Death in Islamic Philosophy

In the view of the materialists death is seen as an evil and an end of conscious existence, something unpleasant and undesirable,an illness that needs to be cured but in Islamic Philosophy death is seen as a perfection and a completion of existence, not as something undesirable and evil, but as a bridge the connects Man with the object of his desire, namely an eternal life of enduring happiness and felicity. In Islamic Philosophy death is classified into two distinct categories namely a) physical death and b) accidental death. In order to understand death it is important to understand the nature of the human soul. 

The purpose of the soul's attachment with the body is to attain ontological perfection, and since the soul by reason of its initial existential weakness is unable to subsist and achieve this perfection on its own therefore it needs a material body, that can function as a vehicle for the attainment of the said perfection . The human soul is corporeal in its origination [jismaniyat al huduth] but spiritual in its subsistence [ruhaniyat al baqa] which means that while at the moment of its physical birth or origination the human soul is absolutely material in character, and in fact at the time of its origination the material body is the soul, but gradually the soul through substantial motion within its very substance it detaches itself from the material body through the gradual and incremental actualization of all its latent potentialities thereby experiencing existential intensification. It is during this gradual actualization of latent potential that the soul starts becoming immaterial by gradually disengaging itself from its bodily host. When the soul [nafs] through substantial motion is able to actualize all its latent potential and becomes what it was supposed to become, namely a spirit in actuality [ruh-e-mujjared], it is at this moment that the soul realizes that it no longer needs the corporeal body having achieved its objective of ontological perfection , and feels that it can subsist independently of the body; this is the moment when the gradual disengagement or disembodiment becomes complete and the soul bids farewell to the material body, transcending into an immaterial realm of existence of either enduring felicity or wretchedness depending upon its ethical status.

Therefore death in Islamic Philosophy is defined as the separation of the soul from the body, not as an end or cessation of existence, but the perfection and the completion thereof, and not as an end of life but the beginning of a new one. It is important not to confuse the notions of ontological or existential perfection with the idea of ethical or moral perfection and rectitude, because the perfection being spoken of here is ontological perfection which is a compulsive and necessary movement [harkat-e-jabri] of every living soul, whether rational or non-rational, towards the stated objective of the complete actualization of existential potential which means to become what the soul is meant to become.  It is also significant to mention that death in Islamic Philosophy and Mysticism [Irfan] is not seen as a one time event, or an instantaneous occurrence, on the contrary death is viewed as a process or a progression, gradual and incremental in character, that commences from the moment of the soul's physical birth or origination; therefore it is not that we will die, but the truth lies in realizing that we are "Now" in the process of experiencing death.