Salvation and Hell in Classical Islamic Thought by Marco Demichelis

Author:Marco Demichelis [Demichelis, Marco]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781350070318
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2018-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

Ibn Sīnā and the philosophical discourse

It is in Avicenna’s Metaphysics (al-Shifā’) that the Soul’s destiny in the afterlife is clarified because the main subject of this work reflects on the entities that are separable from matter both in reality and in definition, but also the primary causes of both physical and spiritual reality as well as the cause of all causes or the principle of all principles: namely God.62

It is obvious that, for the above reasons, man’s existence and survival in the hereafter require partnership through a reciprocal transaction which demands law (sunnah) and justice (‘adl), but also a lawgiver and a dispenser of justice, because laws make up part of the overall order of the good that exists in the cosmos.

Avicenna clarifies that it is impossible that divine providence (‘ināya ūla), which is directly connected with the Necessary Existent and the First Cause of the universe, would not provide the very basis of these laws necessary for human existence and survival, considering the divine lawgivers in the form of prophets as well.

This is Ibn Sīnā’s theological–religious understanding of man’s existence which is closely linked with the First Principle of being: the maker, the one and the omnipotent who knows the hidden and the manifest.63 God’s existence is not related to a precise place; it cannot be verbally described, even though the prophetic words try to simplify him. The human attempt to reach an understanding is usually a cause of incomprehensions and conflicts because divine wisdom is not easily acquired by everyone. It is for these reasons that human beings need common words and concepts, ‘the Revelations’, to properly comprehend the belief of resurrection in a manner that they can conceive of, reflecting on eternal bliss and misery through parables and on the true nature of the afterlife.64

According to the fact that there are few prophetic souls in the physical world, Avicenna argued that the Prophet must also impose certain obligations and laws to instil in human beings the contemplation of God through prayer, acts of worship, fasting and pilgrimages. This praxis should better prepare us to dissociate ourselves from the distraction of our material body focusing more on God.

This is the real reason why the prophetic religions exist in the world: to preserve men’s welfare for the afterlife providing that true happiness (al-Fārābī’s concept) in the hereafter is achieved through the soul’s detaching itself out of piety and against the acquisition of bodily dispositions which opposed this meaning of happiness.

This purification–terrestrial process is directly connected with moral actions and habits which turn the soul away from the body and the material senses. The bestiality of the human body and its actions are clearly the material enemy of this refined attempt which performed spiritual acts by instilling a propensity repelling it from this physical body and its influences.

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