As-Sajda (The Prostration)

11. “Say: ‘The angel of death, who is put in charge of you, shall cause you to die, then unto your Lord you shall be brought back.”

In this holy verse their answer is given in another way. The verse here implies that you should not imagine that your personality depends only on your body, but the basis of your personality is formed by your spirit.

The verse says:

“Say: ‘The angel of death, who is put in charge of you, shall cause you to die, then unto your Lord you shall be brought back.”

Regarding to the concept of the Qur’anic phrase /yatawaffa kum/ which is derived from /tawaffa/ in the sense of: ‘to take back’, death does not mean ‘annihilation’ and ‘destruction’, but it is a kind of taking the man’s soul by angels, and soul forms the most essential part of man’s existence.

It is true that the Qur’an speaks about the resurrection of the body and counts the return of material body and soul decisive in resurrection, but the aim of the above mentioned verse is to state this fact that the basis of the man’s personality is not formed by these material limbs which have occupied your whole thought, but it is that very worthy spirit which has come from the side of Allah (s.w.t.) and once it will surely return to Him again.

As a conclusion, it can be said that the two abovementioned verses answer the deniers of resurrection as follows: If your problem is the dispersion of bodily particles, you yourself believe in Allah’s power and you do not reject it.

And if the problem is annihilation and destruction of man’s personality as the result of dispersion, it is not right either, because man’s personality has been based on the soul.

This objection is similar to the famous paradox of /’akil/ and /ma’kul/ as the answer to both of them is similar to each other.

By the way, it is necessary to note this point that in some verses of the Qur’an ‘taking soul’ has been attributed to Allah, as the Qur’an says:

“Allah takes the souls at the time of their death…”1

And in some other verses it is attributed to a group of angels, as another verse says:

“Those whom the angels take their lives while they are unjust to themselves…”2

And in the verse under discussion taking souls is attributed to the angel of death. But there is not any contrast between these meanings. The Qur’anic phrase: /malik-ul maut/ (the angel of death) has a meaning of genus and is used for all angels, or it refers to the chief of them; and since all of such angels take the soul by the command of Allah, it is also attributed to Allah.