Islam and Heaven or paradise, do women go where men go when they die?

  • Thread starter Thread starter QuietTimes
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Great link, Linda Marie. I found this on the first site that you gave:

“Here Allah mentions the Hoor AlEen* because in most cases men pursue women and not vice versa. As for women, Allah Almighty may marry them to any of the believers in Paradise, if they did not get married during worldly life, or He may compensate them by making them feel content with their position. It is also said that Allah may grant women some kind of beauty with which they will feel that they are better than the *Hoor Al-Een and that they are their mistress, so they will not love anyone other than their own husbands nor will they feel jealous of the Hoor Al-`Een.”

islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?cid=1119503543756&pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar%2FFatwaE%2FFatwaEAskTheScholar
 
You are right that good and bad had been done by both. For example in Spain… said to be the golden period of Islam… the Muslims still had bloody pogroms killing thousands of Jews and Christians.

The lessons here are that all parties have done good things and horrible things. No one today is responsible for what our ancestors did. What we are responsible for is what we do with the knowledge we can learn about man’s inhumanity to man by studying this history. All religions need to remove from their theology and laws anything that supports the killing, subjugation or enslavement of anyone… that’s the bottom line.

I have spoken out against some aspects of Islam on this forum. There is a lot of good things is Islam… it is after all a form of Christianity/Judaism. I do not speak out against all Muslims or all of Islam but instead against things like their laws of the lesser Jihad… a perpetual war against all non-Muslims to spread Islam. The laws of Islam that call for the subjugation of non-Muslims under Islamic rule, the laws allowing for wife beating. Those are the things that I am concerned about. I would argue against any Christian (such as the KKK) that advocate similar things.

There is truth in this.
I’m not trying to be an apologist for Islam, not do I think Islam should be above and beyond criticism. But, I have a problem when people get up on a stand and say one religion in the world is totally evil with nothing good in it, while another is perfect and flawless, and base their arguments not on reason and research or sound apologetics, but personal hatred and prejudice (which is the sense I got from several posters here, but not the above one).

There are some very dangerous and unpleasant undercurrents in Islam, both today and in the past. Jihadist violence, I would certainly agree, is a very dangerous and current threat to the West. Also Islam and Islamic empires have brutally persecuted Christians, especially in the Ottoman Empire; one only remembers the terrible massacres of Orthodox Armenians in the Middle East, the violence against Christians in Iraq, and also during the Lebanese Civil War.

Yet to use such events to try and prove one civilisation or religion is better than another is in my view fraught with dangers and distortions. A true historical accounting requires accurate and balanced analysis and summary of the facts. Martin Gilbert, a great historian, wrote many books on the Holcaust and a Jew himself, was rightly disgusted at the horrible evil he saw there, but he didn’t end up viscerally and irrationally hating all Germans. Likewise, Christians should be very wary of viscerally hating all Muslims because of the actions of a few, because things in the past like the Crusades were triggered when such hatreds were manipulated and used by clerics and politicians for political ends, as Hitler used Anti-Semitic sentiment in Germany to rise to power. Just because such things are not happening now, doesn’t mean they can’t happen again, especially if economic and social instability occur in the West and people rally around demagogues and fanatics who rise up in the chaos and urge everyone to seek a scapegoat.
 
With all due respect, by their fruits you shall know them. I stand by my characterization of Islam. If you choose not to see the imprisonment of the mind, body and soul that is Islam, so be it.
Yes, well, if Islam is and ever was only about imprisoning the mind, body and soul, let me give you the biographies of a couple of Muslim thinkers from Wikipedia (in short extracts):

"Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham (Arabic: أبو علي الحسن بن الحسن بن الهيثم, Latinized: Alhacen or (deprecated) Alhazen) (965–1039), was a Muslim polymath, anatomist, astronomer, engineer, mathematician, mechanician, ophthalmologist, philosopher, physician, physicist, psychologist, and scientist, who made significant contributions to the principles of optics, as well as astronomy, analytic geometry, infinitesimal and integral calculus, mechanics, motion, number theory, and visual perception, and pioneered the use of the scientific method. He is sometimes called al-Basri (Arabic: البصري), after his birthplace of Basra in Iraq (Mesopotamia), then part of the Buyid dynasty of Persia.[1]

Ibn al-Haytham is considered the father of optics for correctly explaining and proving the modern intromission theory of vision in his influential Book of Optics, and for his experiments on optics, including experiments on lenses, mirrors, refraction, reflection, and the dispersion of light into its constituent colours.[2] He also explained binocular vision, speculated on the finite speed, rectilinear propagation and electromagnetic aspects of light,[3] and argued that rays of light are streams of energy particles[4] travelling in straight lines.[5] Due to his empirical and experimental approach to science, he is also considered the pioneer of the modern scientific method,[6][7] and some have described him as the “first scientist” for this reason.[8]

Among his other achievements, Ibn al-Haytham described the pinhole camera and invented the camera obscura (a precursor to the modern camera),[9] discovered Fermat’s principle of least time and Newton’s first law of motion,[10] described the attraction between masses and was aware of the magnitude of acceleration due to gravity,[11] presented the earliest critique and reform of the Ptolemaic model, first stated Wilson’s theorem, formulated and solved Alhazen’s problem geometrically, developed and proved the earliest general formula for integral calculus using mathematical induction,[12] discussed the earliest theories on the psychology of visual perception,[13] and in his optical research, laid the foundations for the later development of telescopic astronomy,[14] as well as the microscope and the use of optical aids in Renaissance art.[15]"

"Ibn Sina (full name Abū ‘Alī al-Husayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā al-Balkhī; Persian: ابوعلى سينا/پورسينا), also known as Avicenna) was a Persian (Tājīk)[2][3][4] physician, astronomer, logician, mathematician, metaphysician, philosopher, physicist, scientist, and theologian. Avicenna was born around 980 (370 AH) in Afshana near Bukhara[5] in Khorasan a part of Persia (now part of Uzbekistan) and died in 1037 (428 AH) in Hamadan (Iran).[1]

He authored some 450 books on a wide range of subjects, many of which concentrated on philosophy and medicine. His most famous works are The Book of Healing and The Canon of Medicine, which was for almost five centuries a standard medical text at many European universities. Avicenna’s medical system was that of Islamic medicine, which was influenced by the medical system of Galen, Aristotelian metaphysics, and traditional Persian and Arabian medicine. Avicenna is also considered the father of the fundamental concept of momentum in physics.[6]
.
 
George Sarton, the “father of the history of science”, wrote in the Introduction to the History of Science: “One of the most famous exponents of Muslim universalism and an eminent figure in Islamic learning was Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna (981-1037). For a thousand years he has retained his original renown as one of the greatest thinkers and medical scholars in history. His most important medical works are the Qanun (Canon) and a treatise on Cardiac drugs. The ‘Qanun fi-l-Tibb’ is an immense encyclopedia of medicine. It contains some of the most illuminating thoughts pertaining to distinction of mediastinitis from pleurisy; contagious nature of phthisis; distribution of diseases by water and soil; careful description of skin troubles; of sexual diseases and perversions; of nervous ailments.”[7]"

"Averroes is most famous for his translations and commentaries of Aristotle’s works, which had been mostly forgotten in the West. Before 1150 only a few translated works of Aristotle existed in Latin Europe, and they were not studied much or given much credence by monastic scholars. It was through the Latin translations of Averroes’s work beginning in the 12th century that the legacy of Aristotle was recovered in the West.

Averroes’s work on Aristotle spans almost three decades, and he wrote commentaries on almost all of Aristotle’s work except for Aristotle’s Politics, to which he did not have access. Hebrew translations of his work also had a lasting impact on Jewish philosophy. His ideas were assimilated by Siger of Brabant and Thomas Aquinas and others (especially in the University of Paris) within the Christian scholastic tradition which valued Aristotelian logic. Famous scholastics such as Aquinas believed him to be so important they did not refer to him by name, simply calling him “The Commentator” and calling Aristotle “The Philosopher.” Averroes also greatly influenced philosophy in the Islamic world. His death coincides with a change in the culture of Al-Andalus. In his work Fasl al-Maqāl (translated a. o. as The Decisive Treatise), he stresses the importance of analytical thinking as a prerequisite to interpret the Qur’an; this is in contrast to orthodox Muslim theology, where the emphasis is less on analytical thinking but on extensive knowledge of sources other than the Qur’an, i.e. the hadith.

His separation of reason and religion in The Decisive Treatise provided a justification for the doctrine of separation of religion and state, thus Averroism was a precursor to modern secularism.[2][3]

Averroes’s treatise on Plato’s Republic has played a major role in both the transmission and the adaptation of the Platonic tradition in the West. It has been a primary source in medieval political philosophy.

Averroes was one of those who predicted the existence of a new world beyond the Atlantic Ocean. [1]"

"Al-Ghazali had an important influence on both Muslim philosophers and Christian medieval philosophers. Margaret Smith writes in her book Al-Ghazali: The Mystic (London 1944): “There can be no doubt that Al-Ghazali’s works would be among the first to attract the attention of these European scholars” (page 220). Then she emphasizes, “The greatest of these Christian writers who was influenced by Al-Ghazali was St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), who made a study of the Arabic writers and admitted his indebtedness to them. He studied at the University of Naples where the influence of Arab literature and culture was predominant at the time.”

Ghazali’s influence has been compared to the works of St. Thomas Aquinas in Christian theology, but the two differed greatly in methods and beliefs. Whereas Ghazali rejected non-Islamic philosophers such as Aristotle and saw it fit to discard their teachings on the basis of their “unbelief,” Aquinas embraced them and incorporated ancient Greek and Latin thought into his own philosophical writings.

“A careful study of Ghazali’s works will indicate how penetrating and widespread his influence was on the Western medieval scholars. A case in point is the influence of Ghazali on St. Thomas Aquinas — who studied the works of Islamic philosophers, especially Ghazali’s, at the University of Naples. In addition, Aquinas’ interest in Islamic studies could be attributed to the infiltration of ‘Latin Averroism’ in the 13th century, especially at [the University of] Paris.”[5]

It is also believed that René Descartes’ ideas from his book called “Discourse on the Method” were influenced by Al-Ghazali and very much similar to Al-Ghazali’s work. Thus, some scholars today believe that Descartes was being dishonest by writing the “Discourse on Methods” without giving any academic reference to Al-Ghazali’s work in his book.
 
Ghazali also played a very major role in integrating Sufism with Shariah. He very well combined the concepts of Sufism with the Shariah laws. He was also the first to present a formal description of Sufism in his works. His works also strengthened the status of Sunnite Islam against other schools. The Batinite (Ismailism) had emerged in Persian territories and were gaining more and more power during Ghazali’s period, as Nizam al-Mulk was assassinated by the members of Ismailis. Ghazali strictly refuted their ideology and wrote several books on refutation of Baatinyas which significantly weakened their status."

Clearly Islam, if it were as you describe and picture it, could never have produced thinkers of this magnitude and depth. I can quite easily, with some basic research, find at least half a dozen to a dozen more Muslim thinkers of the same calibre as those mentioned, and for every one of these, there are many distinguished but somewhat lesser figures of importance who still made important discoveries, just as there were in the West.
 
Please dispense of the cliche characterizations. First, you called me racist (making assumptions about my own race and despite that fact that I never mentioned anyone’s race) and now you call me fearful, angry and derisive. This seems extremely ironic considering that you are haranguing me for being “judgmental”. It’s rather hypocritical of you, isn’t it?
I do not know what your skin color is, nor do I care. You leapt to the defense of someone else’s statement that Muslims have, as a group, not proven themselves ‘worthy of trust and respect’, and I am calling you out on that.
It worries me when our Western society is producing this kind of fuzzy thinking. According to Mirdath, calling the stoning to death of women accused of adultery evil is objectionable. *Actually *stoning to death women accused of adultery is not.
Huh, who’s making assumptions now? I’ll say it right here: stoning people, no matter the reason, is evil. I have never said Islam, or indeed any religion, is perfect, only that its followers do not deserve the treatment they usually get here – and that I would have thought Christians better people, or at least better held in check by their own beliefs. Instead I see a good number of them behaving like so many rabid animals.
 
Yes – a problem with the members, and with religious laws becoming civil theocracies. Keep in mind that Islam is not the only religion that calls for the stoning of homosexuals and apostates. They got that from Judaism.
How does a law like, “Apostates must be executed” avoid becoming a civil law?
Does the fact that Islam “got” the stoning of homosexuals and apostates from Judaism (they would say they did not get this from Judaism btw) make it OK that it is occurring now?
When does it become OK to say that a religion is wrong, and that its members are merely following its precepts correctly when they do these things?
This is true. Does it justify the treatment of Muslims with the fear, anger, and derision they have often met with here so far? Do atrocities committed by extremists and the existence of antiquated evils in the Quran (as they are in the Torah/Pentateuch) give others license to treat all of them as subhuman, undeserving of respect? This is the attitude you are, I hope unintentionally, defending.
Well, that is wrong, and I really struggle with it, because of some of the posters on here like Almadhassan. However can it be said that the Saudis are extremists when they behead people? Is it a numbers game; as long as a certain percentage of muslims do not take the sharia laws literally, then the religion is fine?
BTW if a group of Jews started stoning adulterers and enforcing other Old Testament laws I would condemn them, too.
I see both ideas practiced. I can understand calling Islam misguided; from a Catholic perspective, it certainly is – but evil? How can you call a religion that worships your God, even in a misguided fashion, truly evil?
Evil and good can be defined irregardless of commonality of deities. I can, for instance, attest that Pope Alexander the VI was an evil man. I also believe that it is evil to execute apostates from any religion. The difference here is that Pope Alexander VI was one man, whereas the sharia law is a fundamental part of islam.
Hey, if most muslims do not believe that sharia law should be the civil law of the land, that’s great, and I would agree with them. Instead almadhassan etc. come on here trying to justify killing apostates as one example, and that’s when I have a problem seeing islam as good.
Perhaps it’s the sharia laws that I see as evil not islam per se. Can they be separated, truly? I have no gripe with someone practicing their own religion in their own way, unless they are harming someone else. But I will never, ever, agree with anyone that says it is right to execute apostates or adulterers, forbid women to dress as they wish and drive and leave the house without a male relative escort, or any other manifestation of sharia law, ever. Nor will I ever condone the apartheid system of dhimmitude, nor the lack of religious freedom in saudi arabia, nor suicide bombings, nor fatwas against authors, nor murders over cartoons.
 
And Mirdath, that is what has been going on in this forum! We argue about executing apostates and child brides and so forth and muslims come on here and instead of saying, “Yes, these things are wrong”, they try to justify them. And then things get uglier, and uglier.

I remember Pro-universal (former poster on here) stridently trying to convince us that it was fine to be in dhimmi status and we shouldn’t think that was an unfair system of life…
almadhassan tried to tell us how it was moral to kill apostates… he also tried to suggest that islam ‘can’t be insulted’ and that that justified the murder of people like theo van gogh…

wtf Mirdath, how do we politely contend with this? I feel like I’m debating with the KKK about lynching african-americans.
 
You do realize that everything you just said applies to Judaism back in its conquering days – except conversion wasn’t an option? I have no worries about being slain by rampaging Israelites nowadays, none about being put before the Inquisitional court for my commission of apostasy, and as long as I stay out of Saudi Arabia, none about being put to death for being a queer agnostic. Old laws and divine commands are not the problem; their persistence into civil government is. And that too will pass.
Yes I do realize this. I goes further then that in that most ancient civilizations had such laws. For example in most ancient civilizations it was treason to not belong to the same religion as the ruler. When the ruler changed, everyone converted to worship whatever god(s) the ruler worshiped.

You are right that the issue is their persistence in civil government or might I add in theocracies in some places. And yes this too shall pass… but only if people stand up against it. It has persisted for thousands of years because few stood up against it.
 
Yes I do realize this. I goes further then that in that most ancient civilizations had such laws. For example in most ancient civilizations it was treason to not belong to the same religion as the ruler. When the ruler changed, everyone converted to worship whatever god(s) the ruler worshiped.

You are right that the issue is their persistence in civil government or might I add in theocracies in some places. And yes this too shall pass… but only if people stand up against it. It has persisted for thousands of years because few stood up against it.
This is true.

Have you ever considered how bizarre it is that people were actually murdered over cartoons? It doesn’t sound like it could have really happened, but it did.
 
So I would like to know the beliefs for muslims and what heaven or paradise is to them.
Who gets to go there and will women and men be in this same paradise together, or are they separated?

I know the understanding of the church teaching for catholics and we believe in heaven in a much different way.
Thats obvious, but we dont believe there will be anymore sexual pleasure. I hear different for the muslims and would like someone to elaborate if they could.
What happens when you meet up with your wife and she sees you in the embrase of the 72 virgins. Would she understand?
 
I’m not trying to be an apologist for Islam, not do I think Islam should be above and beyond criticism. But, I have a problem when people get up on a stand and say one religion in the world is totally evil with nothing good in it, while another is perfect and flawless, and base their arguments not on reason and research or sound apologetics, but personal hatred and prejudice (which is the sense I got from several posters here, but not the above one).

There are some very dangerous and unpleasant undercurrents in Islam, both today and in the past. Jihadist violence, I would certainly agree, is a very dangerous and current threat to the West. Also Islam and Islamic empires have brutally persecuted Christians, especially in the Ottoman Empire; one only remembers the terrible massacres of Orthodox Armenians in the Middle East, the violence against Christians in Iraq, and also during the Lebanese Civil War.

Yet to use such events to try and prove one civilisation or religion is better than another is in my view fraught with dangers and distortions. A true historical accounting requires accurate and balanced analysis and summary of the facts. Martin Gilbert, a great historian, wrote many books on the Holcaust and a Jew himself, was rightly disgusted at the horrible evil he saw there, but he didn’t end up viscerally and irrationally hating all Germans. Likewise, Christians should be very wary of viscerally hating all Muslims because of the actions of a few, because things in the past like the Crusades were triggered when such hatreds were manipulated and used by clerics and politicians for political ends, as Hitler used Anti-Semitic sentiment in Germany to rise to power. Just because such things are not happening now, doesn’t mean they can’t happen again, especially if economic and social instability occur in the West and people rally around demagogues and fanatics who rise up in the chaos and urge everyone to seek a scapegoat.
I can only answer for my own words on this forum… so I am not responsible for any broad sweeping remarks made by others. You will find that I keep my criitcism of Islam to a few basic laws that I believe are causing problems today. I’ve even marked that there are parts of it that are essentially Judeism or Christian. My concerns are about the laws of Jihad, laws that require killing people for apostacy and sexul sins, laws the call for the beating and other mistreatment of women and laws that call for the subjugation of non-muslims.

My main concern about attrocities committed by Muslims is that Muslism do not admit to them. They tend to go so far as to say Muslims have never harmed anyone ane the Muslim countries were an absolute model of perfection and blisss while Chrsitans have just been committing attrocities after attrocities for thousands of years. How about we all admit to the truth of history on all sides. Then move on to make things better today.
 
I think the wives will get young boys as well.
NO where does Islamic scripture say this. Women don’t want young boys anyway… children are children. Instead how about some real men. 😃
 
What happens when you meet up with your wife and she sees you in the embrase of the 72 virgins. Would she understand?
What amazes me is that Muslim men do not realize or seem to care that this whole play-boy bunny in heaven thing is an insult to their wives. I guess they just don’t care.
 
Yes, well, if Islam is and ever was only about imprisoning the mind, body and soul, let me give you the biographies of a couple of Muslim thinkers from Wikipedia (in short extracts):
According to Ibn Warraq, author of “Why I Am Not a Muslim”, Islam never really encouraged science, if by science we mean `disinterested enquiry’. What Islam always meant by ’ knowledge’ was religious knowledge, anything else was deemed dangerous to the faith. All the real science that occurred under Islam occurred despite the religion not because of it.

You have given examples of achievements of Muslims from 1,000 years ago. Here is what a Lebanese Muslim wrote about Islamic society today:
Charles Malik:
An entire civilization IS in decline. Modern Muslims are behaving like Middle Ages Europe. How much does the Middle East have to offer the rest of the world in terms of ideas, art, literature, and music? What we are offering as a civilization are raw materials (which no one here produced or learned how to extract for themselves) and violence.

lebop.blogspot.com/2006/02/struggling-with-islam-civilization-in.html
And from The Iranian:

Until the Muslim world looks within and stops the “blame game” of scapegoating the U.S. and Israel for its problems, it will never reclaim the greatness it once enjoyed. A thousand years ago, the Muslim world led humanity in scientific achievement.

Today, Israel alone has nearly twice as many scientists as all Muslim countries put together. This cannot be explained by American foreign policy or Israel. Rather, it is a clear signal that Muslims must look inward in order to reclaim their societies.

iranian.com/Opinion/2002/March/Victim/index.html

This makes your list of Islamic men of achievement all the more depressing when you consider what talent and discoveries have been lost to the world through the oppression of the mind, body and soul that is standard in Islamic nations today.

(None of this has anything to do with Islam and Heaven and the question of where women go. Sorry to the OP for the tangent. I was just responding to the posts directed at me.)
 
I do not know what your skin color is, nor do I care. You leapt to the defense of someone else’s statement that Muslims have, as a group, not proven themselves ‘worthy of trust and respect’, and I am calling you out on that.
Where is this dramatic leap to the defense of someone else’s statement that Muslims have, as a group, not proven themselves “worthy of trust and respect” that you are “calling me out on”? I’ve tried to weed through the posts on this thread and can’t find the defensive leap.
Huh, who’s making assumptions now? I’ll say it right here: stoning people, no matter the reason, is evil. I have never said Islam, or indeed any religion, is perfect, only that its followers do not deserve the treatment they usually get here – and that I would have thought Christians better people, or at least better held in check by their own beliefs. Instead I see a good number of them behaving like so many rabid animals.
I really don’t understand what treatment you are referring to. I have consistently stated that Islamic laws, like stoning women to death for adultery is evil. Instead of immediately agreeing with those statements, you attacked me for being judgmental and hateful. Instead of immediately affirming the dignity of the women who have lost their lives in “honor killings” and stonings, you attacked me for not respecting the humanity of the people who execute the punishments. Can you see even a glimmer of my point of view, that your posts are a tragic example of the illogic of relativist thought?
 
No, they don’t care. Muslim men are taught to respect their mothers, not their wives. You can always get another wife, but you have only one mother. Power, for Muslim women, comes from who your sons are, not who your husband is.

Marriage in Islam is not a sacrament; it is a social contract for family alliance and procreation.

A Muslim man can have, at any one time, 4 wives and any number of concubines. (Old King Ibn Saud had 4 permanent wives and something like 250 concubines, the number fluctuated.) Those 4 ‘permanent’ wives can be divorced and replaced at whim. Not a situation that lends itself to respect, much less love or commitment, or caring what your wife thinks about anything.

Muslim wives currently share their husbands with other women, indeed, compete for their husband’s attention, so sharing their husband with houris in Paradise will be nothing new.

I wonder if the wives, by this time, wouldn’t prefer to see their husbands exclusively with the houris.

Why couldn’t Muslim women get to be mothers in Paradise, rather than wives? The prospect of waiting on a man hand and foot and serving him sexually, only without the joys of children, for all eternity, is appalling and barely preferable to hell.

ps - the boys (beautiful young male houris) are ‘to wait on’ the men, not the wives. The meaning of ‘to wait on’ and ‘We shall join them to Companions’ is controversial and has been interpreted in different ways, depending upon who you ask. On the surface, it appears that the prohibition of homosexual sex has been lifted, along with the prohibition of alcohol. It has been argued that since houris are celestial beings, not human, male and female do not really apply, therefore, it is not ‘homosexual’ and it is permitted to have sex with them. or so I have heard.
 
What happens when you meet up with your wife and she sees you in the embrase of the 72 virgins. Would she understand?
One possibility is that Allah makes gives the wife some sort of greater beauty than the virgins, so that the wife feels superior OR Allah erases the jealousy in the woman’s heart and replaces it with joy at her husband’s happiness. There are a couple articles that address this at Islam Online, but here’s one link:

islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?cid=1119503543756&pagename=IslamOnline-English-Ask_Scholar%2FFatwaE%2FFatwaEAskTheScholar
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top