Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: S. D. Goitein, Jews and Arabs: Their 

Contacts through the Ages (1974. Reprint, New York: 

Dover Publications, 2005); Bernard Lewis, The Jews 

of Islam (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 

1984); Maria Rosa Menocal, The Ornament of the World: 

How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture 

of Tolerance in Medieval Spain (Boston: Little, Brown, 

2002); Gordon D. Newby, A History of the Jews of Arabia

(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989); 

F. E. Peters, The Children of Abraham: Judaism, Christi-

anity and Islam, 2d ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 2006); Marilyn R. Waldman, Muslims and 

Christians, Muslims and Jews: A Common Past, A Hopeful 

Future (Columbus: The Islamic Foundation of Central 

Ohio, 1992); Steven W. Wasserstrom, Between Muslim 

and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam

(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995).

Judgment Day

After belief in one god (a

llah

) the belief in a 

final judgment, or Judgment Day, is a fundamen-

tal tenet of i

slam

. On that day, which marks the 

end of the present world, all human beings will 

be resurrected and judged on an individual basis 

according to their righteousness or sinfulness. 

The righteous will be rewarded with a blissful life 

in 

paradise

 and sinners will experience the tor-

ments of the F

ire

 (hell).

Before Islam’s appearance, belief in a final judg-

ment had already become a widespread one in the 

Middle Eastern–Mediterranean region, as seen in 

the biblical and post-biblical writings of Jews and 

Christians. References to the “day of the Lord” 

when God would punish the wicked occur in 

many of the prophetic books of the Hebrew Bible