ʿIlm al-Kalām Archive · Quranic Verses · Q 36:51-53 · Q 75:1-6
Q 36:51-53 — And the trumpet shall be blown, and at once they are from the graves to their Lord hastening. They will say: Woe to us! Who has raised us from our sleeping place? This is what the Most Merciful had promised, and the messengers told the truth. It will be but one blast, and at once they are all brought present before Us. || Q 75:1-6 — I swear by the Day of Resurrection. And I swear by the nafs al-lawwama (the self-reproaching soul). Does the human being think that We will not reassemble his bones? Yes — We are able to restore even his fingertips. But the human being desires to continue in sin. He asks: When is the Day of Resurrection?
Tabatabai in al-Mizan on Q 36:51: the trumpet of Israfil (nufikha fi al-sur) is the Quranic image of the divine command that reverses the direction of being — from the outward-flowing arc of creation (God → creation) to the inward-returning arc of resurrection (creation → God). Fa-idha hum min al-ajdath ila rabbihim yansilun — "at once they are from the graves to their Lord hastening" — the preposition is crucial: ila rabbihim (toward their Lord). The resurrection is not a movement to a place (paradise/hell as locations) but a movement toward a Person — toward their Rabb, their specific Lord. The return is personal — each being returns to the divine name that was its Rabb al-khass (FATIHA-003).
Q 36:52 — the resurrected's immediate question: "Who has raised us from our marqad (sleeping place)?" Tabatabai notes marqad (sleeping place) rather than qabr (grave): the Quranic vocabulary deliberately uses the sleep-metaphor for death to affirm the continuity of the self across death. The self that wakes in the resurrection is the same self that slept in death — identity is preserved. The resurrected immediately recognize their situation (hadha ma wa'ada al-rahman wa-sadaqa al-mursalun — "this is what the Merciful promised and the messengers told the truth") — recognition across the threshold proves continuity of the knowing self.
Imami creedal statement — Ma'ad is true, Paradise is true, the Fire is true, and Allah will resurrect those in the graves
Q 75:1-2 opens with two divine oaths: by the Day of Resurrection and by the nafs al-lawwama (the self-reproaching soul). Tabatabai: the nafs al-lawwama is the soul that has sufficient moral consciousness to reproach itself for its failures — it has not reached the nafs al-mutma'inna (the soul at rest, Q 89:27) but it has the inner faculty of self-accountability. The divine oath by this soul is the affirmation that this inner faculty — the capacity for self-reproach — is itself evidence of the soul's reality and therefore of the resurrection's necessity. A faculty of self-accountability presupposes a self that persists to be held accountable.
Q 75:3-4 addresses the materialist objection directly: "Does the human being think that We will not reassemble his bones? Yes — We are able to restore even his fingertips." The fingertips (bananahu) carry the most individualized biological identity — in Imam al-Sadiq's reading (Bihar al-Anwar), this is the Quran's statement that the resurrection restores the complete specific individual, not a generic human form. The resurrection is personal resurrection of the specific individual, not merely the continuation of a soul-substance.
Q 75:5-6: "But the human being desires to continue in sin — he asks: When is the Day of Resurrection?" The question is not genuine inquiry but evasion: if there is no resurrection, there is no final accountability, and the nafs can continue pursuing its desires without limit. The denial of Ma'ad is therefore not primarily intellectual — it is motivated by the desire to avoid the consequence of the nafs al-lawwama's self-reproach being externalized in divine judgment. This connects to FATIHA-008: the nafs-orientation that drives the Iblisic structure is the same nafs-orientation that drives the denial of Ma'ad.
Mulla Sadra's major contribution to Islamic theology is the proof of bodily resurrection (ma'ad jismani) from within the principles of his own al-Hikma al-Muta'aliya. The proof proceeds as follows: (1) Wujud is the only truly real thing; everything else is a mode or degree of wujud. (2) The soul (nafs) is an immaterial wujud that intensifies throughout life — through knowledge, worship, and moral action, the soul's wujud-intensity increases (al-haraka al-jawhariyya, substantial motion). (3) The body is not separate from the soul — the body is the soul's outer expression at the material level. (4) Therefore, as the soul's wujud intensifies, it produces its own appropriate body at each level of intensity. The resurrection body is the body produced by the soul's achieved wujud-intensity — it is genuinely the same person's body (produced by the same soul's wujud) but at the soul's achieved eschatological intensity.
The Convergence — Ma'ad as the Completion of the Wujud Arc
Imami tradition: Q 36:51-53 — the resurrection is the return to the Rabb (ila rabbihim), personal and specific; Q 75:3-4 — the fingertips prove complete individual identity-preservation. Akbarian tradition: the resurrection is the unveiling of the batin — the inner reality made fully manifest; nafs al-lawwama as the second stage of the three-stage soul-journey. Sadra's synthesis: al-haraka al-jawhariyya (substantial motion of the soul) throughout life is the soul intensifying its wujud toward its divine completion; at death, this intensification continues without the limitation of material resistance; the resurrection body is the body appropriate to the soul's achieved wujud-intensity. FATIHA-005 (Yawm al-Ma'ad as the completion of the circle of existence): the resurrection is the moment when all tajalliyat complete their arc of return to their divine source — what the Fatiha names eschatologically, Q 36:51-53 and Q 75 describe concretely. The arc: Allah IS Wujud (Q 57:3) → creation IS participation in that Wujud → resurrection IS the return of that Wujud to its source → Ma'ad IS the completion of the ontological circle.