Good non-Muslims, Suicide, Nuance, & Hell

This is Shahid Bolson. Welcome to the Middle Nation. I wanted to talk about a couple of different issues today that are not from the usual sort of topics that this channel focuses on, but I think is in line with the whole concept and theme of the Middle Nation. The first issue comes from a question that a friend of mine asked me about this man Eli Weissman who goes by or went by previously the moniker, the jihadi Jew online. And he runs a Facebook group and I don't know, maybe he has a website or an organization or something called Abraham's tent, which sort of brings together members of communities that belong to what are called the Abrahamic faiths.

So Islam, Judaism, Christianity, you know, so that they can discuss various issues and share perspectives and so on. So this person asked me, do I think that people like Eli Weisman are going to go to hell? Are are they going to go to Jahannam? And so, of course, I said, yes. Of course.

Of course, he will. And this became a dispute. This became a bit of a disagreement. This dispute became about who is and who is not considered a kafir and what is and what is not kufr and what does and does not condemn you to the hellfire. And then it also became a discussion about the ayat of Allah in the Quran about Jahannam and the proposition that maybe these ayat are only to scare us into good behavior and that ultimately Allah will forgive most of us.

Okay. So this was very disturbing to me because these are not ambiguous matters and it is extremely dangerous to treat them as ambiguous. Now making the argument that Eli Weisman believes in Allah, respects Islam, and recognizes that Rasulullah was a prophet, arguing that this makes him qualify for being regarded as a believer. This is extremely dangerous. This is precisely why many Muslims are very reticent about interfaith dialogues and why we are suspicious of characters like Eli Weissman and Craig Considine and anyone else who has these positive things to say about Islam, but who are not actually Muslims.

Because we as a people, the Muslims, are very soft hearted. And so when we hear someone speaking positively about Islam, respectfully about Rasulullah and pointing out all of these things that are almost like a form of dawah to Islam, but they themselves are not Muslims. That endears them to us. That endears them to us. And our hearts become attached to these people.

We love them. And then we want them to have what the believers will have. We want them to be treated by Allah as if they are one of us, as if they belong to our ummah, as if they qualify for jannah. We don't wanna see them going to hell because, well, they're so nice, you know, they say nice things. So we want them to be able to qualify for Jannah.

And after all, doesn't it qualify them for Jannah that they recognize the prophethood of Rasulullah and that they recognize that the Quran is a holy book, that it is from Allah. So aren't they upholding tawheed and and so on and so on? And then they'll always bring up this word nuance. There are many many things that are nuanced and there is space, there is latitude for certain opinions that take nuance into consideration. Who is a Muslim and who is not a Muslim?

It's not nuanced. The distinction between a Muslim and a Jew is not nuanced. The distinction between what is a Christian and what is a Muslim is not nuanced. There are many things that are nuanced. This is not one of those things.

And there's no nuance around the distinction between where someone will go who believes in and follows the final revelation of Allah and someone who does not follow it. Now think about this. It's remarkable to me that you can have Muslims today who are happy about someone who says that they believe in Allah who says that they believe that prophet Muhammad was a prophet, but that they will not follow him or obey him or accept his religion. We know he's a prophet. We won't follow him.

You can't get much more kuffer than that. I mean, think about in the Quran when Allah mentions that the Jews bragged saying we killed the Masih. So would these Muslims today say that, well, those Jews back then accepted that Isa Alaihi Salam was the Masih. After all, they said we killed the Masih. So therefore, they are accepting that he was the Masih.

So doesn't that make them believers ineligible for Jannah? This is insane. You had people in the time of who accepted that he was a prophet or who at least didn't deny that he was a prophet, but they didn't accept him. They didn't follow him. They didn't embrace Islam.

That's Kufr. That is as strong a version of Kufr as you can find. That's worse than denying that he was a prophet. If you deny that he was a prophet, then you can in some level, in some degree rationalize why you don't follow his deen. Just like how accepted to not be referred to as in the treaty of Hudaybiyah.

But here we're talking about people who say, yes, he's a prophet and yes, I'm not going to follow him. That's extreme, Kufr. Now I'm not picking on Weissman. I don't know the man. I don't follow any of what he does.

I'm I'm aware of him. I'm sure he's a fine, okay guy. But he's not a Muslim, and he's not eligible for what the Muslims are eligible for. Now just just remember that Rasulullah said that any of the prophets who preceded him, if they were to have been present in his lifetime, they would have no choice but to follow him. Okay?

So on where are these people going to be gathered? With with which will these people be gathered? Will the Jews of today be gathered in the ummah of Nabi Musa Alaihi Salam? How? Will they be will will the Christians be gathered with Nabi Risa Alaihi Salam?

Will will he say that these these people are part of my ummah? Will Musa say, these people are part of my ummah? Will Musa and themselves would have had to follow Muhammad had they lived in his lifetime? Anyone who lived during or after Rasulullah is obliged to follow Rasulullah. So the ummah who will be gathered with Musa will not include anyone who came after Rasulullah.

The the ummah who will be gathered with Isa will not include anyone who came after Rasulullah Any people who called themselves followers of Musa or who called themselves followers of Isa, none of the people who followed after the lifetime of will be gathered with those prophets and be included in their because those prophets themselves would have had to follow had they lived in his lifetime. If if if a Jew of today in Yamukriyama wants to assemble himself with Nabi Musa Alaihi Salam, you can imagine that Musa Alaihi Salam would say, I have nothing to do with you. A prophet came. You're supposed to follow him. A prophet came after me.

You're supposed to follow him. You can't you can't now prefer me over him. And the same with Isa. If if if a Christian of today goes to Isa on and says, I'm part of your ummah, no, you're not. You're supposed to follow with the one who came after me, the last one.

That's what you're supposed to follow. Anyone could follow me when I was the prophet. When I was the last available prophet, the people who followed me at that time, they're part of my ummah. But anyone who rejects the prophets who came after me, they're not part of my ummah. How can this be?

Now the second issue is with regards to suicide, and that was a conversation between a friend of our family and my family about suicide and, insisting that we do not know that people who commit suicide will go to Jannah. We don't know that. And she used as her evidence of this a talk by Mufti Menk in which he said this.

The pen that writes the deeds of people is lifted three times. One is when a person is asleep. Similarly, the one who is a child until they grow up. And thirdly, a person who is unwell mentally, don't know what they're doing until they become better. You don't know the condition of his mind at the exact point when he committed that act.

Now, Mufty Mink is a very tactful man. He's very tactful with his language. And here he is concerned about, those whose loved ones may have committed suicide and wanting them to have some hope that maybe their loved one is not doomed forever in Jahannam. Because he's trying to be compassionate and sympathetic with the people who live on after a loved one has committed suicide, the living relatives of someone who committed suicide. He's trying to be compassionate to them and thus using very sort of broad language because someone with mental health issues is not means you literally have no idea what's going on.

You have lost your mind. You don't have your senses. Not that your senses are under stress, not that you have suffered trauma, not that you're depressed, not that you're sad, not that you have tension, but you have literally lost your senses. And this is a this is a very serious state because you've noticed also that in the three from whom the pen has been lifted, the intoxicated person is not one of those. An intoxicated person more or less has lost their senses, but that's still a very different thing from actually when your mind is broken.

So he uses terms like mentally unwell or mentally ill or these kinds of things as a way to soften the dread that the living relatives may feel about the fate of their loved one who committed suicide. And he's correct in saying that, yes, we do not know the actual mental state of the person at the moment that they committed suicide. Maybe at that particular moment, they were insane. Yes. Maybe.

But the point here is that that would have to be the case in order for them to not be eligible for the punishment. That would have to be the case. Because if that's not the case, we know what the punishment will be. And so when we say that someone who committed suicide is in jahannam, that is based on the rule that we know. That's based on the information that we know.

Just like in a court, there's the law and then the judge has discretion for mitigating circumstances. So the law in this case would be that someone who commits suicide will be in Jahannam. The discretion is with Allah to know the mitigating circumstances that we cannot know and therefore his judgment may not comply with the law that we know. It may be an exception. So that's all true.

But that's not something we know. So when someone says that someone is going to jahannam if they commit suicide, that is correct. It's also correct to say that Allah will do what he wants and Allah will consider every case individually based on the knowledge that he alone has. So someone who commits suicide may be crazy at the moment they do it, but we can't depend on that. And just being depressed and being stressed out enough or sad enough or tense enough that you will commit suicide, that does not qualify as crazy.

It wouldn't stand up in a court of law. You wouldn't qualify as insane as a defense against a criminal accusation because you're under tension, because you have trauma, because you're sad, because you're tired, because you have no hope. These are not reasons for committing a crime for which you would be not held accountable. You would have to have actually lost your senses. So I wanted to talk about this because it's very dangerous, I think, when you start trying to be nuanced in areas where there is no nuance And when you start treating unambiguous matters as if they are ambiguous for reasons of your own personal emotions, you don't get to do that in Islam.

And in the first case, with someone like Eli Weissman or Craig Considine or any of these other types of people, you are not doing them any favors by making them believe that they are eligible for Jannah without accepting Islam. You're not doing them any favors. You're not actually making it easier. You're not actually being nicer. You're not actually being kinder or more compassionate to make anyone believe that it's okay for you to not be Muslim, and you will still get the reward as if you were Muslim.

And it doesn't help them to correct their life and their belief. So you have to tell the truth even if it's not tactful, even if it hurts people's feelings, even if it makes you unpopular. You have to tell the truth. There's at least two types of extremisms. One of them is to deny that there's any nuance in anything and everything is just black and white, cut and dry.

And then there's the then there's the other type of extremism, which is saying that everything is nuanced. Everything is ambiguous. Everything is open to interpretation and debate and discussion and maybe yes, maybe no, this kind of idea. These are two types of extremisms. There are things that are ambiguous, there are things that have nuance, and there are things that do not.

And we have to tell the truth about what those are. And if something is not nuanced and it's not ambiguous, then you're not allowed to treat it as ambiguous.