Part 7
What is the job of the angels (… Contd.)
Azrail -The Vedas of the Hindus has it that the ‘Jomdut’ (Messenger of Death) takes away the life of a living animal. Angel Azrail is none but the Muslim counterpart of this very ‘Messenger of Death’. Muslim preachers explain it clearly that the job of angel Azrail is to take away the lives of human beings. But this explanation leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Is it also the job of Azrail (Or, isn’t it?) to take away the lives of beasts like the cow, the horse, the buffalo and the tiger; birds like the crow and the vulture; aquatic animals like the shark and the crocodile as well as insects of all kinds? Then again the Creator alone knows how many short-lived microbes are there in animal body and the atmosphere of the world. The longevity of some of them range from a few months to a few hours or minutes. Does Azrail take away their lives too?
It is well known that trees and plants of all sorts like the mango tree, palm tree and coconut tree have life and death. Modern scientists say that plants are endowed with the feelings of hunger, thirst, happiness and sorrow. They are even sensitive to touch and sound. Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose had demonstrated with the help of scientific instruments that music has a cheering effect on plants. Therefore, there is little difference between plant life and animal life. Who takes away the lives of the plants? Besides, there are several kinds of microscopic plant organisms which cannot be seen with the naked eye. They float around in the air and under suitable conditions come out in various forms like algae and spirogyra in water and fungus, moss and mushroom on land. They have life and death. Who takes away their lives?
There arc certain germs and bacteria, and they are legion, which infect animal body, especially human body. These can be killed by the administration of appropriate medicine. Who takes away the lives of these germs and bacteria?
If the lives of all non-human creatures and animalcules are wiped off at the command of Allah why make an exception of man in this regard?
On the other hand, if Azrail alone takes away the lives of all the living creatures from man to microbe, how does he make time for it? Do the Azrails increase in number by procreation? Or are there Deputy Azrails to assist him? If there are, when were they created? Were they created all at a time or at different times keeping pace with the population explosion?
One more question, and this is the last one on this account; if the ‘Messenger of Death’ or Azrail is entrusted with the job of taking away the lives of created being why does death occur as the effect of a disease or an accident?
We are also told that besides the four angels discussed above, there are four more angels who are associated with every man. They are Keraman and Katebin; Mankir and Nakir. A few things about them are discussed below.
Keraman and Katebin -Priests tell us that two angels called Keraman and Katebin are engaged in writing down an account of the honest and dishonest acts of every man sitting on his shoulders. One of them makes a list of his honest acts and the other makes a list of his dishonest acts, Every man will be tried on the Day of Judgment for his vices and virtues on the basis of the written records presented by these two angels.
Newborn babies are neither vicious nor virtuous since they are innocent of vice and virtue. It is said that religious injunctions relating to prayers and fasting are not binding on any person until he/she reaches his/her majority.
There is no consensus of opinion in our country as to when a person comes of age. Some say it is twelve, some say it is fourteen for females and eighteen for males. In these circumstances exactly when do the couple of angels viz. Keraman and Katebin take their seats on a person’s shoulder? The moment after a baby is born? Or after he/she attains majority? If they arrive immediately after the birth of a child they have to sit idle for several years doing nothing. On the other hand, there is no fixed date for man to attain adulthood. Is there any universal date sanctioned by Allah to determine this matter?
We hear that angels do not like to stay in unholy and filthy places. For this reason some people cultivate cleanliness and use perfumes to please the angels. From the religious point of view all non-Muslims are unholy since they do not perform their ablution nor do they take a bath regularly; they consume forbidden food and liquor; and some of them don’t even wash the anus after defecation. Then again, the sweepers, scavengers and other members of the untouchable caste wallow in unholy filth and nasty smell. Do the above angels care to sit on their shoulders?
After the death of a man the tenure of office of the angels on his shoulders come to an end. What do they do after that? Do they make over their charge to a superior angel or to Allah and go into retirement? Or do they keep the records in their own custody and remain busy looking after their safety? Or, do they, by any chance, sit on the shoulders of some other person and start a new book-keeping job?
The angels are said to be numberless and even if they are countable none but Allah knows the exact number. Of all these innumerable angels only two have close association with human beings. Among the rest, angel Azrail comes to them only once, when they die, and the couple of angels called Mankir and Nakir, too, come to them only once, after they die and meet them in the grave. But Keraman and Katebin are constant companions of man, residing within four or five inches of man’s eyes and ears. And yet man is insensible of their very existence. What is the reason for it?
Whatever be the language in which the angels write the account of man’s good deeds and bad deeds, they have to use ink, pen and paper or similar other things for this purpose. If the records are factual, the instruments and ingredients used for writing them should also be real and not fictitious. But man finds no evidence of these things. Is there any proof of their reality? If not, well, then, since the angels, the ink, the pen and paper are all invisible are not the records likely lo be fictitious?
Mankir and Nakir -It is said that immediately after the burial of man two angels called Mankir and Nakir bring him back to life in the grave and ask him a few questions about his religious beliefs. If he can give the right answers he enjoys immense happiness. But if he fails to do so he suffers various punishments. He is pounded with heavy clubs till he sinks seventy yards deep in the ground and is drawn up again by the nails of those two angels to be pounded again and again. At the same time hell-fire comes through a tunnel to scorch and singe him.
There are some 3,424 intelligible languages in the world and most people ; speak their mother tongue only. As a result when the dead are brought : back to life the majority of them are not likely to speak or understand any other language except their respective native languages. Under this circumstance in which language do Mankir and Nakir interrogate the dead? In angelic language or in the mother tongue of the dead person concerned?
Some say that Arabic will be the lingua franca in the world hereafter. Presumably angels, too, will speak Arabic. At the side leading to hell, what is the explanation for it? Are the stories of the tortures in the grave true? Or are they fictitious?
It is interesting to note the difference between these eight angels who are ‘-2 so closely associated with the affairs of man. Thus Azrail alone is perfectly capable of getting hundreds of strong and stout people killed in a single moment in a train accident or in an air crash or in a battlefield whereas two angels (Mankir and Nakir) are required to beat one person who is probably weak and sickly and died from hunger and malnutrition. Besides, is there any need for two angels to interrogate only the dead?
Zibrail, Mikail, Israfil and Azrail are proper names belonging to the four individual angels. But Keraman, Katebin, Mankir and Nakir are names common to a tribe of angels. The population of the world today is 3,000,000,000. The first draft of the MS was prepared in 1951. So on the shoulders of these people there are 3,000,000,000 Katebins. One wonders if the number of Mankirs and Nakirs, too, turns into ten figures. However, have they any individual proper names? If not does how Allah send for a particular angel from among them?