About the Duties OF Angels

About the Duties OF Angels

The majority of texts that speak of this matter divide people into two categories:
1. Believers. The angels of mercy take their souls and lift them up to heaven with great care, coming with glad tidings, calling them by the most loved of their names, so they feel joy, blessing and happiness which makes them steadfast.
2. Disbelievers and hypocrites. The angels of wrath take their souls, coming with harshness and warnings, and the gates of heaven are closed in their faces, so they are thrown in the earth to face woe and punishments as recompense for what they did in this world of wrongdoing, disbelief and enmity.
Allah, may He be glorified and exalted, mentioned that in the Holy Quran, where He says (interpretation of the meaning):
“By those (angels) who pull out (the souls of the disbelievers and the wicked) with great violence.
2. By those (angels) who gently take out (the souls of the believers).
3. And by those that swim along (i.e. angels or planets in their orbits)”
[al-Naazi’aat 79:1-3].
Al-Haafiz ibn Katheer (may Allah have mercy on him) said:
Ibn Mas’ood, Ibn ‘Abbaas, Masrooq, Sa’eed ibn Jubayr, Abu Saalih, Abu’l-Duha and al-Suddi said: “By those who pull out” refers to the angels, i.e., when they pull out the souls of the sons of Adam. There are some whose soul is taken forcefully and they suffer when it is taken out, and there are some whose soul is taken gently, which is referred to in the verse, “and those who gently take out.” This was stated by Ibn ‘Abbaas. It was also narrated from Ibn ‘Abbaas that al-naazi’aat refers to the souls of the disbelievers, which are taken out, then plunged into the Fire. This was narrated by Ibn Abi Haatim. End quote.
Tafseer al-Qur’aan al-Kareem, 8/312
Secondly:
There is fear for the Muslim who commits sin or is an evildoer -- and what is meant is the one who persists in committing major sins or transgresses against people and dies in that state. To which of the two groups mentioned above does he belong? Is his soul taken by the angels of mercy and treated in the same manner as the believers, or is it taken by the angels of wrath and treated in the same manner as the disbelievers? This is a matter of the unseen and we have not found any text that clearly and definitively states the situation of the one who commits major sins.
But there are some references that may indicate that the angels of wrath take the souls of those who commit major sins. For example:
The hadeeth about the man who killed one hundred people, then he repented to Allah, may He be glorified and exalted. When he died, the angels of mercy and the angels of wrath disputed as to which of them would take his soul and take it up to heaven. The story was narrated by Abu Sa’eed al-Khudri from the Prophet (blessings and peace of Allah be upon him):
The angels of mercy and the angels of torment disputed over him. The angels of mercy said: he came repenting and turning wholeheartedly towards Allah. The angels of torment said: He never did anything good. Then an angel in the form of a man came to them and they appointed him (to decide) between them. He said: Measure the distance between the two lands, and whichever is closer, that is where he belongs. So they measured it and they found that he was closer to the land that he was heading for, so the angels of mercy took him.”
Narrated by al-Bukhaari (3740) and Muslim (2766).