assigned to the wombs. For Allah, exalted is He, says, “None knows the soldiers of your Lord but He” (Q 74:31). The angels are Allah’s soldiers, and each of them has been entrusted with a task: one is charged with the wombs, another with the souls, taking them; another with the deeds, recording them; another with the bodies, guarding them. These are mighty duties that Allah, exalted is He, has delegated to the angels.

The Angel of the Wombs comes to every uterus and, by Allah’s permission, breathes the spirit into it. The spirit is a matter known only to the Lord of all worlds. Allah the Exalted says: “They ask you about the spirit. Say, ‘The spirit is from the affair of my Lord, and you have been given of knowledge only a little’” (Q 17:85). He breathes it into that body—which is no more than a morsel of flesh in the womb, devoid of movement or sensation. Once the spirit is breathed in, it enters the body and courses through it like a live ember diffusing through charcoal, by Allah’s leave, or like water seeping through dried clay. It permeates the entire frame until it reaches every part, and then it becomes a human being that moves; the mother senses its movement after one hundred and twenty days. Only then is it considered a human being; before that, it is nothing.

If the fetus is expelled before the completion of one hundred and twenty days, no funeral prayer is offered for it; it is simply taken and buried in any hole in the ground.

But when it has completed one hundred and twenty days—four full months—it is regarded as a person. Should it be miscarried after that, it is to be washed, shrouded, and the funeral prayer performed for it—even if it is only the size of a hand—and it is then buried in the Muslims’ cemetery if it is Muslim.

If it is the child of Christians—meaning both its mother and father are Christian—it is not buried