“The first person who shall receive sentence on the Day of Resurrection will be a martyr, who will be brought into the presence of the Almighty: then God will make known the benefits which were conferred on him in the world, and the person will be sensible of them and confess them; and God will say, ‘What didst thou do in gratitude for them?’ He will reply, ‘I fought in Thy cause till I was slain.’ God will say, ‘Thou liest, for thou foughtest in order that people might extol thy courage.’ Then God will order them to drag him upon his face to hell. The second, a man who shall have obtained knowledge and instructed others, and read the Qurʾān. He will be brought into the presence of God, and will be given to understand the benefits he had received, which he will be sensible of and acknowledge; and God will say, ‘What didst thou do in gratitude thereof?’ He will reply, ‘I learned knowledge and taught others, and I read the Qurʾān to please Thee.’ Then God will say, ‘Thou liest, for thou didst study that people might call thee learned, and thou didst read the Qurʾān for the name of the thing.’ Then God will order him to be dragged upon his face and precipitated into hell. The third, a man to whom God shall have given abundant wealth; and he shall be called into the presence of God, and will be reminded of the benefits which he received, and he will acknowledge and confess them; and God will say, ‘What return didst thou in return for them?’ He will say, ‘I expended my wealth to please thee, in all those ways which Thou hast approved.’ God will say, ‘Thou liest, for thou didst it that people might extol thy liberality’; after which he will be drawn upon his face and thrown into the fire.”
As to the place where they are to be assembled to Judgment, the Qurʾān and Traditions agree that it will be on the earth, but in what part of the earth is not agreed. Some say their Prophet mentioned Syria for the place; others, a white and even tract of land, without inhabitants or any signs of buildings. Al-G͟hazzālī imagines it will be a second earth, which he supposes to be of silver; and others an earth which has nothing in common with ours, but the name; having, it is possible, heard something of the new heavens and new earth, mentioned in Scripture ([Rev. xxi. 1]); whence the Qurʾān has this expression, “on the day wherein the earth shall be changed into another earth.” ([Sūrah xiv. 49].)
The end of the Resurrection the Muḥammadans declare to be, that they who are so raised may give an account of their actions, and receive the reward thereof. And that not only mankind, but the genii and irrational animals also shall be judged on this great day; when the unhorned cattle shall take vengeance on the horned, till entire satisfaction shall be given to the injured.
As to mankind, when they are all assembled together, they will not be immediately brought to judgment, but the angels will keep them in their ranks and order while they attend for that purpose; and this attendance, some say, is to last forty years, others seventy, others three hundred; nay, some say no less than fifty thousand years, each of them vouching their Prophet’s authority. During this space they will stand looking up to heaven, but without receiving any information or orders thence, and are to suffer grievous torments, both the just and the unjust, though with manifest difference. For the limbs of the former, particularly those parts which they used to wash in making the ceremonial ablution before prayer, shall shine gloriously. And their sufferings shall be light in comparison, and shall last no longer than the time necessary to say the appointed prayers; but the latter will have their faces obscured with blackness, and disfigured with all the marks of sorrow and deformity. What will then occasion not the least of their pain, is a wonderful and incredible sweat, which will even stop their mouths, and in which they will be immersed in various degrees, according to their demerits, some to the ankles only and some to the knees, some to the middle, some so high as their mouth, and others as their ears. And this sweat will be provoked not only by that vast concourse of all sorts of creatures mutually pressing and treading on one another’s feet, but by the near and unusual approach of the sun, which will be then no farther from them than the distance of a mile, or (as some translate the word, the signification of which is ambiguous) than the length of a bodkin. So that their skulls will boil like a pot, and they will be all bathed in sweat. From this inconvenience, however, the good will be protected by the shade of God’s throne; but the wicked will be so miserably tormented with it, also with hunger and thirst, and a stifling air, that they will cry out, “Lord, deliver us from this anguish, though thou send us into hell-fire!” What they fable of the extraordinary heat of the sun on this occasion, the Muḥammadans certainly borrowed from the Jews, who say that, for the punishment of the wicked in the Last Day, that planet shall be drawn forth from its sheath, in which it is now put up, lest it should destroy all things by its excessive heat.
When those who have risen shall have waited the limited time, the Muḥammadans believe God will at length appear to judge them, Muḥammad undertaking the office of intercessor, after it shall have been declined by Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, who shall beg deliverance only for their own souls. (Mishkāt, book xxiii. ch. xii.) On this solemn occasion God will come in the clouds, surrounded by angels, and will produce the books wherein the actions of every person are recorded by their guardian angels, and will command the prophets to bear witness against those to whom they have been respectively sent. Then everyone will be examined concerning all his words and actions, uttered and done by him in this life; not as if God needed any information in those respects, but to oblige the person to make public confession and acknowledgment of God’s justice. The particulars of which they shall give an account, as Muḥammad himself enumerated them, are: of their time, how they spent it; of their wealth, by what means they acquired it, and how they employed it; of their bodies, wherein they exercised them; of their knowledge, what use they made of it. It is said, however, that Muḥammad has affirmed that no less than seventy thousand of his followers should be permitted to enter Paradise without any previous examination; which seems to be contradictory to what is said above. To the questions, it is said, each person shall answer, and make his defence in the best manner he can, endeavouring to excuse himself by casting the blame of his evil deeds on others; so that a dispute shall arise even between the soul and the body, to which of them their guilt ought to be imputed: the soul saying, “O Lord, my body I received from thee; for thou createdst me without a hand to lay hold with, till I came and entered into this body; therefore punish it eternally, but deliver me.” The body on the other side will make this apology, “O Lord, thou createdst me like a stock of wood, having neither hand that I could lay hold with, nor foot that I could walk with, till this soul, like a ray of light, entered into me, and my tongue began to speak, my eye to see, and my foot to walk; therefore punish it eternally, but deliver me.”
But God will propound to them the following parable of the blind man and the lame man, which, as well as the preceding dispute, was borrowed by the Muḥammadans from the Jews. (Gemara, Sanhedr., ch. xi.)
A certain king having a pleasant garden, in which were ripe fruits, set two persons to keep it. One of them was blind, and the other lame, the former not being able to see the fruit nor the latter to gather it. The lame man, however, seeing the fruit, persuaded the blind man to take him upon his shoulders, and by that means he easily gathered the fruit, which they divided between them. The lord of the garden coming some time after, and inquiring after his fruit, each began to excuse himself: the blind man said he had no eyes to see with, and the lame man that he had no feet to approach the trees. But the king, ordering the lame man to be set on the blind, passed sentence on and punished them both. And in the same manner will God deal with the body and the soul. As these apologies will not avail on that day, so will it also be in vain for anyone to deny his evil actions, since men and angels and his own members, nay, the very earth itself, will be ready to bear witness against him.
Though the Muḥammadans assign so long a space for the attendance of the resuscitated before their trial, yet they tell us the trial itself will be over in much less time, and, according to an expression of Muḥammad, familiar enough to the Arabs, will last no longer than while one may milk an ewe, or than the space between two milkings of a she-camel. Some, explaining those words so frequently used in the Qurʾān, “God will be swift in taking an account,” say that he will judge all creatures in the space of half a day, and others that it will be done in less time than the twinkling of an eye.
At this examination they also believe that each person will have the book wherein all the actions of his life are written delivered to him, which books the righteous will receive in their right hand, and read with great pleasure and satisfaction; but the ungodly will be obliged to take them against their wills in their left, which will be bound behind their backs, their right hand being tied up to their necks.
To show the exact Justice which will be observed on this great day of trial, the next thing they describe is the mīzān or “balance,” wherein all things shall be weighed. They say it will be held by Gabriel, and that it is of so vast a size that its two scales, one of which hangs over Paradise, and the other over hell, are capacious enough to contain both heaven and earth. Though some are willing to understand what is said in the Qurʾān concerning this balance allegorically, and only as a figurative representation of God’s equity, yet the more ancient and orthodox opinion is that it is to be taken literally; and since words and actions, being mere accidents, are not capable of being themselves weighed, they say that the books wherein they are written will be thrown into the scales, and according as those wherein the good or the evil actions are recorded shall preponderate, sentence will be given; those whose balances laden with their good works shall be heavy will be saved, but those whose balances are light will be condemned. Nor will anyone have cause to complain that God suffers any good action to pass unrewarded, because the wicked for the good they do have their reward in this life, and therefore can expect no favour in the next.