Munkar is one of the two angels of the grave in Islamic tradition: with his companion [nakir], the angel who comes to the newly buried dead in the grave to question them about their faith — their God, their religion, and their Prophet — determining, by their answers, the nature of their wait until the Day of Judgment. He is an angel of the grave, the questioner of the dead.
The Angel of the Grave
Munkar, with his companion [nakir], is one of the two angels of the grave in Islamic tradition — the angels who come to the dead in the tomb to test and question them. According to the tradition (based on the Hadith), when a person has died and been buried, and the mourners have departed, the two angels Munkar and Nakir come to the deceased in the grave. They are described as awesome and fearsome in appearance — dark, with blue or flashing eyes, of frightening aspect — and they raise the dead person to a sitting position in the grave to question them.
The Questioning of the Dead
Munkar and Nakir put to the dead three great questions, the test of the grave: “Who is your Lord?” “What is your religion?” and “Who is this man (the Prophet) who was sent among you?” The faithful believer, whose faith is firm, answers rightly and without fear: “My Lord is God (Allah); my religion is Islam; and this is Muhammad, the Messenger of God.” For such a one, the questioning is passed, and the grave is made spacious and filled with light and peace, a foretaste of Paradise, where the soul rests in ease until the Resurrection. But the unbeliever, the hypocrite, or the wrongdoer cannot answer — they stammer, “I do not know,” or give a false answer — and for them the grave becomes a place of darkness, torment, and punishment (the “punishment of the grave,” adhab al-qabr), a foretaste of the Fire, until the Day of Judgment.
The Test of the Tomb
Munkar (whose name is connected to the “denied” or “unknown,” the testing of what is professed) and Nakir thus administer the first reckoning after death — the test of faith in the grave that determines the state of the dead during the long wait (the barzakh, the intermediate state) between death and the final Resurrection and Judgment. The questioning of the grave is an important element of Islamic eschatology and belief about death and the afterlife, and the two angels are well-known and solemn figures. As one of the two angels of the grave who question the dead about their faith and determine their state until the Judgment, Munkar holds his place among the angels of Islamic tradition. In Munkar, Islamic tradition gave form to an angel of the grave — the awesome questioner who, with Nakir, comes to the buried dead to test their faith and determine the nature of their wait until the Day of Judgment, the angel of the test of the tomb.