Does anyone really deserve to go to hell?

Ignite · Feb 24, 2012

Madhuri said:
It's always a little confusing when Muslims refer to 'muslims'. When asked for further explanation, sometimes I have been given the response that really it means anyone who is submitted to God, which includes 'people of the book'. Do you agree?

And just for further clarification, are you implying that any person who is not 'muslim', even if a person who commits minimal sin in life, will be in hell forever?

Yes, according to them, mother teresa will go to Hell.

Gharib · Feb 24, 2012

Madhuri said:
It's always a little confusing when Muslims refer to 'muslims'. When asked for further explanation, sometimes I have been given the response that really it means anyone who is submitted to God, which includes 'people of the book'. Do you agree?

And just for further clarification, are you implying that any person who is not 'muslim', even if a person who commits minimal sin in life, will be in hell forever?

it is anyone who has uttered the Shahada (testimony of faith) 'The is no God except Allah'. but since muslims believe that all 124,000 prophets called people to monotheism, those who rightly followed their prophet before the advent of Muhammed are all considered muslims. however if by 'people of the book' one refers to the christians and jews after the advent of Muhammed then that is not correct.

for the second part, yes that is the islamic view. however, to leave it at only that statement and not explain the full islamic perspective is injustice to islam. however, even if the matter was explained further anyone who is not a muslim will not necessarily accept the islamic perspective.

i will just try to explain briefly:
you have said, 'even if a person who commits minimal sin in life, will be in hell forever?'

to say that statement means that the said person did many many good deeds and little sins. but the question i have to ask is, according to whose laws did that person do so many good deeds? for example you and i live in australia, does Australia award the 'Australian of the year' to someone who is not of Australian citizenship but instead Chinese and who has done so much for china and in accordance to the chinese laws and culture?

if the answer is no, then 2 things become clear, intentions and actions play a big role. islamically speaking, anyone who does something for the sake of other than Allah, Allah will tell that person to go and seek the reward of the person or thing for whose sake they did such and such action, this applies to muslims who do things for other than the sake of Allah. and the action is also based on the intention. Allah judges by intention and by action.

i hope that makes sense.

Madhuri · Feb 24, 2012

I think I understand what you are saying. By minimal sin I tend to base on my own beliefs rather than the mainstream culture of the nation I was born and raised in. I view sin as action based in selfishness and 'good' is selfless action. So for me, a person who is lacking in sin is one who acts for the sake of others, thinking nothing of his own gain.

But you also seem to be saying that a person whose intentions are entirely selfless would still go to hell forever if he/she is not 'muslim'.

I will note also that this is not a hard and fast rule, as far as I have been told by many Muslims. An obvious example is in regard to people who never have the chance to even know about Islam.

Shermana · Feb 24, 2012

Ignite said:
Yes, according to them, mother teresa will go to Hell.

Sarah Fitz-Claridge: Why Mother Teresa Was Evil
Exposing Mother Teresa by JOHN M. SWOMLEY
"India has no reason to be grateful to Mother Teresa"* by Sanal Edamaruku
Hitting Bedrock: Mother Teresa and money

I like clearing up the Mother Theresa misconceptions (that she was somehow this sweet saint who spent even a fraction of a fraction of the money she got on her causes and that her causes were even all that humanitarian to begin with) whenever I can.

I personally hope she is getting or got a good round in Purgatory.

As well, the concept of Reincarnation was apparently even acknowledged by the Disciples. When Jesus said that the Blind man had been blind "from birth", the Apostle asked if he had committed a sin to be blind. The only, and ONLY way to interpret that was that the Apostle believed in Reincarnation (or at least didn't rule it out.). The concept of "eternal hell" as opposed to "temporary hell" is, IMO, a corruption of what was being advocated back then.

Gharib · Feb 24, 2012

ImmortalFlame said:
So, what happens to non-Muslims?

Indeed, Allah does not forgive association with Him, but He forgives what is less than that for whom He wills. And he who associates others with Allah has certainly fabricated a tremendous sin. [4:48]

ImmortalFlame · Feb 24, 2012

eselam said:
Indeed, Allah does not forgive association with Him, but He forgives what is less than that for whom He wills. And he who associates others with Allah has certainly fabricated a tremendous sin. [4:48]

With due respect, that's not really answered my question. Do non-Muslims (atheists included) go to hell?

mycorrhiza · Feb 24, 2012

ankarali said:
So, since one minute's unbelief is like a thousand murders, according to the law of human justice, someone who lives a life of twenty years in unbelief and dies in that state deserves imprisonment for fifty-seven billion, two hundred and one thousand two hundred million years.

How can unbelief be like murder? Unbelief doesn't harm anyone.

I believe that hell in both the Bible and the Qur'an are supposed to be metaphorical. They use the same word. The mainstream beliefs about hell seem more influenced by Dante than any religious book.

dyanaprajna2011 · Feb 24, 2012

Shermana said:
Sarah Fitz-Claridge: Why Mother Teresa Was Evil
Exposing Mother Teresa by JOHN M. SWOMLEY
"India has no reason to be grateful to Mother Teresa"* by Sanal Edamaruku
Hitting Bedrock: Mother Teresa and money

I like clearing up the Mother Theresa misconceptions (that she was somehow this sweet saint who spent even a fraction of a fraction of the money she got on her causes and that her causes were even all that humanitarian to begin with) whenever I can.

I personally hope she is getting or got a good round in Purgatory.

As well, the concept of Reincarnation was apparently even acknowledged by the Disciples. When Jesus said that the Blind man had been blind "from birth", the Apostle asked if he had committed a sin to be blind. The only, and ONLY way to interpret that was that the Apostle believed in Reincarnation (or at least didn't rule it out.). The concept of "eternal hell" as opposed to "temporary hell" is, IMO, a corruption of what was being advocated back then.

I've made that argument here before, that early Christianity was univeralist. Even when I was a Christian, the I had not ruled the concept out. There is certainly plenty of evidence to support ideas, from the Bible, and even the early church fathers, that are not popular with "orthodox" Christians of today.

Gharib · Feb 24, 2012

Madhuri said:
I think I understand what you are saying. By minimal sin I tend to base on my own beliefs rather than the mainstream culture of the nation I was born and raised in. I view sin as action based in selfishness and 'good' is selfless action. So for me, a person who is lacking in sin is one who acts for the sake of others, thinking nothing of his own gain.

But you also seem to be saying that a person whose intentions are entirely selfless would still go to hell forever if he/she is not 'muslim'.

the islamic view is that you do things and wish for no reward/praise from people and Allah will reward you both in this life and the hear after. it is similar to what you say, however, the part where the 2 views differ is that for whose sake do you do something which is selfless?

I will note also that this is not a hard and fast rule, as far as I have been told by many Muslims. An obvious example is in regard to people who never have the chance to even know about Islam

i have read that some scholars are of the opinion that anyone who died not having received the message/revelation of Muhammed then they will be rewarded with paradise. however, there are a few other views and i have not looked into the matter thoroughly in order to say what the majority opinion is. or if the opinion i have mentioned is correct.

Gharib · Feb 24, 2012

ImmortalFlame said:
With due respect, that's not really answered my question. Do non-Muslims (atheists included) go to hell?

sorry, i thought that would answer your question.

islamically speaking anyone who dies in the state of worshiping someone other than Allah will go to hell as the verse i posted indicates. however, if someone who has been a non-muslim all his adult life accepts islam and dies the next day or soon after then he is still considered a muslim and all his bad deeds which they did would be turned into good deeds and would begin from that day sinless. however any wrong that person has done to other humans he must repay them or ask for forgiveness from them. the same goes for someone who lived as a muslim all his adult life and then left islam and dies the next day or soon after.

i hope that answers you question.

Madhuri · Feb 24, 2012

eselam said:
the islamic view is that you do things and wish for no reward/praise from people and Allah will reward you both in this life and the hear after. it is similar to what you say, however, the part where the 2 views differ is that for whose sake do you do something which is selfless?

I will tell you my personal belief, which I think that is similar to your belief but also different.
In Hinduism, the goal of life is to realise God. Not to have blind faith, but to come to actually KNOW God. And one thing that God is, is unity. We do not see God as some being in a far away place, but we see all existence within God's very self.

(After all, if nothing existed beyond God at one point, then everything must come from his own self otherwise we have to think that some ingredients of the universe existed independently of him.)

So a natural process of coming to know God is to feel this connection with all existing things. It becomes impossible to not care about others. We become consumed by love and devotion. The height of this experience, the point at which we become liberated from material existence and go to God forever, is when we experience only love/selflessness and it is then impossible to sin.

When we are consumed by this love, we forget ourselves and our entire consciousness is driven toward the Whole. Toward God. All that exists is God.

All selfless action stems from this innate love, this connection, within us. And so when you ask to whom this selfless action is for, I say it is for All; for God, naturally.

And this is why it is very challenging for me to conceptualise the Islamic idea that a selfless person can be condemned or that a selfless person can only exist if they follow the Quran.

ImmortalFlame · Feb 24, 2012

eselam said:
sorry, i thought that would answer your question.

islamically speaking anyone who dies in the state of worshiping someone other than Allah will go to hell as the verse i posted indicates. however, if someone who has been a non-muslim all his adult life accepts islam and dies the next day or soon after then he is still considered a muslim and all his bad deeds which they did would be turned into good deeds and would begin from that day sinless. however any wrong that person has done to other humans he must repay them or ask for forgiveness from them. the same goes for someone who lived as a muslim all his adult life and then left islam and dies the next day or soon after.

i hope that answers you question.

Thank you, it does.

Now I have to ask, how could you possibly believe in such a twisted, amoral system?

tarasan · Feb 24, 2012

(4) Other things being equal, the seriousness of a crime increases as the status (the degree of importance or value) of its victim increases.
(5) God has an infinitely high status.
(6) Therefore, crimes against God are infinitely serious (from (4) and (5)).
(7) All sin is a crime against God.
(8) Therefore, all sin is infinitely serious (from (6) and (7)).
(9) The more serious a crime is, the more serious its punishment should be.
(10) Therefore, all sin should receive an infinitely serious punishment (from (8) and (9)). http://www.iep.utm.edu/hell/

now let me clarify a few of the points here,

premise (4) isnt necessarily talking about things like social or economic status's rather its talking about there being a degrees of importance. e.g. we would hold a tree having a lesser degree of importance than a baby. For this argument to succeed we dont have to agree on the particulars of these degrees rather that this value system exists.

premise (7) may seem false initially However, many believe that when one person is sufficiently precious to, and dependent upon, another, a wrong committed against the first person automatically wrongs the second. so if we take for example if a baby has been wronged then it could be said that his mother has been wronged as well.

any other problems please feel free to reply

fantome profane · Feb 24, 2012

tarasan said:
(4) Other things being equal, the seriousness of a crime increases as the status (the degree of importance or value) of its victim increases.
(5) God has an infinitely high status.
(6) Therefore, crimes against God are infinitely serious (from (4) and (5)).
(7) All sin is a crime against God.
(8) Therefore, all sin is infinitely serious (from (6) and (7)).
(9) The more serious a crime is, the more serious its punishment should be.
(10) Therefore, all sin should receive an infinitely serious punishment (from (8) and (9)). Hell*[Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

now let me clarify a few of the points here,

premise (4) isnt necessarily talking about things like social or economic status's rather its talking about there being a degrees of importance. e.g. we would hold a tree having a lesser degree of importance than a baby. For this argument to succeed we dont have to agree on the particulars of these degrees rather that this value system exists.

premise (7) may seem false initially However, many believe that when one person is sufficiently precious to, and dependent upon, another, a wrong committed against the first person automatically wrongs the second. so if we take for example if a baby has been wronged then it could be said that his mother has been wronged as well.

any other problems please feel free to reply

Can I perhaps ask you to give us an illustration that could possibly clarify the logic behind this? Please do the following:

1. Name an entity that you think has a lower status than you do.

2. Describe a sin or crime that this lower status entity could conceivably commit against you.

And most importantly

3. Describe what sentence you would impose on the lower status entity.

Ignite · Feb 24, 2012

ImmortalFlame said:
Thank you, it does.

Now I have to ask, how could you possibly believe in such a twisted, amoral system?

I'm glad to see i'm not to only one with that opinion.

Ignite · Feb 24, 2012

eselam said:
it is anyone who has uttered the Shahada (testimony of faith) 'The is no God except Allah'. but since muslims believe that all 124,000 prophets called people to monotheism, those who rightly followed their prophet before the advent of Muhammed are all considered muslims. however if by 'people of the book' one refers to the christians and jews after the advent of Muhammed then that is not correct.

for the second part, yes that is the islamic view. however, to leave it at only that statement and not explain the full islamic perspective is injustice to islam. however, even if the matter was explained further anyone who is not a muslim will not necessarily accept the islamic perspective.

i will just try to explain briefly:
you have said, 'even if a person who commits minimal sin in life, will be in hell forever?'

to say that statement means that the said person did many many good deeds and little sins. but the question i have to ask is, according to whose laws did that person do so many good deeds? for example you and i live in australia, does Australia award the 'Australian of the year' to someone who is not of Australian citizenship but instead Chinese and who has done so much for china and in accordance to the chinese laws and culture?

if the answer is no, then 2 things become clear, intentions and actions play a big role. islamically speaking, anyone who does something for the sake of other than Allah, Allah will tell that person to go and seek the reward of the person or thing for whose sake they did such and such action, this applies to muslims who do things for other than the sake of Allah. and the action is also based on the intention. Allah judges by intention and by action.

i hope that makes sense.

The example you provided doesn't really work. People get awarded because they do good things, they don't do good things to get awarded. No-one really does anything for the sake of God, people who do good for God are doing things in self-intrest (to get to heaven). If you take out the aspect of heaven and hell, nobody would worship God, even if we knew for sure he exists.

muhammad_isa · Feb 24, 2012

Ignite said:
No-one really does anything for the sake of God, people who do good for God are doing things in self-intrest (to get to heaven). If you take out the aspect of heaven and hell, nobody would worship God, even if we knew for sure he exists.

That's not true..
There are plenty of believers whose deeds are for God's pleasure .. and that includes Christians and others, as well as Muslims.

If you ask me how I know this, then I could ask you the same question!
It's not just about going to paradise, but naturally enough, it's good to know that there IS eventual justice for those who are righteous, even if they are suffering in the present.

dyanaprajna2011 · Feb 24, 2012

muhammad_isa said:
That's not true..
There are plenty of believers whose deeds are for God's pleasure .. and that includes Christians and others, as well as Muslims.

If you ask me how I know this, then I could ask you the same question!
It's not just about going to paradise, but naturally enough, it's good to know that there IS eventual justice for those who are righteous, even if they are suffering in the present.

Suffering is a state of mind brought about by attachment to things empty of self-existence.

9Westy9 · Feb 24, 2012

ankarali said:
Hi to Everyone Yes, if you don't believe in God you deserve the eternel hell as you will see in the text below:

How can incarceration in Hell for an infinite duration in return for unbelief for a short duration be justice?
T h e A n s w e r : Reckoning a year to be three hundred and sixty five days, the law of justice requires for a one-minute murder seven million eight hundred and eighty-four thousand minutes imprisonment. So, since one minute's unbelief is like a thousand murders, according to the law of human justice, someone who lives a life of twenty years in unbelief and dies in that state deserves imprisonment for fifty-seven billion, two hundred and one thousand two hundred million years. It may be understood from this how conformable with Divine justice is the verse,

They will dwell therein for ever.

The reason for the connection between these two numbers, so far from one another, is this: since murder and unbelief are destruction and aggression, they have an effect on others. A murder which takes one minute negates on average at least fifteen years of the victim's life, so the murderer is imprisoned in their place. While since one minute of unbelief denies a thousand and one Divine Names and denigrates their inscriptions, violates the rights of the universe and denies its perfections, and gives the lie to innumerable evidences of Divine Unity and rejects their testimony, the unbeliever is cast down to the lowest of the low for more than a thousand years, and "dwells" in imprisonment.
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi

Nonentity is the worst of thinks, Imagine a man condemned to death penalty he will do everything he can do to change it as a life emprisonment

you think that not believing in god(s) for a minute is equivalent to 1000 murders? Some people are beyond hope...

since murder and unbelief are destruction and aggression

this is just low... just because I disbelieve in a deity doesn't make me destructive or aggressive.

9Westy9 · Feb 24, 2012

ankarali said:
Everyone is free to believe or not but the dead reality is saying there. No one of us can kill the death. All of us, one day, we will be dead people.

If I believe in God and if there is a God I will lose nothing and if there is no God I will lose nothing neither.
but if you don't believe and there is a God what you will lose? Think about it

Our days in this world not enough for our intentions, we stay here 70 or maximum 90 years and after we will be dead me I have 35 years old and all my life has passed in a second

Please don't tell me someone used Pascals wager :facepalm:

What if there is an afterlife, but the God punishes everyone who believed in a deity? Then you lose I'm afraid.

Does anyone really deserve to go to hell?

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