Pre-mortality and perhaps even a pre-mortal council in the Qur’an?

My hasty translation:

And when your Lord took their descendants from the children of Adam, from their loins, and caused them to testify against themselves.  “Am I not your Lord?”  “Yes, we have testified.”  Lest you should say, on the Day of Resurrection, “We were unaware of that.”

Or should say “Our fathers were idolators before us, and we are their descendants following after them.  Will you destroy us for what the falsifiers have done?”

(Qur’an 7:172-173)

The commentators have discussed and argued over these verses for many centuries, since the beginning.  Some have suggested that they refer to a sort of covenant in a sort of human pre-mortal existence.

Pre-mortal existence isn’t a doctrine of the Qur’an otherwise, though one might argue that its constant description of death as a “return” to God implies something of that sort.

And pre-mortality isn’t a doctrine of mainstream Islam, although some thinkers (such as the great philosopher Ibn Sina [Avicenna] and the equally great Persian mystic poet Jalal al-Din Rumi) seem to have believed that humans lived before they came to earth.

Posted from San Antonio, Texas