Reflections on God's Grace, Salvation, Heaven & Hell
By Shahid Athar, MD, FACP, FACE
BismillahirRahmannirRahim
In the name of God, Most Kind, Most Merciful
Indeed, it is a great honor for a lay person, a physician by profession, that you have invited him to this program and be on the panel with learned men and women. As a physician I like to give my patients the news of hope for their good health and not decimal statistics of impending death. As a believer I would like to see my fellow humans go to heaven and not to hell. As advised by Prophet Muhammad, I "desire for my brother what I desire for myself".
The two questions I ask myself are these: a) what is the Islamic concept of God's Grace, Salvation and Love? b) What would God do to those who misbehave i.e. have wrong beliefs resulting in wrong actions?
We humans can not comprehend what God is like and how He is going to act. A created thing can not define his or her Creator. I am reminded the story of four blind men in India who wanted to know what an elephant was like, since they had never seen one. They thought that if they went to the zoo and touched the elephant, they can describe what the elephant was like.
They did so and one who touched the tail of the elephant said it was like a rope, the one who touched the side of the elephant said it was like a wall, the one who touched the leg said the elephant was like a pillar and the one who touched the ear said it was like a big leaf. They insisted on what they believed as being the only truth and a fight was about to begin when God out of His infinite Mercy, decided to give them their eyesight back. Then they went back to the zoo and confirmed that the elephant was all that was described- plus more.
This is what is wrong with us that when we talk of God as my God and do not know that the same God is shared by others. When the US General Boykin said to his church audience "my God is bigger than their (Muslims) God. My God is a real God and their God is an idol", he was behaving no differently than the kids on the street, who when they fight, say to each other, my dad is stronger than your dad and my dad will beat up your dad. This is what some of us say that my God will save you if you believe in Him the way I believe and if you don't, He will send you to hell.
I started my talk with the name of God most Kind. Most Merciful. I did so as two of the 99 names of God are Rahman and Rahim which means the Kind and the Merciful. What is God's Mercy? Does He love only those who believe in Him? Does He not feed also those who deny His existence. He loves humans more than a mother loves her children.
A mother would not like to throw her child into fire. He would not like to send anyone to hell, unless, that person intentionally wants to go there. And who does? It is for this reason that He created and left the door of forgiveness wide open. He loves to forgive those who seek His forgiveness. He finds a reason to forgive to those who do wrong out of ignorance. The Quran tells us, "Say ! O My servants! who have transgressed against their souls, despair not from the Mercy of God, for God forgives all sins. He is oft forgiving, most Merciful." (31:53). "And it is He who accepts repentance from His servants, and pardons the evil deed, and knows what you do." (42:25)
Is any crime or too many crimes, too big to be forgiven? In one of the authentic sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, transmitted to him directly from God (Hadith Qudsi), God almighty has said "O Son of Adam, so long as you call upon Me and ask of Me, I shall forgive you for what you have done and I will not mind. O son of Adam, were your sins to reach the clouds of sky and were you then seek the forgiveness of Me I would forgive you. O son of Adam were you to come to Me with sins as great as the earth, and were you then to face Me ascribing no partners to Me, I will bring you forgiveness nearly as great as it." How does God forgives the sin of the sinner who repents? According to another saying of Prophet Muhammad, "When God accepts the repentance , then the recording angels erase their records, the organs which he used to commit the crime lose their memory, the place where he committed the crime remove the stains of evidence so that person appears before God with a clean record ". The case dismissed due to lack of evidence.
Another name that God has taken for Himself is Al- Wadud, meaning the Loving God. His Mercy and Forgiveness is tied with His love. He created us out of love in His own image and blown into us, His own spirit. Thus , He forgives out of His love , like a loving mother, who always forgives her misbehaving children when they come back to her. It this love of God, that 9th century Muslim woman saint, Rabia Basri talks about by saying,
"Dear God, if I worship You for fear of Hell, then burn me therein
If I worship You for the reward of Paradise, then keep me away from it
But if I worship You, only out of my love for You, then,
Do not deprive me of Your nearness in the life hereafter.
After describing God, His forgiveness, His mercy and love, is there any room now left for discussion on God's punishment and hellfire? Another attribute of God is Al- Adil, the Just One. There has to be a concept of reward and punishment in order for Him to do justice with two groups of people. The Quran says "those who have done an atom's worth of good will see it (in the day of Judgment) and those who have done an atom's worth of evil will also see it." In our human life as a teacher for example we never treat all students equally. Those who attend classes and study are passed and those who skip classes and don't study are failed. Parents don't treat their children equally either. Those who are loving and obedient versus those who are hateful and rebellious. Thus God says "Equal are not, the dwellers of Heaven and the dwellers of Hell, as the dwellers of Heaven are successful." Thus according to the Quran "Those who reject God whether, people of the book (i.e. those who received Divine scriptures, Jews, Christians and Muslims) or idol worshippers, for them there is a hell-fire to dwell therein, they are the worst of creations".
Thus He created hell as a deterrent for wrong-doing. Just the thought of being burned in Hell may refrain us from wrong doing. Jesus said, "If your right eye causes you to sin, gauge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown in hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it of and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go to Hell." (Matthew 5:29-30)
There is no death penalty in the Quran for apostasy. The Quran says "Let there be no compulsion in religion, truth stands out from falsehood. Whosoever rejects falsehood and believes in one God has grasped the most trustworthy hand that never breaks, and God hears and knows all things." (2:26). In order to be a true Muslim, the faith has to accepted in the heart of the person. A court cannot force him to become Muslim.
According to Quran, those who are believers and do go good attain salvation. "those who believe and do good such are the rightful owners of heaven, they will live therein forever."(Al-Baqara) and "and those who do good whether male or female, and they are believers, they will enter into heaven and not be wronged."(An-Nissa)
My friends, I do not worry if others are going to heaven or hell I worry about myself. I must have tolerance for others who do not look like me, nor were born where I was born, nor speak the same language as mine, nor do they pray to God the way my parents taught me to pray as we all are from seed Adam who was made out of clay.
"our first task in approaching other people, another culture, another religion, is to take off our own shoes, for the place we are approaching is holy, else we may find ourselves treading on another's dream. More serious still, we may forget that God was there before we arrived."(Author unknown)
Nowhere in Quran, God calls Himself as God of Muslims only but He calls Himself as Lord of the Universe. A poet put it this way,
"At the muezzin's call to prayer,
The kneeling faithful throng the square
And on the pushkara's lofty heights,
The saintly priest chanted Brahma's might,
Amid a monastery's weed,
An old Franciscan held his beads,
While to the synagogue there came a Jew
To praise Jehovah's name
The One great God looked down and
Counted each of His loving child and smiled
For the Turk, the Brahmin, the monk and the Jew
They all had reached Him
Through their prayers they knew.
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Speech delivered at The Benedict Inn, Indianapolis on April 30th 2006 during the interfaith program on "The Hell is killing us". Dr. Athar can be reached via his email sathar3624@aol.com , webpage www.islam-usa.com
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Shahid Athar, MD
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