Akhirah: Life After Death

A belief about later that changes now

Akhirah is the Muslim belief in everlasting life after death. It is easy to file it under things that happen at the end and move on. ⭐ That is the wrong way round. Muslims hold that akhirah is not mainly a claim about later. IT IS WHAT MAKES THIS LIFE ACCOUNTABLE. Think about what follows if everything is recorded and nothing goes unseen. A duty kept in private still counts, because there was never a private. A wrong nobody noticed is not therefore free. And a life that looked unrewarded from outside is not therefore wasted. ⚠️ So the question to ask of this belief is not what it describes, but what it CHANGES ABOUT TODAY. That is also why it sits in a course about how people live, next to the duties and the practices rather than tucked away at the end of it.

What Muslims hold about each

Set out plainly what Muslims believe about this life and about what follows it. Keep the two columns separate when you write, and attribute the beliefs as beliefs. Muslims describe the judgement as just, and describe Allah as merciful, and a fair answer gives both.

Order what Muslims describe

Put these stages in the order Muslims describe them.

• This life, lived as a test with a record kept
• Death, which ends the time in which choices can be made
• Barzakh, a state of waiting between death and judgement
• Yawm al-Din, the Day of Judgement, when the record is examined
• Al-Jannah or Jahannam, according to that judgement

The duty nobody sees

A Muslim gives what is owed in zakat without anybody knowing, and keeps a fast on a day when nobody would have checked. How does belief in akhirah best explain that?

• Because Muslims hold that everything is recorded and nothing goes unseen, so a duty kept in private counts exactly as much as one kept in public
• Because they are frightened of being punished if they are caught out
• Because the practices have become habits performed without thought
• Because they expect other people to find out eventually and think well of them

Words for this belief

Five terms, each defined so that you can use it in a sentence rather than only recognise it.

Find the sentence that connects

A student writes about akhirah. Select the ONE sentence that connects the belief to how a person lives now.

• Muslims believe in life after death, which they call akhirah.
• They believe there will be a Day of Judgement.
• Because Muslims hold that every action is recorded and will be examined, an obligation kept when nobody is watching matters as much as one kept in public, which is why the belief shapes ordinary decisions rather than only final ones.
• Paradise is often described as a garden.
• This is a very important belief in Islam.

What the belief changes now

Three of these five are consequences Muslims draw from akhirah FOR THIS LIFE. Choose the three.

• An obligation kept when nobody is watching counts as much as one kept publicly
• Suffering that goes unanswered in this life is not therefore the end of the matter
• Choices made now matter, because death ends the time in which they can be made
• Muslims should withdraw from ordinary life to concentrate on what comes after
• There is no point seeking justice in this life, since it will be settled later

One question for any belief in this topic

Beliefs questions are easy to answer thinly, by stating what is believed and stopping. ⭐ Ask what this belief changes about today. A belief that changes nothing about how somebody acts is being described rather than explained, and description alone sits in the lower bands. ⚠️ And attribute. Say that Muslims believe it, describe the judgement as they describe it, and do not write as though you were settling whether any of it is so.

Match the belief to what it changes

The piece of work that gets marked

Leave religion aside. Two pieces of work are set on the same Monday. The first will be collected, read closely by somebody who knows the subject, and marked. The second is described as optional practice, and the teacher says plainly that nobody will ever look at it. ⭐ Watch what happens to the two on the Sunday night, and notice that it has almost nothing to do with which is more interesting. The first gets the last hour. It gets checked over. The bit that was rushed gets done again. ⚠️ And here is the part worth sitting with. It is not fear of a bad mark that does most of that work. It is simply knowing that the effort will be SEEN. Work that nobody will read has a way of feeling like it did not quite happen. ⭐⭐ Which tells you something useful about people in general. A belief that nothing goes unseen does not mainly change what somebody thinks about the distant future. It changes what they do on an ordinary evening, about a small thing, when no one is in the room. Hold that and you can explain why a belief about what comes after sits in a course about how people live now.

Complete the akhirah facts

The Muslim belief in everlasting life after death is called _____. Between death and judgement, Muslims describe a state of waiting called _____. On the Day of Judgement, known as yawm al-din, each person is held to answer for themselves, and the outcome is described as either _____, paradise, or _____, hell. Because everything is held to be _____, an obligation kept when nobody is watching counts as much as a public one, and because this life is described as a _____, hardship can be understood as something to be borne rather than as evidence of abandonment.

Build the explanation

Complete an explanation of why belief in akhirah affects how a Muslim lives now.

Akhirah quick-fire

Five quick decisions. Three lives.

Turn a belief into an argument

A question asks how belief in life after death affects the way Muslims live. Work through your answer.

• How should you begin?
• You need an example that shows the belief doing work. Which is strongest?
• The question asks you to evaluate. What must your answer include?

Explain what the belief changes

Some people argue that a belief about life after death makes no practical difference to how somebody lives. Evaluate that view, using Muslim belief in akhirah in your answer.

• Explain briefly what Muslims believe about akhirah, using the correct terms
• Explain one way Muslims hold that the belief changes ordinary decisions, with an example
• Explain why Muslims describe the judgement as just and Allah as merciful
• Give the strongest argument on the other side, attributed to those who hold it
• Reach a judgement and support it, remembering that no position is being marked as the right one