There are certain philosophies that say that our life finishes when we die. Others say that our life is a never-ending cycle of births and rebirths. According to the belief of Islam, death is not the end of life; it is, in fact, the beginning of a new stage of life – that is to say man has a life after life in the eternal world of the hereafter.

The reality is that the Creator of the world has created this world, as one half of a pair — the present limited world, in which we pass our lives after birth, is the first half; and the next eternal world of the hereafter where we live after death is the other half. The Creator of man has thus created him as an eternal creature and has divided his life into two stages — the pre-death period or the limited life in this world and the post death period or the eternal life in the hereafter after death.

Looked at in relation to the creation plan of God, let us try to understand the concept of the hereafter with the help of the following example.

Those huge masses of ice, which we know as icebergs, found floating in the seas of the North and South poles, number amongst the most deceptive and, therefore, most dangerous phenomena to be found in nature. Their deceptiveness lies in the fact that no matter how huge or wonderful in configuration, what we see of them amounts to only one tenth of their enormous bulk. What lies below the surface of the ocean, spreading far and beyond the visible perimeter, poses tremendous hazards to the unwary. In some ways, our lives are like those floating mountains of ice. The part we spend in this world — about a hundred years, or less — is one part of our life – like the part of the iceberg, which is visible above the surface. We can see it, touch it, feel it. We can take its measure and deal with it effectively. But the part, which comes after death, is like the submerged part of the iceberg — vast, unfathomable and fraught with peril. It is something which defies the imagination, but which we must nevertheless try to comprehend, for that is the part of human life which God has decreed should be eternal and, as such, ineluctable. This part of our life that comes after death is the ‘life after life’.

We are all familiar with the facts of our origin and the course which life takes from the womb until death. But at the end of our lifespan, whether it terminates in childhood, youth or in old age, our familiarity with the nature of things comes to an end. It has been surmised that death means total and final annihilation. But this is not so. Death is simply a means of consigning us to a new womb, to the womb of the universe itself. From that point, we are ushered into another world: the Hereafter – the life after life. While the present, physical world as we know it has a finite time frame, the Hereafter stretches away from us into infinity. We fondly imagine that there is some parallel between the pleasures and pains of this world and those of the next, but, in truth, nothing that we can experience in this world will ever match the extremes of agony and bliss of life after death. Those who merit punishment in the Hereafter will be condemned to suffer the most horrific pain for all time to come. But those who merit God’s blessings in the Hereafter shall know the most wonderful joy and contentment.

Let us try to understand the concept of the hereafter rationally.