CB,
Unlike the Jews. They all talk about god but get pretty tight-lipped on the subject of an afterlife. That's because their lives center around achieving the higher financial status here and now in this world. Is that what you are saying?
There can be many reasons why someone will cling to delusional fantasies of an afterlife. Many times, the fantasy is created out of a discontent with this life, and they bury their discontent in the here and now by becoming satisfied with some afterlife fantasy. Discontent can result in feelings of powerlessness, aniexty, fear and all the rest of it. And they react by projecting a fantasy in the afterlife where they are powerful, happy, on top. etc and so on.
So by your logic, Christians actually do not have an acute fear of death because they are sheltered from it. Who is it then that has the acute fear of death? Certainly not the Muslims. The party is on the other side, where all the virgins are. There's the real joke. They get to spend eternity with hordes of beautiful women that are virgins - they won't put out!
You miss the point. The fantasy is created out of an unsatisfied longing in this life, and the thought of that longing not being satisfied creates a huge amount of fear, anxiety, powerlessness, and all the rest of it. Imagine, an uneducated muslim male who is unable to find a female mate, and then some religious wacko comes along, and convinces him that it is his destiny to find love in the next life. I think that is what happens, he believes the person, and relieves his unresolved emotional pain by believing in some future delusion in an afterlife.
The fear of death ties in because what pushes the person to delusion is that they may imagine the possibility of themselves not achieving a higher status, a pretty wife, children, etc and so on, and their minds cannot handle the sorrow of such an outcome, so their minds crack, and they project fantasies where these drives are satisfied.
To be more accurate, it is a fear of not succeeding in life by the time of death, or an actual realization in the possibility of ones own morality that fuels delusions of an afterlife.