The Problem of Salvation

Does, for equally righteous and committed believers, birth in particular sect or religion increase/decrease chance of entry to Heaven? This is in fact one of the seminal challenges for the Muslim scholarship facing modernity and postmodernity–understanding the fact of diversity of religions/paths/sharaia vis-a-vis unity of Ad-Din/ shared metaphysics, myths, folklore, art traditions, esoterism, wisdom poetry etc.

It is towering scholars like Imam Ghazali whose insights we build upon today for articulating the logic of salvation and mercy that is comprehensible and accessible and explaining how no bias or accident of birth and region decisively impacts one’s prospect for eternal salvation.

Without invoking the approach of modern pluralism that was alien to great medieval minds like Ghazali, as has been noted by modern scholars, there remain a battery of resources in Islamic tradition that towering scholars of diverse persuasions  read to maintain that “God would not take to task ‘earnest’ non-Muslims for not being Muslim, they differ when it comes to explaining how such non-Muslims would indeed be ‘tested.’ Rashid Ridā sides with Mu’tazilites and argues that such people will be taken to account according to what they had comprehended and believed to be true and good in this life.

Consequent of divine mercy embracing all things, most of humanity will enter Heaven, a conclusion AbdolKarim Soroush also reaches citing prophetic tradition in his The Expansion of Prophetic Experience.  Ibn Arabi concludes that chastisement is somehow sweet and hell would lose its property to torture and became a place of bliss and Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim  posit a non-eternal hell.

All for believers, a prophetic tradition compares heat of hell to hamam and Ashraf Ali Thanwi, the famous scholar of Indian subcontinent, explained that hell will be like having a shower with excessive hot water we need sometimes to wash off dirt. Ghazali especially focused on the problem of determining kufr and heterodoxy and possibility of salvation for other Muslim sects and religious communities.

Ghazali, like Ibn Arabi later, inferred that the mercy of God cannot be held in such low estimation as to conceive that salvation is only attainable by Muslims. Verses such as, “If God had so willed, He would have made you one community...(5:48)” and “Each community has its own direction to which it turns... (2:148),” suggest that exclusivism can’t be a part of Quranic values.

He has principally defended a rational proposition all true seekers are destined for reward. Arrogance in the face of obvious truth entails damnation – a proposition brilliantly defended by Maanzir Ahsan Gilani in Maqalat-i Gilani. Regarding anyone who is a seeking but struggling with all kinds of doubts and would be described as an atheist or agnostic we find in certain propositions of Mu’tazilities, Ibn Arabi and modern theologians including Ghamidi and Farhad Shafti insights concurring with Ghazali for including them as well in basically mercy centric approach that can’t fail in saving anyone truly striving in the way of nameless Truth that alone saves.

Ghazali also argued in his Ihyā’ ‘ulūm al-dīn, as Khalil has noted in his Islam and the Salvation of the Others, that “the Law (al-shar‘) did not obligate the uncivilized Bedouins (to do) anything more than maintain firm faith in the literal meaning of [the articles of faith].”

Ghazali’s explication of the hadith stating that seventy two sects will go to fire is illuminating. He noted that a recension of this text would have instead, “Only one will be lost” Or else, as Troll has paraphrased him, “one must understand it as meaning that only one will be saved and go straight to paradise without need of intercession.

Ghazali concludes that one sect only will go to the Eternal Fore; those who treat Muhammad as a liar.” Regarding the verse that states most will not believe, it has been pointed out that it means people in Mecca at the time of revelation.  Ghazālī has also clarified that “what is meant by ‘saved’ is that they will never encounter Hell and will not require intercession. Furthermore, as Ghazālī notes, there are different, less popular versions of this hadith, one of which states that “only one of them will perish.”

Another one states that “all of them are in Paradise except the Crypto-infidels (al-zanādiqah),” which  Ghazālī identifies as being a sect within the Muslim community.  Regarding 999 out of 1000 will be resurrected for the Fire, Ghazali replies: “the 999 would only spend a moment in the Fire, to be purified, and then they would go immediately to Paradise. Only one of the thousand would spend Eternity in Hell.”

Ghazali, in his Faysal al-Tafriqa, quotes the tradition (criticism of hadith scholars and their endorsement of other variants that stops at two multiples of 70,000 figure only and not including the phrase ‘bedouin who neither fasted nor prayed.’  not withstanding) stating that God will cause seventy thousand people from my community to enter Paradise with no account of their deeds being taken and no punishment exacted from them, followed by seventy thousand for every one of this seventy thousand and then followed in turn by another seventy thousand for every one of this seventy thousand and on being asked that this ummah will not reach this number to which the Prophet (PBUH) answered, “It will be reached by including Bedouin who neither fasted nor prayed.”

Thus noting diverse texts that extend number of saved and lessen misery/duration of hell and letting unlimited God’s mercy has the final word and identifying the criterion for exclusion/damnation as attributing lie to the Prophet – there being very few who do it today as did in the past – (though one can’t buy his application of this charge to philosophers like Ibn  Sina), and conceding salvation of those to whom the Prophet’s message hasn’t been attractively presented (this would include vast majority of mankind) Ghazali, effectively,  succeeds in showing Islam extends rather than restricts salvation to the other in many ways.