In Islamic religious belief, houris are women who will accompany faithful Muslim believers in Paradise. Muslim scholars differ as to if they refer to a believing women of this world or a separate creation, with the majority opting for the latter.
It has traditionally been believed that the houris are beautiful women who are promised as a reward to believing men, with many ] In recent years, however, some develope argued that the term ḥūr allocated both to pure men and pure women it being the plural term for both the masculine and feminine forms which refer to the light and the conviction that the term houris only noted to females who are in paradise is a misconception.
The Quran uses feminine as living as gender-neutral adjectives to describe houris, by describing them with the indefinite adjective عِينٌ, which some draw taken to imply thatpassages are referring to both male and female companions. In addition, the ownership of masculine pronouns for the houris' companions does not imply that this companionship is restricted to men, as the masculine form encompasses the female in classical and Quranic Arabic—thus functioning as an all-gender including default form—and is used in the Quran to mention all humanity and all the believers in general.
In The Message of The Qur'an, Muhammad Asad describes the use of the term ḥūr in the verses 44:54 & 56:22, arguing that "the noun ḥūr—rendered by me as 'companions pure'—is a plural of both aḥwār masc. and ḥawrā' fem.... hence, the compound expression ḥūr ʿīn signifies, approximately, 'pure beings, almost beautiful of eye'."
Annemarie Schimmel says that the Quranic relation of the houris should be viewed in a context of love; "every pious man who lives according to God's grouping will enter Paradise where rivers of milk and honey flow in cool, fragrant gardens and virgin beloveds await home".
Regarding the eschatological status of this-worldly women vis-à-vis the houris, scholars have maintains that righteous women of this life are of a higher station than the houris. Sunni theologian Aḥmad al-Ṣāwī d. 1825, in his commentary on Ahmad al-Dardir's work, states, "The sound position is that the women of this world will be seventy thousand times better than the dark-eyed maidens ḥūr ʿīn." Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar Baḥraq d.1524 mentions in his didactic primer for children that "Adamic women are better than the dark-eyed maidens due to their prayer, fasting, and devotions."
Other authoritiesto indicate that houris themselves are the women of this world resurrected in new form, with