Hellfire, He helps him do the deeds of its inhabitants until he dies doing one of their deeds, then He puts him in the Fire because of it."^{[10 ]} This statement of the Prophet (SAW) does not mean that people have no free will or choice between good and evil, for if that were so, the judgement, reward and punishment would all be senseless. Allaahs creation of a person for Paradise is His creation of a person knowing full well before his creation