Answered by Shaykh Hamza Karamali, SunniPath Academy Teacher
Do Muslims believe that in the next life, it will be an ”embodied life”? Is the actual physical body going to live paradise? Is the soul & body connected? Or separate? What about after death?
The belief of Sunni Islam (ahl al-sunna wa’l-jama`a) is that the next life is a physical life composed of both body and soul. Death is the separation of body and soul; resurrection is their reunification. Allah says in Sura al-Takwir, “And when the souls are paired …” Imam Jalal al-Din al-Mahalli explains in his commentary that this verse refers to the reunification of the soul with the body. Standard texts of Sunni belief, such as the Jawhara of Imam Laqani, also corroborate the physical nature of the resurrection.
The physicality of the resurrection and afterlife is necessarily known of our religion, which is why Imam Ghazali declared certain philosophers of his time beyond the pale of Islam because they advocated a purely spiritual afterlife (cf. al-Ghazali, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, Tr. Michael Marmura).
This is plain after even a cursory reading of the Qur’an, which clearly depicts physical pleasures in Paradise and physical pain in Hell, leaving no room or reason for any metaphorical interpretation. Imam Ghazali points out, however, that by affirming the existence of physical pleasure and pain we are not negating the existence of spiritual pleasure and pain.
And Allah knows best.
Hamza.