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My question is Islamically at what point does the soul enter the fetus in a Mother's womb? My reason for asking is in regards to an Abortion. I am well aware of the Islamic ruling on the when an Abortion is permissible and at what point it is not. Also, I am not interested in starting a debate about the morality of an Abortion. I have a opinion on Abortion, as I'm sure many of you do as well, nor am I interested in engaging in a debate about women's rights. I am fully aware of those as well. https://www.al-Islam.org/Islamic-edicts-on-family-planning/abortions Please see my question as to when exactly the soul enters the body of the unborn child? Thanks in advance for any info that is provided !!!

The verse of Mubahila mentions the Nafs ie self / soul of the prophet saaw. فَمَنْ حَآجَّكَ فِيهِ مِنۢ بَعْدِ مَا جَآءَكَ مِنَ ٱلْعِلْمِ فَقُلْ تَعَالَوْا۟ نَدْعُ أَبْنَآءَنَا وَأَبْنَآءَكُمْ وَنِسَآءَنَا وَنِسَآءَكُمْ وَأَنفُسَنَا وَأَنفُسَكُمْ ثُمَّ نَبْتَهِلْ فَنَجْعَل لَّعْنَتَ ٱللَّهِ عَلَى ٱلْكَٰذِبِينَ {٦١} 003:061 Should anyone argue with you concerning him, after the knowledge that has come to you, say, ‘Come! Let us call our sons and your sons, our women and your women, our souls and your souls, then let us pray earnestly, and call down Allah’s curse upon the liars.’ From the recorded history of mubahila it is mentioned "In this way, the Prophet (S) challenged the Christians. The next day the Christian priests came out on one side of the field. Also on the other side, the Prophet came out of his house carrying al-Husayn in his arm with al-Hasan walking along with him while he was holding his hand. Behind him was Fatimah al-Zahra (sa), and behind her was ‘Ali, peace be upon them all. When the Christians saw the five pure souls, and how determined the Prophet is in his idea that he put the closest people to him at risk, the Christians were terrified and abstained from the proposed malediction (Mubahala) and submitted to a treaty with the Prophet (S). al-Suyuti who was a great Sunni scholar, wrote: In the above verse (3:61), according to what Jabir Ibn Abdillah al-Ansari (the great companion of the Prophet) said, the word "sons”refers to al-Hasan and al-Husayn, the word "women”refers to Fatimah, and the word "our selves”refer to the Prophet and ‘Ali. Thus ‘Ali is referred as "the self”of the Prophet (Nafs of the Prophet). Reference: al-Durr al-Manthoor by al-Hafidh Jalaluddin al-Suyuti, v2, p38 It follows that just as it is unlawful to seek to be superior to the Prophet, similarly it is unlawful to supersede ‘Ali (who is the "self”of the Prophet according to the words of Allah). Any one who presumed to supersede ‘Ali, was, in essence, presumed to supersede the Prophet! The following verse mentions again the Nafs ie soul of the Prophet saaw: ٩_١٢٠ مَا كَانَ لِأَهْلِ ٱلْمَدِينَةِ وَمَنْ حَوْلَهُم مِّنَ ٱلْأَعْرَابِ أَن يَتَخَلَّفُوا۟ عَن رَّسُولِ ٱللَّهِ وَلَا يَرْغَبُوا۟ بِأَنفُسِهِمْ عَن نَّفْسِهِۦ ۚ ذَٰلِكَ بِأَنَّهُمْ لَا يُصِيبُهُمْ ظَمَأٌۭ وَلَا نَصَبٌۭ وَلَا مَخْمَصَةٌۭ فِى سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ وَلَا يَطَـُٔونَ مَوْطِئًۭا يَغِيظُ ٱلْكُفَّارَ وَلَا يَنَالُونَ مِنْ عَدُوٍّۢ نَّيْلًا إِلَّا كُتِبَ لَهُم بِهِۦ عَمَلٌۭ صَٰلِحٌ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُضِيعُ أَجْرَ ٱلْمُحْسِنِينَ 009:120 It is not fitting for the people of Madinah and the Bedouins around them to hang back behind the Messenger of Allah and prefer their own self to his self. That is because they neither experience any thirst, nor fatigue, nor hunger, in the way of Allah, nor do they tread any ground enraging the faithless, nor do they gain any ground against an enemy but a righteous deed is written for them on its account. Indeed Allah does not waste the reward of the virtuous. It forms clear instruction not to prefer any one over Imam Ali As who is declared as Nafs ie self / Soul of the prophet saaw. Any comments?

Salam I originally though that the soul was an immaterial substance, that was given to humans in specific. But according to some people, everything that exists has a soul. The soul is essential for physical existence of everything. The soul is defined as " Existent's esoteric dimension". Can someone explain what this means

Hypothetically Suppose a living person's memories, thoughts, dreams, ideas, loves, and hates could all be transferred to a computer. Would the computer be a person? I'm not talking about AI. I'm talking about a biological to mechanical data transfer. Perhaps this transferred person (?) could operate a mechanical body, or maybe even a biological body whose brain has been irreparably damaged. If we had the technology to do this, would the result be a person or a thing? And why? Is the soul part of the brain, or is it something else?

Salam everybody Recently, I have been praying 2 rakat after fajr prayer for my mother's soul - she passed away. I have never come across any information on a prayer for the dead, except for namaz-e-Mayyat and Namaz wahsat-eqabar. I've never found a specific prayer to pray for the dead on a daily basis. So my question is, will these 2 rakats I do for my mother benefit her? Are there any hadiths on how the dead will benefit from people praying for them? Thank you

Salam, I hope to find you all in good health. I have tried to find information about the concept of soul/"being alive v/s being dead" in atheism. I have been largely unsuccessful. Background- The following is my perspective and/or what i am aware of- When a 'being' is being born, various molecules are processed in a manner which become relevant cells. The supply of the relevant molecules is provided by the 'mother' or taken directly from nature. The body mass of the 'being' keeps on increasing and at a certain point of time, it becomes an 'entity', separate from the mother, to the extent that, in some cases, if separated prematurely it will continue to survive, with sufficient 'outside' care. During this process, the 'being' is said to have received a 'soul', as per the theists. After the 'being' passes away, the 'brain consciousness'/soul is no more with the body. Scenario Now, it may seem repulsive, but- For example, if someone is strangulated in a manner that the body is not hurt, and only the supply of air is stopped, the person 'dies'. My questions are- Why does the body not gain consciousness when the air supply is restored? Does the brain decide that the body should 'die'? If so, why? My contention is (I may be wrong) that- If a body does not have a 'soul', it is like an intelligent machine. And if it is a machine, then shouldn't the supply of resources should bring the 'dead' body back to 'life'?

There was a time a few years back when I was younger, I am 20 so when I was around 14. I not only avoided bad acts but I even avoided bad thoughts, naturally whenever I had a bad thought I would quickly be rid of it. Bad actions were out of the question, my gaze was low and it was hard for me to raise my gaze. When I saw other men stare at women I would feel ashamed but sadly now that I think of it, I have to keep telling myself to keep my gaze low and I still fail. I don't know where or what went wrong, I was so innocent but now I feel like my legions fighting against Satan are dead and only a few injured ones are limping around fighting Satan within me, so hopelessly losing. It is as though I have become my carnal desires, I continuously forget that I am not my desires and my desires are against me, I have to keep reminding myself. Each act I do is done for a selfish reason even charity is done for a selfish reason, not like the old days when I would just feel bad and give, now I give because I have been told it helps me. I offer prayer but even that is for a selfish reason because if I don't do it I will be punished and if I do it then I am saved from punishment, given rewards, and I would have either pleased people or Allah. When I don't know a person I like them but when I know them, I see their faults and as a result I lose heart for them and they become 'unworthy' in my eyes but the people who I don't know seem saintly and perfect and I am humbled before them. So I am forever spending money, treating people nicely, befriending them, only to forget them and repeat the process with new people. Even with the land I have a problem, when I live here in the UK, I see its problems and envy a different place but at the different place I envy what I left remembering what the old land had which the new one lacks. Even with the seasons, in winter I wish for Summer and in Summer I wish for winter. I have also lost the plot about why I should interact with men and the only motive with interaction with women is lust and because of this I also keep away from women. Part of me wants to be noticed, tells myself that I am good but another part of me doesn't want to show off, wants to be good without being noticed and tells me I am worthless and useless and low. I have no idea about my worth, I have achieved nothing but I have also achieved something, I want to be pious and I am pious but I am only fooling myself in thinking this way. The only thing my heart, mind and soul agrees on is where I should be buried, the type of soil I want to be left alone in. I am fearful of being buried in a wet soil, it seems cold, damp and dark to me. I feel attraction and warmth when I think of being buried in a dry, warm soil. The only thing I seem to be certain of is my grave, or at least what I want my grave to be like. I don't know anything else. I was also in awe of the Scholars when they were out of reach but now I realize that those who give light are sitting on darkness, like a light bulb which illuminates its surrounding but beneath it is a shadow. How can I get back to that innocence and revive the might of my legions against Satan? To live as a human, being Adam for which God praised himself and naturally giving priority to my soul before my desires. Please quote each problem and give me an advice on each one separately as best as you can. Thank you.

As salam alaikum, For some background: My mother is Hindu but more spiritual,doesnt believe in rituals etc., dad neutral about religions and a lot more spiritual, and brother is a downright atheist - I'm Muslim lol..and all of us live together so some of our discussions can be..well..interesting and disturbing.. Based on these discussions, I have a question: What is the purpose of creation and afterlife, as per Islam? I understand the purpose of our temporary earthly life is as a test to ensure jannah in the hereafter, through the worship of our creator....but then what? We enter jannah, live there...and then? Whats the point really? My dad asked me this...and I dodged the question coz I wasn't very sure on how to handle it....his view is that we don't know what happens after death, n there is no way to experience it, so how can you just believe something a book says? Mum believes in re-incarnation and the idea that the soul needs to be freed...but after its freed after several thousands of lifetimes, we don't know what will happen... My brother says: well we have no idea what happens once we die - so live this life fullest...following religion or rituals will not allow you to maximize your potential in terms of career and the rest coz it takes up too much time...in terms of creator and universe, he says "there's no way I would think that there is a creator who created this universe...its all physics and quantum mechanics" I ask him who created gravity, how did all of that exist? He says we are not qualified enough in the field of physics to know that...there may be 10 to 15 people in the world who can tell you what existed before the Big Bang and how it was created....but we are not at that level of education, but surely you cannot believe that a God created it...that would just make life so boring - imagine not being able to use your own critical analysis and science backed evidence of the existence of physics laws...and just coming to a conclusion of "oh one creator created all of this"...thats just plain silly and provides no intellectual stimulation in his opinion... They all see religion as being something just for people who haven't got a career or are not educated, to be happy and content with whatever little they have..in the false hope that there will be something better after death, so its ok if there's no money etc now...therefore they will not strive for the most, and will be more focused on religious things... All of them truly believe that religions are all man made to control and manipulate crowds who cannot think for themselves...but for critical thinkers like them (especially my super highly educated brother), it is a joke and very sad to think that you would need to live within certain limits set by someone (something) else....unless its the law of the state, noone else should have any authority over your being except yourself....he doesn't agree with a creator or soul or any of that...and immorality and morality to him is a social construct - the only things which all humans can agree are immoral are those that hurt others: murder, stealing, rape, and sometimes cheating but not always.....he can't understand why marriage is such a huge deal and premarital sex or LGBT is a problem...or the concept of chastity...according to him its all in the heads of people and society has formed it that way - in nature however, if we look at animals, there are many who are homosexual, and there is no such thing of premarital issues, or even issues with one night stands...so why do humans have to make such a big deal and complicate life so much? So based on the above viewpoints, there are many times I don't know how to answer them because I just can't deal with their perspectives...its inconceivable for me to ever think of the idea of not believing in a creator...I have pursued the quest for God since I was a kid...so I really need help answering some of these questions.. My belief is that life is temporary and it is there as a test for the hereafter....but what happens if we go to heaven, or hell for that matter...what is the purpose of getting gardens in which rivers flow? What happens after that? Yes our souls can get close to God, but then what? And ok God will punish those in hell, keep punishing them continuously, but then what? What's the point there? Why would a God do that anyway? What does He get by putting us in heaven or hell? These are the kind of questions I'm afraid to answer, but I really do need something to understand this..and I'm becoming curious of this as well..I'm sure there is a reason I don't know it yet, and I may even believe if Allah has said it is not for us to know, but that won't work with my family...so any help would be greatly appreciated in this matter... I know there are several different points - opinions on all would be great...but the most crucial is the purpose of creation, hereafter and the rest... JazakAllah...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi9zKM5wotM Please do share for the cause of Hussain (a.s)

Can the Soul Interact with the Body?By Alexander Pruss — August 19, 2013 Could we have non-physical souls that control our bodies by causing effects in the brain that propagate via the nervous system to our muscles? Contemporary naturalist philosophers—philosophers who understand the world solely in terms of physical causes—have three main objections to this idea. The first objection is the worry that this interaction would contradict what neuroscience has to say about our actions originating in the brain. I won’t focus on this here, but I can say that neuroscience does not have a sufficiently detailed understanding of our decision-making to rule out the possibility of a non-physical component. [Click here for content related to neuroscience and human freedom/action. --Ed.] The second objection is known as the “interaction problem”: How could a non-physical cause have an effect on something physical? The interaction problem is a red herring (a “red herring” is a fallacy in argumentation that distracts from the real issue). Yes, it is very mysterious how a non-physical cause could have a physical effect. But (at least given a non-deterministic physics like quantum mechanics) it is no more mysterious than how any cause could have an effect. Sir Isaac Newton said that the sun has a gravitational effect on distant planets. Philosophers wondered: How could that be? Certainly such causation at a distance is mysterious, but it is not just a thing’s being at a distance that makes it mysterious—it is causation that is a mysterious tie between distinct events. How can one thing cause another? That is the mystery of causation, but it is no more puzzling when one of the things is physical and the other is non-physical than when they are both physical. Maybe it is puzzling how a non-physical cause can have an effect on something physical, because the non-physical and the physical are “very different” from each other. But non-living unconscious things and living conscious beings are very different from each other, and yet non-living unconscious things constantly affect living conscious beings—oxygen molecules, for instance, constantly keep us alive. Science is full of things that are “very different” interacting causally with one another. Indeed, naturalists think that non-living matter can cause life, and non-conscious matter can cause consciousness. The third objection is based on the Closure Principle: The physical world is explanatorily closed—the explanations of physical states of affairs are always physical in nature. The closure principle would let one be confident that scientists don’t need to look for miracles—that explanations of physical events will never go beyond science. If the Closure Principle is true, then no physical event in the brain has an explanation by means of a soul. I’m going to argue that the Closure Principle is more likely to be false than true. My argument has two parts. The first part will be to establish the No Physical Explanation Thesis: No Physical Explanation Thesis: Whether or not the Closure Principle is true, some physical states of affairs have no physical explanations. The second part will argue that if the above thesis is true, then the Closure Principle is more likely to be false than true. So, first, I need to argue that some physical states of affairs have no physical explanations. A quick argument for this thesis is to consider all of physical reality as a whole. This constitutes a gigantic physical state of affairs. This gigantic physical state of affairs cannot have a physical explanation. For if it had a physical explanation, that physical explanation would be a part of the gigantic physical state of affairs, since that gigantic state contained all of physical reality. But then the explanation, in explaining that gigantic state, would also explain itself, since it itself is a part of the gigantic state. But no physical state of affairs can explain itself—that would be like the absurdity of being one’s own parent. A second (related) argument is that if every physical state of affairs has a physical explanation, we end up with a vicious infinite regress of physical states of affairs. Physical state #1 is explained by physical state #2 (maybe, my existence is explained by my parents’ existence), which then must be explained by physical state #3, and so on. So we have an infinite regress of physical states of affairs. But the regress does not stop there. For the whole infinite regress will be a physical state of affairs, and hence will need an explanation. So we will have another regress, and another, and so on. This is really absurd. A third argument is that current science gives us good reason to think that physical reality is not infinitely old, that it came into existence some finite amount of time ago, maybe in a Big Bang. If so, then the state of affairs of physical reality coming into existence won’t have a physical explanation. These three arguments for the No Physical Explanation Thesis are basically adaptations of the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God, but I am not concluding from them that there is a God—just that something physical has no physical explanation. So now we’ve learned that some physical state of affairs has no physical explanation. Let’s give a name to some such physical state of affairs—call it “Blob.” Blob, then, has no physical explanation. There are now two possibilities. Either (1) Blob has no explanation at all, or (2) Blob has a non-physical explanation. If Blob has a non-physical explanation, then the Closure Principle is false, since the Closure Principle said that no physical state of affairs has a non-physical explanation, and here is Blob—a physical state of affairs with a non-physical explanation. Of the two options, which is more likely? Blob having no explanation at all? Or Blob having a non-physical explanation? I will argue that think the likelier option is the latter—that Blob has a non-physical explanation. For physical states of affairs are contingent—they don’t have to be there. Blob, thus, doesn’t have to be there. The idea of something contingent having no explanation is like the idea of something coming into existence out of nothing. It is intuitively absurd. Much more absurd than the alternative, namely that it has a non-physical explanation. Maybe it’s hard for something physical to happen because of a non-physical cause—but it should be far harder for something physical to happen for no cause at all. If we think that that something contingent could happen for no cause at all, it should be even easier for it to happen due to a non-physical cause. So it is more likely that Blob has a non-physical explanation than that it has no explanation at all. But if it has a non-physical explanation, then the Closure Principle is false. So, most likely, the Closure Principle is false. Moreover, if we admitted that a physical state of affairs, namely Blob, could take place for no reason at all, with no explanation, then it would be a wonder why all sorts of other physical things don’t happen for no reason at all. Why doesn’t a dog-headed person suddenly pop into existence for no cause at all in front of me? Why doesn’t a golden mountain materialize in the middle of the Pacific Ocean out of nowhere? I can give a very simple explanation of why all these infinitely many strange things don’t happen: all physical states of affairs have to have explanations. But this explanation also implies that the Closure Principle is false. For we know that Blob has no physical explanation, and so Blob’s explanation must be non-physical. The Closure Principle was introduced in large part to save science from giving up on physical explanations and looking for supernatural ones. But if we accept the Closure Principle, then we have to say that some physical states of affairs have no explanation at all. And it is much worse to be willing to give up completely on a search for explanation than to be willing to give up on a search for physical explanation. We should thus think that most likely the Closure Principle is false, and hence this argument against interaction between the soul and the body fails as much as the previous ones did. http://cct.biola.edu/blog/2013/aug/19/can-soul-interact-body/

This is me and and Far's positivty blog.

(salam) There are many obstacles stopping us from reaching that perfection we desire. The biggest is our own will and the level of power it commands, the obedience that comes through is from our own will to act upon God’s rules & regulations for our own benefits. For example why do we pray five times a day? Why is Fajr prayer 2 rakah? These are for our own benefit even though we may not understand or comprehend the significance of God’s laws we have logic to indicate why or what benefits are transmitted through these acts. It is for perfection we must strive for, nothing less...Continued here... http://ahlulakhlaq.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/the-disease-of-the-millennia/