format_quote Originally Posted by
DanEdge
For me, I am often reminded of my friend John when I see this kind of rhetoric. I simply could not believe that he deserved to go to hell. I still don't believe it. Never have, never will.
Dear Danedge,
You do not understand this situation because appearantly there is still information out there you are missing. you need this information in order to understand the problem with your friend.
These questions are key to that:
1 What is the purpose of life?
2 If life is a test, why are we taking this test? I thought Allah was omnipotent...he know the outcome of the test beforehand, right?
3 Why did Allah create us? out what kind of need?
4 If Allah is omnipotent, what does He need us for?
5 Why did Allah create weak and ungrateful humans when he could create much stonger and faster creatures and much more obedient?
6 why is free will so important?
7 Why did allah create so many religions?
8 How does religion relate to science?
9 Why are there so many prophets which result to different religions?
10 what will happen when we die?
11 what happens to children and mental ill people like people with down syndrome who do not have the capacity to believe? what happens to them?
12 what happens to people who have never heard of Islam...or people who lived way before Muhammad sas?
All these questions were also my reason to seriously question my religion but as I investigated, and found more and more answers, I regained my faith.
I will try to provide you the information you need inshaallah...but it will take time. keep reminding me to it.
I could answer in short to you that your friend goes to hell because he dies as a nun muslim, but you wouldn't understand that right now. So I will take the long route and try to provide you answers to each above questions and hopefully by the end, you will understand.
first you need to know why Allah created us. He did NOT create us out of need. He does not need us. He created us because that is what he does. A creator, creates...that is one of His attributes...just like painting is one of the attributes of a painter...you also do not ask a painter "why do you paint?".
So Allah created us and many other creatures as well. creatures like animals, angels, devils, jinns, and many other unknown creatures.
he gathered all of us and asked us "am I not your Lord?" and we replied "No, you are".
I once read somewhere why Allah asked us this question, but I cannot find that anymore, so I cannot validate it, but it was something like this:
long before we were born on this Earth, we already existed and lived. at that time Ibliss was not condemmed yet. He was the greatest of all the creatures and very powerfull...so powerfull that slowly rose the illusion that he too could be a God. So some of the creatures did believe that Ibliss could be a God too.
So Allah gathered all of us and asked us "Am I not your Lord?" many of us said "no, you are!" and were safe...the devils said "Ibliss could be a God too" and got condemned.
We humans were stupid enough to ask for time and find out on our own who our Lord is...so here we are on this Earth...looking for our Lord on our own.
Allah wiped our memory clean before we were born so we would not be affected by our memories...and we are hunting for clues to believe in Him or not.
That is the test we are taking. That is our main purpose on this world...so dying as a non-muslim means we failed our test...
again, I cannot validate this, but it seemed very plausible.
I will try to explain the other questions later inshaallah.
To be continued...