it is a widely shared misconception that a person who thinks there is life after death would be, or should be, more okay with letting himself or others die and would/should not grieve death as much as the person who thinks this life is the only life and there isn’t any life after this. This misconception has some validity and that comes from the way some people make claims about their belife in an afterlife.
Some people talk about the afterlife as entirely distinct from the life one has here. the life after death is one that is a matter of their faith and this faith is based on the repitiotion of the claim made in their holy book, not affirmed nad justified by observing/witnessing a will and power that creates and sustains the present life and the acceptance that this life is not theirs (nor any living being has life on its own) but already, life cannot be its own source and it is a sign poiting to the existence of the Living One, to which all life belongs and comes from here and now and is taken back to as it’s places of manifestation, a creature with life is then created dead. In the outside world, the inability of a beings to sutain its own life in death is a sign that someone other than itself was the source of its life because if it were its own source, it would be able to sustain itself alive and never die. In the heart or soul, one sees a great unacceptable injustice in the creation of life or existence of life that ends in permanent annihilation. It makes life ultimately absurd, cruel and meaningless. The soul is not reconciled with this cruelty and annihilation. Mine is not! And if taken as a sign, this rejection of anninilation is a sign that the soul already knows about, and is drawn towards and made for, a life that cannot be ended with death. The life of this world, for the one who sees it as a sign of eternal life, are intimately connected and cannot be separated such that this person could value one less and the other more. In honoring life here, and hereafter, in trying to stay alive and keep others alive, in protecting life, in mourning and being deepy affected by its “apparent loss” to be reminded anew of the justice of its continued existence beyond death and the injustice of its permanent loss (like hunger comes to remind me of the value of food and sustenance), one is not being contradictory. One is being a human who is made to experience a loss, who needs to feel the darkness and the need for light, in order to realize and experience gratitude for existence and light. Such a person then values Life, here and hereafter. They are the same life insofar as they are from the same source and take him to the same source. The way to honor the living one is to honor His life everywhere and at all times. One loves life in His name here and hereafter. One cannot take life ‘here’ to be dispensable and discardable because there is this ‘other’ life, as if from a different source of life, after death. Those who disconnect this life and life after death in their actions or words give validity to the thought that perhaps such people should not value the present life really or not as much as those who see it as the only (read precious and irreplaceable) life and hence woud be honest in mourning it. Someone who is sure that life here means life forever, from the same life-giver, from the same Living One, whose Life it always and eveywhere was, is and shall be, is honest in preserving it, protecting it, mourning especially its unjust and preventable loss and also, at least temporarily, its apparent loss/absence until he is given again the joy or realizing that his pain at loss is a sign of a Will that wills for him, and all life, eternal life.
The Quran as Revelation 