Background
A person’s commitment to their beliefs and convictions is greatly influenced by their sense of belonging to a religious group. Distance from the Muslim community is one of the first indications that someone is turning away from Islam. When they find themselves at a mosque or among Muslims, they could feel excluded or out of place. This essay aims to show that Islam has the inclusivity required for anybody to feel a part of its mission by exploring the idea of spiritual individuality.
Spiritual personality is a term used to describe a person’s inherent character that affects how they practice Islam. They are drawn to qualities and beliefs spontaneously. Individuals believe that as the Muslim community becomes more conscious of this variety, it will foster environments that allow individuals with various passions, skills, and abilities to flourish.
Comparative Schemes of the Soul
Foundational Qur’anic Concepts of the Soul
According to Islamic philosophy, the soul’s connection to the body is determined by the soul’s fusion with the body, how it affects the body, the soul’s independence, the condition of the body, the soul’s separation from the body after death, and whether the soul retains its identity. Therefore, Islamic ideas on the soul can be classified as traditional, most common, or mystical. They comprise ideas created within Islamic philosophy and beliefs produced by various schools of Islamic dialectical theology. The wide variety of these conceptions can be roughly categorized into four groups: conventional, theological, philosophical, and mystical. There are numerous distinctions and overlaps within and between these groups (Beran & Marchal, 2022).
Classical and Theological Interpretations of Soul and Afterlife
However, many Islamic conceptions of the soul look to or assert a foundation in the Qur’an. Therefore, the Qur’an should be the starting point of the discussion of these ideas. However, a few introductory observations on using the Arabic words spirit and soul are necessary before going to the Quran.
However, as was already mentioned, God gives man life by inhaling his spirit into him. Therefore, the human soul is connected to the divine spirit. However, the Qur’an does not indicate that life and soul are equivalent. Furthermore, neither the soul’s immateriality nor its materiality is explicitly stated.
The main topics that the Qur’an addresses are the moral and religious orientations of the human soul, how it behaves, and the rewards and punishments resulting from that behavior in the hereafter (Vásquez, 2020). This concern with the soul’s moral and spiritual makeup is reflected in the Qur’anic designation of the soul as either ammrah, lawwmah, or mumainnah. The soul that naturally encourages or urges wicked behavior is the ammrah.
Commentators on the Qur’an have linked this to the carnal self. Some interpreters read the lawwmah, the soul that continuously criticizes itself, as the soul reprimands itself in pursuing virtue. The peaceful soul of the upright believer who will revert to his Lord is called the mumainnah.
Additionally, the soul departs from the body upon death, returning to it on the day of judgment. After that, the good reside in paradise while the bad reside in hell. Islamic religious philosophers were particularly interested in two resurrection-related concerns. The first is whether the resurrected body consists of the same body’s remnants. The Qur’an states that God can restore what has died without providing a thorough response to this when the bones rot; a concern is who will revive the dead since the one who created them originally will bring them back(Vásquez, 2020).
The second concerns the soul’s state between the moment of death and the day of the resurrection. Qur’anic verses 8:49; 9:101; 32:21; and 47:27 imply that evil souls would suffer punishment before the resurrection and that martyrs’ souls will be in paradise. Therefore, one should not calculate that those who die in battle are dead; they have been considered alive with their Lord cared for. Such assertions are the foundation for conventional ideas about what happens to a person’s soul between passing away and the last day of judgment.
Greek Thought and Islamic Adaptation
Nonetheless, Qus Ibn Lq, a Christian translator, wrote an important and influential short Arabic treatise on the distinction between spirit and soul. It is noteworthy for its ideas and the sources it cites, including Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Galen. Therefore, this book claims that the spirit is a delicate body (Vinkesteijn, 2022). Its less refined form causes pulse, breathing, and activity as it flows throughout the body from the heart to the veins.
The brain sends the more refined spirit throughout the nervous system, causing movement and feeling. However, the soul, an immaterial, eternal essence, gives the spirit its power; it is the immediate, intermediate cause of these actions. Death ends the soul but not the spirit.
However, the theory of the soul’s immortality and immateriality significantly influenced Islamic philosophy during the Neoplatonic period. This influence was not limited to philosophy; it may also be seen in the theological beliefs of many Islamic sectarian organizations, such as the Ismailis. Aristotle was the falsifah’s second most important source of ideas on the soul (Vinkesteijn, 2022).
Most people agreed with Aristotle’s definition of the soul as the entelechy of the body, his classification of it into vegetative, sensitive, and rational states, and his idea that rational states can be theoretical or practical. They also agreed with his description of the states of their various parts as they transition from potentiality to actuality. In addition, there were variations in the falsifah’s views of the soul within the Platonic, Aristotelian, and Neoplatonic frameworks (Vinkesteijn, 2022). One may understand these distinctions by examining a few notable philosophers’ notions.
Furthermore, the earliest Islamic philosopher, for instance, upholds the Qur’anic teaching on corporeal resurrection and the idea that the soul is an immaterial, eternal essence. However, nothing from his surviving treaties demonstrates how he combined these two theories. Al-Rz, a physician and philosopher who died in 926 (Vinkesteijn, 2022), offers a theory of the human soul based mainly on Timaeus from Plato. God, atomic matter, absolute space, and absolute time are the other four everlasting principles in addition to the soul.
Consequently, God imparts order to matter at a specific time, making it responsive to the soul. When spirit and matter join together, it gets individuated and creates unique living things. Man is the only creature among these with the gift of reason, emanating from God.
There is a long but limited period during which the soul is still individuated and connected to matter (Cohoe, 2022). During this time, spirits move between the lives of animals and people. When humanity uses reason, the finite time comes to an end. After disengaging from matter, each soul returns to its original condition as one soul. The four other eternal principles return to their initial condition and remain in their infinity.
Neoplatonic Psychology in al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā
Al-Frb and Ibn Sn are well-developed psychologists whose theories we come across. The Neoplatonic emanative system was assumed in both cases. According to al-Frb, the heavenly realm comprises dyads, bits of intelligence, and physical spheres that follow God; according to Ibn Sn, it comprises triads, bits of intelligence, souls, and physical spheres (Cohoe, 2022). The Active Intellect, which precedes the creation of our earthly universe, is the final heavenly intellect for both. The entire chain of God’s subsequent manifestations exists forever.
Furthermore, Al-Frb asserts that the human intellectual soul is a potentiality in the physical body. In certain people, Active Intellect’s illuminating action transforms the objects of sensory perception, the material pictures, into abstract conceptions. These human souls that are capable of abstract cognition become immaterial. The periodic union of the human soul with the Active Intellect results in higher levels of conceptual thinking that reach their zenith with a select few, the philosopher-prophets. The only souls that can live forever have acquired an immaterial state.
Good souls that have continued to follow the rules of reason and have shunned the lesser impulses enjoy eternal delight while thinking about the celestial bits of intelligence and God (Zhaoyuan, 2021). Those intelligent souls who have abandoned their purpose by giving in to the baser desires are condemned to an eternity of suffering. They yearn for but are unable to experience contemplation of the divine bits of intelligence. However, most people’s souls never reach an immaterial state and vanish with death.
Even so, Ibn Sn, on the other hand, is adamant that every soul has individual immortality. An emanation of the Active Intellect, the rational soul, joins the body and is individuated by it. Although it coexists with the body, it is not imprinted in it. It is an intangible, unique substance.
The afterlife rewards souls that lead logical lives, restrain their baser desires, and avoid immoral behavior (Zhaoyuan, 2021). They contemplate God and the celestial beings while living in eternal bliss. This holds for morally upright individuals who have followed divine rule because it expresses philosophical truth in a form that no philosophers may comprehend—the language of picture and symbol.
Besides, the afterlife punishes souls who did not lead a morally upright existence or did not follow religious law. They are tormented for all eternity and yearn to think of God and the celestial creatures, but they cannot do so. The language of the Qur’an uses symbols to describe the hereafter in concrete ways (Zhaoyuan, 2021).
The pinnacle of Ibn Sn’s soul theory is mysticism. Nevertheless, this is a form of academic mysticism. Ibn Sn believed that God is pure thinking. The souls of extraordinary people are flooded with all the intelligible from the Active Intellect as part of their path to God. This experience comes all at once and is intuitive.
References
Beran, O., & Marchal, K. (2022). Iris Murdoch between buddhism and christianity: moral change, conceptual loss/recovery, unselfing. International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, 1-20.
Vásquez, M. A. (2020). The Persistence, Ubiquity, and Dynamicity of Materiality: Studying Religion and Materiality Comparatively. The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Religion and Materiality, 1-42.
Vinkesteijn, R. (2022). The Cultivation of the Soul in a ‘Physicalist’World: Ethical Philosophy in Galen’s QAM. In Philosophical Perspectives on Galen of Pergamum: Four Case-Studies on Human Nature and the Relation between Body and Soul (pp. 8-102). Brill.
Cohoe, C. M. (2022). Endurance, Acceptance, or Constitutional Gratitude: Non-Theistic and Theistic Attitudes to Suffering. Religions, 13(10), 1005.
Zhaoyuan, W. A. N. (2021). A Celestial Wanderer. In Science and the Confucian Religion of Kang Youwei (1858–1927) (pp. 188-225). Brill.