Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

264 t CHAPTER TEN
troubled a narrow circle of mystics and their critics, but its occurrence
in the Afterlife was the hope of all believers.
The notion of seeing God, even in the Afterlife, was problematic
on numerous scores. It reeked, to be sure, of “embodying” God,
what the Muslims called tajsim, the grossest form of anthropomorphism.
Even if the expression “face of God” or “seeing God” was
softened into something more acceptable like “being” or “living”
in the “presence of God,” the troublesome issue “similitude”
(tashbih), of reducing God to human categories, did not disappear.
But whereas the traditionalists fought the notion of a vision of
God for the living—the enemy here were Sufis like Ibn al-Arabi
who claimed that privilege for themselves during their lifetime—
they simply acceded when it came to the reward of the blessed.
Both Scripture and tradition were too strong and clear for any
Christian or Muslim to resist the conclusion that in eternity the
righteous will “be with God,” however that might be explained.
The early suras of the Quran, which were attempting to move
pagans to “conversion,” provide abundant details on the rewards
and punishments that will follow the Reckoning, with a distinct
emphasis on the subjective state, blissful or painful, of the individual.
The rewards of the blessed are chiefly couched in terms of the
pleasures of the Garden of Eden, or simply, the Delight. The Meccan
chapters of the Quran spell them out in detail: the blessed will
recline on couches, dine on fruits, and imbibe the otherwise forbidden
wine, served by the much discussed (chiefly by Christian polemicists)
virginal houris (the “dark-eyed ones”) of Paradise (43:
70–73; 44:54; 55:46–78; 56:11–39, etc.). Later, in the Medina
revelations, there is a noticeable shift in emphasis toward the enjoyment
of God’s “approval” (ridwan) as the ultimate reward of
the believers (9:72). In one key verse, however, there appears to be
an allusion to an actual vision of God in the Afterlife: “On that
Day the faces of some will shine, looking toward their Lord”
(75:22–23). Another (83:15) states that “that Day shall they (the
transgressors) be veiled.”
Numerous hadith fill in the details of life in the Garden, many of
them in highly literalistic terms. The blessed will “visit” God every
Friday, escorted into the Presence, the men by Muhammad and the