Islam - Its Meaning for Modern Man — Page 326
326 of the human soul. Such realisation as is possible in this life is only a twilight experience. Islam insists on belief in the life after death. There are several matters of belief which Islam regards as essential, but belief in the life after death is concomitant with belief in the Existence of God (5:70). Failing belief in the life after death there is no faith at all. The absence of such belief is almost a negation of, and inconsistent with, belief in a Wise Creator. Too often has man been apt to say: “There is no life other than our present life. We were without life and now we live; but we shall not be raised again” (23:38). “Man says: ‘What! When I am dead shall I be brought forth alive?’ Does not man remember that We created him before, when he was naught?” (19:67 ⎯ 68). Man, and indeed the whole universe, has been brought into being from a state of nothingness. It is idle to contend that inasmuch as our observation merely confirms that man dies and his body disintegrates, therefore his personality and his existence come to a final end with death. Man’s very coming into existence is proof that there is the possibility of continuation. When the fact of man’s having been brought into existence through a long process is viewed against the existence of a Wise and All-Powerful Creator, the conclusion is inevitable that