“Give up your souls!”

indicate the existence of the soul that leaves the body. His words:

“Today you will be repaid with humiliating punishment”

indicate that recompense follows immediately after death.

Allah, Most High, said in Sūrat al-Anfāl:

“If only you could see when the angels take the disbelievers in death, striking their faces and their backs, saying: ‘Taste the punishment of the burning Fire.’”

“That is for what your hands have sent ahead, and Allah is never unjust to His servants.”

This is their tasting that punishment after death. It is established in both authentic hadith collections through several chains of transmission:

“When the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, came to the pit containing the polytheists on the day of Badr, he called out to them: ‘O so-and-so! O so-and-so! Have you found what your Lord promised to be true? I have indeed found what my Lord promised me to be true.’”

This proves their continued existence, their hearing, and their having encountered the punishment they were promised after death. As for the mere fact that they had been killed, those of their people who remained alive already knew it.

Allah, Most High, said in Sūrat al-Nisā’:

“When the angels take in death those who have wronged themselves, they ask: ‘What circumstances were you in?’ They reply: ‘We were oppressed in the land.’ The angels say: ‘Was Allah’s earth not spacious enough for you to migrate elsewhere?’ Their refuge will be Hell—what an evil destination!”

They are addressed in this way when the angels take them in death. They do not behold the angels until they have lost all hope of remaining in this world. It is known that the body’s tongue has not spoken; rather, it bears witness. One knows that it is the soul that addresses the angels, and an entity being addressed cannot be an accident.

Allah, Most High, said in Sūrat al-Nahl:

“Those whom the angels take in death while they are wronging themselves will offer submission