It is understood from sound narrations that the spirits of animals will live eternally, and that certain individual animals, like the Hudhud of Solomon (PUH) and his ants, Salih's (PUH) she-camel, and the dog of the Companions of the Cave, will go to the eternal realm with both their spirits and their bodies,² and that each species will have a single body that may be utilized from time to time. This is also demanded by wisdom and reality, and mercy and dominicality.
О All-Powerful Self-Subsistent One!
AH living creatures, beings with spirits, and conscious beings are subjugated to the commands of Your dominicality and employed in their innate duties only through Your power and strength, Your will and planning, and Your mercy and wisdom. Some have been subjugated to man, not because of man's power and dominance, but by Divine mercy because of his innate weakness and impotence. Through the tongues of both disposition and speech they absolve their Maker and True Object of Worship of all defect and partner, and offering thanks and praise for His bounties, perform the worship particular to them.
О Most Pure and Holy One, hidden in the intensity of His manifestation and concealed within the magnificence of His grandeur! Forming the intention, I sanctify You with the glorifications of all beings with spirits, and declare: "Glory be to You Who has made from water all living things!"³
O Sustainer of All the Worlds! O God of the First-comers and the Last-comers! О Sustainer of the Heavens and the Earth!
Through the instruction of Your Noble Messenger (Peace and blessings be upon him) and the teaching of the All-Wise Qur'an I have understood and believe that just as the heavens, atmosphere, earth, land and sea, trees, plants, and animals, together with all their members, parts, and particles, know and recognize You and point to and testify to Your existence and unity; so too living beings, the essence of the universe, and man, the essence of living creatures, and the prophets, saints, and purified scholars, the essence of men, and, through their visions, unfoldings, inspirations, and the discoveries of their hearts and intellects, which form the essence of the prophets, saints, and purified scholars, testify with the certainty of a hundredfold consensus to Your necessary existence, unity and oneness, and give news of them; and through their miracles, wonderworking, and certain proofs, prove what they tell of.
Yes, there is nothing that occurs to the heart, which looks to one who inspires it from behind the veil of the Unseen; and there is no inspiration, which makes one look to the giver of inspiration; and there is no certain belief, which discloses in the form of 'absolute certainty' Your sacred attributes and Most Beautiful Names; and there is no luminous heart of the prophets and saints, which observes with 'the vision of certainty' the lights of the Necessary Existent; and there is no enlightened intellect of the purified scholars and veracious ones, which confirms and proves with 'the knowledge of certainty' the signs of the existence of the Creator of All Things and the proofs of His unity; —there is not one of these that does not testify to Your necessary existence, and sacred attributes, and Your unity, oneness, and Most Beautiful Names, and point to them and indicate them. Also, just as relying on their miracles, wonder-working and proofs, all those hundreds of thousands of truthful bringers of good news testify to Your existence and unity; so they unanimously give news of, proclaim, and prove the degree of majesty of Your dominicality, which governs from the administration of the totality of matters of the Sublime Throne, which encompasses all things, to knowing and hearing and administering the secret, private thoughts of the heart, and its desires and supplications.
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2. Bursawï. Rūh al-Bayãn. v. 226; Tafsir al-Qurţubi, і, 372.
3. Qur'an, 21:30.