Do animals have a soul?

Animals have life and awareness. But the soul that lives on after death without the body is something the Holy Qur’an ascribes only to human beings.

Arabic has two words that are often both translated as soul. Nafs means life itself, breathing, feeling and wanting. We share this life with animals. Ruh, on the other hand, is the spirit that comes into being in man by God’s command.

Whenever the Holy Qur’an speaks of God breathing His spirit into a being, it is always about human beings, as in the first verse above. Nowhere does it say that God breathed His spirit into an animal. The second verse says that the soul comes into being by God’s command and that our knowledge of it is small.

Animals are wonderful creatures. They feel, they learn and they know their surroundings. They have shared a large part of life’s long journey with us. But only in human beings did a more developed form of life arise, one that can separate from the body and still survive. With it began man’s conscious journey back to God.

That is why the Holy Qur’an does not describe paradise as a place for animals in their earthly form. It speaks of rivers of milk and honey, yet mentions neither cows nor bees. This shows that these images are meant spiritually. The joys of the hereafter are joys of the soul.