Nobody Has the Right to Call Himself Doomed

The second part of this hadith takes us into the next section of the book as well: it is about the divine decree. Ponder this. Recall what an earlier chapter said about the difference between an involuntary shaking of the hands and a voluntary shaking of the hands: how we know, and feel, that we have some free will. Nobody reading these pages was pushed along into doing so, trying to get away but unable to, fixed in place. It is something done voluntarily, so it proves that we have a window of will that Allah has given us.

Now this hadith says that these are for paradise and these are for hell. Where does that leave free will? This man asked the Prophet (peace be upon him): fa-fīma al-ʿamalu yā Rasūl Allāh? The Prophet (peace be upon him) gave a beautiful answer, and if we ponder over it, we will understand that it is not within our realm to ask why: to ask, if it has all been decided, what the point of action is. Because that is a fatalistic attitude.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) clarified this by saying that if a person is destined for paradise, Allah will use them in the activities of the people of paradise. Meaning: for people who are destined for paradise, those are the things they will be doing as well. And if a person is destined for hell, then those are the things they will be doing. So if somebody voluntarily wants to do the actions of the people of the Hellfire, and keeps complaining that they are doomed, that it has been written for them, that they were selected on the other side, meaning from that group who were doomed, then that is up to them. But they cannot say that. Nobody has the right, until they die, to say that they were doomed. Nobody.

Now think about this. We have this information in front of us: Allah took these and made these two groups. This is for paradise; this is for hell. Can anybody, seriously speaking, say that they are from this group before they die? Because another hadith makes it very clear that sometimes there is just a handspan^*** left between a person and paradise, and the course changes, and they go to hell. And the same hadith speaks of that much of a distance left to the hellfire for a person who has been sinning and disbelieving all of his life, and then suddenly he changes, and goes to paradise.

There is the account, from the time of the Prophet (peace be upon him), of a battle that was going on. A man came along, a non-Muslim, and said: yā Rasūlallāh, should I embrace the faith first, or should I go and join in the battle first? The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: of course, take the shahādah and then go. He took the shahādah, entered the battle, and was killed almost instantly, very quickly. The Prophet (peace be upon him) remarked: ʿamila qalīlan wa ujira kathīrā. He did so little, but got such a great reward. He never prayed, never gave any ṣadaqah in Islam, never did any of the other deeds; but mā shāʾ Allāh, straight away paradise, a great reward. That is a change in a moment, after all of his life a disbeliever.

The scholars in fact explain about these two cases that the first happens rather more, where a person has been bad all their life and goes over to the good side, as opposed to being good all their life and suddenly changing to the bad. Allah preserve us from that. Allāhumma innā naʿūdhu bika min al-ḥawri baʿda al-kawr. It is very important that we seek protection from regressing, from going back. Alhamdulillah, the ʿulamāʾ have said, from observation, that this happens much less frequently, which is a good, good thing.

So with this in front of us, is it right for anybody to call themselves doomed until they actually die? Come over: there is lots of space. Jump ship. Come over and be good; nobody is stopping you. Do not doom yourself; do not doom yourself. Be from the good side, be from the suʿadāʾ, be from the side that was destined for paradise. Nobody is stopping you.

And once a person goes to the Hellfire, once they die in a doomed state, then obviously they will recall, and they will say: well, these were my actions; the opportunity was there, because everybody has free will.