There is a Hadith which address these issues eschatologicaly which I'll dig out if you are interested. For me it is the best solution to the problem of theodicy I have read anywhere. Let me know if you are interested
I don't knoe about Joe but I am.
Dear Joe98 & Heigou, I hope you enjoy these thoughts...
For Islam as for Christianity this life is a preparation for what is to come, but no one will seriously prepare himself for something that appears to him unreal, a fantasy, a dream. It is difficult enough for the young to grasp in an entirely concrete manner the fact that - assuming they survive - they will eventually be old people. How much more difficult, then, for the human creature, young or old, to understand that divine Judgement, heaven and hell will come as surely as tomorrow's dawn, or yet more surely, since that dawn cannot come unless God so wills, whereas the advent of physical death and all that follows upon it represents the only infallible prediction we can make concerning our future.
It is by no means easy for those whose whole attention is focused upon the massive apparent reality of this world to accept the fact that it can at any moment, and will at some moment, disappear like a puff of smoke. Yet the Qur'an assures us that the akhiria, the hereafter, is 'better and more lasting', and this suggests that it is more real than any 'reality' we experience here.
The three monotheistic religions (unlike Hinduism, for example) are not altogether happy with the imagery of 'dreaming' as applied to our present state of existence, although this imagery is by no means foreign either to Islam or Christianity. It is often misunderstood, since people readily take it to mean that life is 'less real' than we take it to be, whereas the intention is to indicate that there are other possible states of experience so intense that, in relation to our everyday experience of this world, they may be compared to wakefulness in relation to dreaming. There is a hadith recorded by Muslim which can scarcely be interpreted in any other terms. The man who had the pleasantest life in the world, so we are told, will be dipped momentarily into hell on the Day of Resurrection. He will then be asked, 'Son of Adam, did you ever experience any good? Did anything pleasant ever come your way?' and he will reply, 'No, my Lord, I swear it!' Then the man who, of all men, had the most miserable life on earth will be dipped momentarily into Paradise. He will then be brought before his Lord and asked, 'Son of Adam, did you ever have any misfortune? Did any distress ever come your way?' and he will reply, 'No, my Lord, I swear it! No misfortune has ever come to me and I have never known distress.'
It would be difficult to find a simpler or more striking illustration of the difference between degrees of reality as experienced by a consciousness transposed from a lower one to a higher one. At the same time it offers, at least to those who are prepared to accept the possibility that there may be states of experience 'more real' than anything we live through here, one answer to the question as to how God can allow the innocent to suffer in this world. If anyone were to awaken from a bad dream, full of fear and torment, to find himself at home beside his beloved, sunlight streaming through the window, a prospect of golden days before him and all his deepest longings satisfied, for how long would he remember the pain of his dream? On the other hand, if he were to awaken from a dream of delight to find himself in an all too familiar prison cell, awaiting the next session of torture at the hands of merciless inquisitors and quite without hope, dream-pleasure would melt away in moments. Whether it be sweet or sour, reality takes precedence over dreaming, and the greater reality takes precedence over the lesser.
A delicate balance has to be maintained between two extremes: on the one hand a view of human life which attributes absolute reality to the world of the senses, on the other a view which dismisses this world as 'unreal'. Islam, as the religion of the 'middle way' has maintained this balance with great care, however often individual Muslims may have veered to one extreme or the other.
this is taken from
Islam and the destiny of Man, by Gai Eaton
