The Fate of Non-Muslims: Is Heaven Reserved for any particular Faith Community?

Exclusivist view of salvation of Muslims that holds sway amongst the laity and even theologians trained in seminaries has been a source of much debate amongst modern intellectuals and certain theologians influenced by modernity or postmodern hermeneutics. It has also been the Achilles’ heel of Muslim rationalism. Given widespread contacts between different faith communities in the face of globalization, classical attempts of defense of exclusivism need rethinking and certain more inclusive arguments need to be revisited.

    Regarding apparently exclusivist verses “Verily the religion, in the sight of God, is Islam…” and “If anyone desires a religion other than Islam never will it be accepted of him; in the hereafter he will be in the ranks of those who have lost,”  further observations made by several scholars are in order.

• Several Quran translators including M.A.S. Abdel Haleem insist on using the lowercase “i” suggesting that “islam is being used as a verb, which means submission or devotion to God. It is not being viewed only as the exclusive name given to the religion of Islam as it is practiced today. Even if literal exegesis is given preference, they still do not deny the truth contained in other religions.”
• Given the Quran in 2:113 and 2:120 condemns those Christians and Jews who  assert that they alone will be offered salvation by God, how come “the same Quran then endorse such exclusivist attitude by Muslims? From divisive identity politics to deranged messianic violence, all have their genesis in willful disregard of pluralism as a core Quranic value. It is not coincidental that societies that have embraced pluralism also tend to be more successful and peaceful.”
• Several verses in the Quran present the act of freely submitting to God as Islam. For instance Noah and Abraham are commanded, respectively, in 10:72 and 2:131 to submit.
• It has also been pointed out that islam as a distinct identity of particular community is a later phenomenon in early Islamic history and a product of politics of exclusion of other communities whom the Quran included in submitter’s category.
• Toshiko Izutsu in his God and Man in the Koran argued against fixed reading of Islam as a distinctive religious identity and for its reading as submission of our very self and noted that this provides material for, “a very eloquent understanding of religious pluralism, one wherein all revelations throughout history are seen as different ways of giving to God that which is most difficult to give - our very selves” (Izutsu, 2000: 199).
• Schuon in his The Transcendent Unity of Religions has also noted the use of Al-islam as a symbol which it would be absurd to reduce to a particular historical manifestation only and noted that the interests of universality and total and disinterested Truth demand we guard against this restriction.
• A medieval Sufi commentary on the Quran by Tustari has this to say on the key verses under debate between contemporary exclusivists and inclusivists:
• … “whoever believes,” meaning if they fear [God] in [their] different ways of knowing [Him], all of them will have a beautiful place of return and an ample reward. The believer (muʾmin) is anyone in the protection (amān) of the Real. For anyone who is in His protection, it is fitting that no fear shall befall them, neither shall they grieve.
• Lo, the religion (dīn) with God is submission (islām) [to the One God].
• Religion (dīn): The [religion] that He is pleased with, and the one whose follower He has determined to reward, elevate, and favor, is submission (islām). Submission (islām) is sincerity (ikhlāṣ) and the surrender of oneself (istislām). Anything else is rejected (mardūd) and the path to salvation for its follower is blocked (masdūd).
  

Other arguments complementing one another succeed in questioning exclusivist reading of Islamic canon.

• Ghazzali has principally defended a rational proposition all true seekers are destined for reward. Arrogance in the face of obvious truth entails damnation. Given this there would hardly be any objection from any quarter regarding exclusion. Al-Ghazali and Ibn Arabi 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),” suggests that exclusivism can’t be a part of Quranic values.
• A galaxy of modern scholars from divergent backgrounds and points of view including Fazlur Rahman, Farid Essack, AbdulKarim Suorush, Muhammad Sharur, Abu Nasr Zayd, Asghar Ali Engineer, Javed Ahmed Ghamidi, Farhad Shafti– to name only a few – have advanced a battery of arguments that cumulatively serve at least to fundamentally question the perception that exclusivist reading is more orthodox, uncontested within emergent Muslim community and classical exegetes, rational and literal or supported by mass of prophetic traditions,  actual practice of the State and creedal statements that have had great influences in Muslim communities .
• Saving grace, virtues and other associated elements can’t be imagined to be restricted to one religion. Influential modern theologian and author of Risal e Noor Said Nursi (1877-1960) clearly recognizes elements of truth and holiness in other heavenly religions and asserts that if followers of other faiths perform a genuine worship of God, then “the manifestations of the unseen and the epiphanies of the spirit, revelation and inspiration,” are not exclusive to Islam and can be found in other divinely guided faith traditions.
• Mu’tazilıte theologians constituting the majority of the Shiites and minority amongst the Sunnis, have conceded the continuing salvific efficacy of the other monotheistic faiths on the basis of “both the revealed and the rational guidance to which the Christians and the Jews were exposed. They regarded the ‘People of the Book’ as responsible for acting upon their revelation whose substance has remained recognisable despite the neglect and alteration (tahrıf)it has suffered.”
• Reza Shah Kazemi proposes developing pluralistic attitudes in Muslim societies as a “principle at the very heart of the vision of Islam itself: a vision in which the plurality of religious paths to the One is perceived as a reflection of the spiritual infinity of the One.”
  

How does the exclusivist thesis gel with certain key Quranic declarations that God has appointed different ways (sharaya/manahij) for people, that God will resolve differences of doctrines in the otherworld, that different religions are de facto recognized and accordingly dealt with, that certain arrangements in marriages between believers of different revealed religions are solemnized, that God doesn’t want one path/minhaj (as distinguished from Ad-Din – the Tradition – that grounds, at deeper levels, all revealed/authentic/sanctified paths) to be imposed? Given there are arguments from the canon that point to immediate or ultimate salvation of vast majority of people, are we ready to accept on various grounds the implied thesis that denying – or at least decreasing probability of /risking – salvation to righteous believers of other religions disposes four fifth or at least two third of humankind to eternal hell for purely accidental reasons of not being born in particular religion/land?