By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
17
September 2021
Muslims
Take the Idea of Heaven and Hell Literally and Make the Mistake of Imagining
God in Very Human Terms
Main
Points:
1. The Old
Testament does not make any mention of the concept of the hell or heaven.
2. Christ
simply stated that the wicked will be exterminated when the kingdom of God
arrived.
3. The idea of
an eternal hell is a contribution of early Christian fathers.
4. Islam
borrowed the idea of hell from a common pool of stories floating around that
time.
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The ideas
of hell and heaven have moved believers in Christianity and Islam since their
inceptions. Both these notions are polar opposites: hell being the place of
eternal torment while heaven being the place of eternal bliss. The dual concept
of hell and heaven has been at the core of holding believers to do ‘good’ and
keep away from ‘evil’ deeds. But it is the concept of hell, which has been
treated in fine detail in these scriptures. Within Islam, tomes have been
written about what will happen to sinners in hell. The word Jahannam is
mentioned or implied more than a hundred times in the Quran. Since Islam came
to ‘perfect’ Judaism and Christianity, it is interesting to know what these
earlier traditions had to say about hell.
It is
surprising but true that the Old Testament does not make any mention of hell or
heaven. The Hebrew term Sheol is used to denote the place of the dead. Early
Judaistic belief was that all the dead descend to Sheol, which is a region in
the depths of the earth that is filled with darkness, gloom and silence. It is important
to underline that there is no conception of life after death here. Dead people
merely descend into the Sheol and eventually fade from collective memory. There
is no mention of any judgment, neither any reward or punishment in the Old
Testament.
The Sheol
later metamorphosed into hell and as a place of eternal damnation only in the
books of the New Testament. Partly the reason for this transformation had to do
with the failed apocalyptic promises of Christianity. Christianity is premised
on the coming of the Messiah which will herald the end of the world. Christ
preached that the end time was near but he himself never preached of hell as a
place of eternal damnation but rather simply stated that the wicked will be
exterminated when the kingdom of God arrived. The notion of hell was similarly
underdeveloped in Paul, who many credit for laying the foundation of the
religion.
But as
Christianity grew, there was no sign that the world was coming to an end. Later
Christian exegetes were at a loss to explain as why the Romans who were
oppressing the true believers continued to have such a life of luxury and
power. It was within such a context the concept of Sheol underwent a
transformation. The idea gained ground that there was life after death, in
which the righteous will be rewarded and wicked will be punished. Sheol became
a temporary place and was replaced with the idea of hell where the suffering
will be eternal. Hell became the place for the wicked dead and heaven became
the place for the righteous dead.
Christian
writers used vivid imagery to describe what kind of torment would take place in
hell, many of which were borrowed later by Islam. The Apocalypse of Peter tells
us how, in hell, blasphemers will be hung by their tongues and usurers will
find themselves in lakes of blood. There is the imagery of fire which burns the
bodies of sinners over and over again. Later church exegetes like Lactantius
would state sinners’ skin would be renewed again and again in order that they
burn eternally.
The parallels
with the Quran are unmistakable as the Muslim text also talks of such
punishment. Later Muslim writers like Ibn Taymiyya modified some of the beliefs
by arguing that the punishment in hell will not be eternal as it is
inconsistent with the merciful nature of Allah. Sufis like Ibn Arabi gave a new
hermeneutic twist to the idea of hell by stating that it signified distance
from Allah. The more a person is close to Allah, he argued, the more he is
close to heaven. In Ibn Arabi, heaven and hell were not physical spaces but
rather experiences of the self.
But the
overall notion of hell within Islamic theology has remained that of a place of
suffering and torment, which as we have seen, was borrowed from the writings of
early Christians.
If the
Muslim, Christians and Jews worship the same God, then why is it that the same
God would not even mention hell in Her early scriptures like the Torah but will
detail it in later ones like the Quran? Are we to believe that God has been
inconsistent when it comes to prescribing punishment for the sinners?
Muslims
have argued that earlier religious scriptures like the Torah and later Bibles
were corrupted by their respective followers. It follows therefore that God’s
original message is either lost or has been replaced by earthly erroneous
interpretations.
Let us for
a moment assume that there was a mention of hell and heaven in the Old
Testament. If we accept the Muslim argument that Jews have corrupted it and
erased the part which talked about hell, then truly it must have required a
humungous effort on their part. One cannot really believe that Jews all over
the world would be working in unison to remove certain parts of their holy
text.
The only
explanation therefore is that these ideas of hell (and heaven) are products of
the human mind. And that these ideas evolved over time. The fact that the Quran
borrows heavily the imagery of hell from Christianity is simply because they
are part of the same pool of stories which were circulating that time in that
particular region of world.
Muslims
take such ideas literally and make the mistake of imagining God in very human
terms.
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Arshad
Alam is a columnist with NewAgeIslam.com
URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-ideology/heaven-hell-christianity-judaistic/d/125377