Ma`rifat Kalami

Among the religious doctrines to which Muslims adhere is the world of pre-existence. Deepening people’s understanding of religious beliefs is necessary for their upholding the faith and developing their ability to counter dubious ideas. So, this paper sheds light on the different views of Muslim intellectuals. Muslim intellectuals draw their conclusions from Qur’anic verses and narrations. In the world of pre-existence, man has born testimony to the Lordship of God and to his being God’s servant. The question of the nature of this world has been a subject of inquiry and different ideas have been shown. To sum up, seven theories are proposed. They are: the authoritative character of the appearance of narrations and impermissibility of any interpretation in them, the assumption of precedence of incorporeal souls, exclusivness of the world of pre-existence to especial group of people and not to all of them, the metaphorical and allegorical property of Qur’anic verses and narrations, interpreting this world as taking a covenant and reflecting reality through revelation and intellect, considering quiddities to be objective and non-existents to be positive and esoteric interpretation of the meaning of the Qur’anic verses and the narrations related to the world of pre-existence. Most of these views and statements have problems which cannot be easily solved, but from among them the ocultists’ interpretation is considered as the strongest interpretative view