Thinking about Hell

by

Ruqaiyyah Waris Maqsood.

I recently received some very interesting questions from one of correspondents. He was raised as a Muslim in the Middle East, but recently some things had been undermining the security of faith that he had enjoyed for so long. He asked me several deep questions that really did require sensible answers, and I promised to do my best for him.

His first question related to Hell. In the Qur'an, time and again it was reiterated that one of the sure conditions of avoiding hell was to believe in God and the Last Day. His question was this - what about people who do not believe in these things, but are noble, upright and kind people, people who have done their best to help humanity with all of their resources? Do these people automatically go to Hell? Secondly, what about people who apparently believe in God and the Last Day, but do the most evil things one can imagine while living here on earth. Do these people have more of a chance of avoiding Hell than the previous sort?

The next question was: How is it that there are so many different cults and religions in the world, most of the adherents of which will never hear of Islam (at least, not in a favourable light) and certainly will never consider converting to Islam? Are all of these people (which must surely be most of humanity throughout time) all doomed to end up in Hell? If certain people never got a chance in their lives to hear about Islam properly, how would their cases be dealt with according to Islam?

Finally, he wanted to know that since Allah knows everything He must know where all of us will ultimately end up. Notwithstanding the importance of free will in determining our outcome, this must surely therefore mean that God created a lot of people knowing that they would burn in Hell. How on earth are we supposed to deal with this notion?

These are all questions that intelligent people raise when they begin to think deeply about these issues. They are not blasphemous or irreverent questions, but natural problems that stir the hearts and minds of believers from time to time. I wish I had the ability to answer them properly, but I know that I cannot do so. I can only do my best, and hope that some of it makes sense.

Firstly, I would point out that there is a great deal about what we believe – matters concerning life, the universe and everything – that we can never know. These things belong to the realm of al-Ghayb, that which is unknown to us because it is impossible for us to know. The answers lie in a realm beyond the powers of any human mind to comprehend. Like an iceberg with only a tenth of it showing above the waves and the other nine tenths completely unknown to us, the small amount of knowledge we have here on earth about the nature of Allah and His will and intentions for us are only known through revelation. Allah reveals to us that which He wishes us to know. More than that, we cannot know. It lies beyond our comprehension. We might be given clues, but not knowledge, except as God wills. That is a basic point in Islam. We can only know about God and the Life to Come that which He has chosen to reveal to us.

The material in the Qur’an, moreover, is not as straightforward as some of us would like to think. Sometimes the verses are very easy, and need little help to understand – but other times there are all sorts of layers of meaning and interpretation, many of which are beyond us, and depend on our sensitivity and intelligence and so on. Moreover, God Himself revealed that some of the verses are signs and allegories. So, we might read the verses about the Life to Come, Heaven and Hell, and take them all literally – or we might take as our first basis of belief that these matters lie beyond our powers of comprehension, and we will be created one day into forms that we know not of, and are completely unable to imagine.

Some Muslims believe that the states of Paradise or Hell are eternal, that once we have gone there, we will remain there for ever. Yet this seems to ignore the revelation of Surah 11. 105-108:

'When the Day (of Judgement) comes, no one shall dare to speak except with His permission. Of them, some will be damned and some will be blessed. Those who are damned shall be consigned to the fire, wherein they will have only sighs and sobs. They will dwell therein as long as the heavens and the earth shall last, unless your Rabb ordains otherwise; surely your Rabb is the mighty doer of what He intends. As for those who are blessed, they shall be in Paradise. They will dwell therein as long as the heavens and the earth shall last, unless your Rabb ordains otherwise; an award which shall never be taken away.'

These verses therefore suggest that although the fate of souls will be eternal, this will only be unless Allah wishes it to be otherwise, which is fairly obvious really. Perhaps, if departed souls repent, Allah will change our fates at some stage, and our time in hell will be limited by His compassion.

In Islam, we believe that Allah does not rush to condemn people; He is the Most Kind, the Most Patient, the Most Compassionate of judges. He is not a harsh, stern, fierce, miserable tyrannical figure watching closely for us to commit some sin for which we can never be forgiven. He waits and waits and waits – and gives every possible chance for a sinful person to be sorry for what they have done, and repent, and make some effort if possible to put it right.

There is only a limit to this because our physical forms are finite. There will come a time when they will die and cease to be. Our physical body will lose whatever it was that held it all together as one organism, and will break down once more into all the ingredient organisms of which it was made. It will rot away. The good news is that we are not our bodies. We have bodies. We ourselves are souls – and these do not rot away at all.

While we are in our bodies, we are granted the freewill to believe in God or not, to believe in life after death or not, and so on. Obviously, once a person dies and actually enters the state of whatever it is that will come next, the freewill to believe in it or not will have gone - either there is nothing, or they are in it and must get on with it as best they can. In Islam, we are taught that once that moment comes, our choices to believe or not believe are taken away, and our life-record of all the things that we did or said has been completed, and nothing more can be added to it, or wiped away by our repentance. We have to the moment of death to say sorry, and then that opportunity has gone.

I do not believe that it makes the slightest difference whether or not a person literally actually states before they die that they are sorry, and then turns to God in prayer – the final illness might strike very suddenly, or there could also be the problem that the prayer and belief aspect had simply not become possible for an individual - someone whose reason had never convinced them of the existence of God. What must matter to Allah is surely the intention - we are judged always according to niyyah or intention. The individual needs to feel remorse for bad things done before death, whether or not they can state it or express it. That is what is important, no matter how they express it, or if they are indeed unable to express it.

This leads into the next question. Does God will bad things to happen? You see, again it's a debate - it all depends on what we mean by bad? Does God will earthquakes to happen? And if not, why do they happen? Or is it that we should not call an earthquake bad at all? We need to think deeply through the whole issue of freewill versus determinism. It is obviously true that if Allah creates all things, He must be ultimately responsible over whether they are good or evil. It leads on to the interesting question of the reality of the power of Evil, Shaytan, and who created him and allowed him to function, and why.

Some Muslims take the shortsighted point of view that if a person only has a strong enough faith in God, then nothing bad will ever happen to them - and if it does, then it must have been their lack of faith. This point of view does not look so good when we consider the awful things our Prophet (pbuh) suffered, including persecution, war wounds, sickness and death. Who willed the Prophet to suffer? Why did Allah not magically prevent him from suffering?

If God is the most Merciful, should He then forgive every sin? If so, why is there a Hell at all, for if He forgave everyone, then there is no need for it. If Hell exists at all, then there must presumably be some occupants of it. The trouble is, we do not think as God thinks, or know as God knows, or judge as He judges. In every place and time there have been communities that worship and believe what it has seemed right for them to do - what is the fate for them? Personally, if I discovered that Allah was going to chuck into Hell thousands of very righteous people who had done their best in life but had believed something wrong because they had never seen it the 'right' way, then being quite a rebel, I would probably be awkward and not wish to go to Heaven, but would take my chance with those I felt strongly should not have been rejected!

It is human reason and experience that makes people believe different things. When Muslims say that everyone is born Muslim (the faith of natural reason) and is then changed by teaching and circumstances, they do not mean that people are born knowing all the rituals and customs and practices of Islam, but that the things Islam teaches about God and the realm Unseen are all acceptable to natural reason and assume that humans have an innate sense of good and evil. They then have complete freedom of choice over what they do in their lives - they can choose not to believe in God, and He will never force that choice upon them. All faiths are the result of people seeking for the truth, and for meaning in life. If you study them, you will see that their values of goodness and compassion and noble life and so on are the same for all.

But one of your tests might be that you are introduced to Islam and discover it for yourself, and then, if you become by your own choice one of those 'submitted to God and seeking fully to do His will', you have to investigate as best you can what that will is - and you will find your answers in Qur'an and sunnah, and you will choose whether or not to accept the 'rules and regulations' side of it.

It is worth remembering that the Prophet (pbuh) knew an extremely devout woman who he said would not achieve Paradise because she was cruel to her cat; in another case, there was someone with no outward practice of Islam whatsoever, who would achieve Paradise because of his kindness to another. Islam has to reach the heart - rituals and practices are only an outward aspect of Islam.

Did God create people knowing they would burn in Hell? It is yes and no. Yes, because He created all souls, and is the source and origin, and because his knowledge is outside our awareness of Time. However, this does not mean that He created people for the purpose of ending up there; the whole point of Islam is to hear the message and respond to it. Allah taught us that He would never change a person until that person started the change in his or her own heart. Allah never forces, but allows people to follow their paths that they choose. A person who is going bad will have started off as a perfectly innocent babe, with no sins - but with certain characteristics over which they have no choice. But they DO have control. For example, a hero experiences fear just the same as a coward, but only when faced with some challenge do we find out which we are. It is the same for selfishness, vengeance, exploitation, lust, etc etc. Some say all people are of equal value - this is meaningless. They are of equal worth, and may indeed start out equal - although I question that very much; how they live will drastically affect how much value they are, to themselves and to others.

If a person is born 'faulty', they have to cope with that test as best they can. A person may be born blind, or with confused sexuality, or be mentally unsound. Allah knows all that, and just as any earthly law makes allowances for those who are too young to understand or of impaired mind, so too does our Final Judgement. A person born insane must have one amazing advantage over the rest of us – they will go straight to Paradise, for they have never been able to be responsible for sins.

Those of us with other impairments have to do our best to cope with the world as it is - if a blind person walks into a fire he will be burned just the same as a seeing one. Allah will not normally 'step in' and save him from the fire, or make it not hurt him. A parent of a person born blind or insane may possibly have been sent on earth specifically to learn particular lessons of caring and coping.

So, we must do our best to keep our minds open, and full of love and faith, and not be too ready to jump to rather juvenile conclusions. May Allah bless us all, and keep us longing for His love and guidance, so long as we shall live, and into whatever form our life to come will take when the time comes. Amin.

(With acknowledgements to Reflect, the magazine of the Muslim Educational Trust).