Does the Quran send every non-Muslim to hell? 7 points from the sources

The verse reads: “And whoever desires other than Islam as religion – never will it be accepted from him, and he, in the Hereafter, will be among the losers.”^[1] The word translated “Islam” means submission to God. The Quran uses it of the religion of earlier prophets as well. It says that Abraham عليه السلام was “a Muslim” in the sense of one who submitted (3:67), and that the disciples of Jesus said, “Bear witness that we are Muslims” (3:52).^[2]

The verse therefore does not say that only the community that bears the name of Muhammad ﷺ ﷺ will be saved. It says that the religion God accepts is submission to Him, and the Quran claims that every messenger brought it. That is the reading al-Fārūqī gives: one primordial religion, the dīn al-ḥanīf that every people received in its own time (30:30, 16:36).^[3]

The classical position, which this article does not hide, goes further. After the message of Muhammad ﷺ has reached a person clearly, the jurists and theologians held that submission to God is completed by accepting it. What counts as the message having reached a person is the question the next entries take up. Verdict: mixed. The verse is plain, and its first meaning is wider than the label of a community.

The verse says: “Indeed, Allah does not forgive association with Him, but He forgives what is less than that for whom He wills.”^[4] The same words stand again in 4:116. A reader who stops there may ask why God cares so much whether He is known as the only God, and whether this makes Him needy.

The answer in the Quran is that the oneness of God is a statement about what is real, and nothing in it concerns God’s need. Al-Fārūqī calls it the first principle of the faith: reality is of two kinds, Creator and creature, and the one cannot be merged with the other.^[5] To set up a partner with God is to raise a creature to the Creator’s rank, or to bring the Creator down to a creature’s. The Quran presents that as a falsehood about the nature of things. It adds that God has no need of worship, and that whoever is grateful is grateful for himself (31:12).^[6]

The verse is also narrower than it sounds. It speaks of what God does not forgive. It does not say that a person who held a wrong belief in good faith and never learned better has been judged. Other verses, taken in the next entries, state that God does not punish before the message has come. It is true that the verse says God may forgive lesser sins for whom He wills, and that is sometimes put as an unfairness. The Quran does not say that those sins go unpunished. It says that whoever does an atom’s weight of wrong will see it (99:8), and that the one who kills a believer deliberately has a punishment of Hell (4:93).^[7] Verdict: mixed. The verse is real and hard, and its terms are narrower than the slogan made from it.

Verse 2:62 reads, in the translation used here: “Indeed, those who believed and those who were Jews or Christians or Sabeans [before Prophet Muḥammad (ﷺ)] – those [among them] who believed in Allah and the Last Day and did righteousness – will have their reward with their Lord, and no fear will there be concerning them, nor will they grieve.” Verse 5:69 repeats the promise in nearly the same words, and 22:17 lists the groups that God will decide between on the Day of Resurrection.^[8] The words in square brackets are the translator’s, and they are not in the Arabic. They state one side of the argument in the next paragraph.

The commentators disagreed about these verses from early on. Some, as al-Ṭabarī reports, held that 3:85 replaced the promise, so that after Muhammad ﷺ it applied only to those who accepted him. Others read it as standing: the condition is belief in God, the Last Day and righteous deeds, and the verse stays as it is.^[9] A reader who wants to say what “the Quran teaches” has to say that Muslim scholars read it both ways.

What the verses do show is that the Quran does not treat the People of the Book as one block bound for Hell. The promise is tied to belief in God and the Last Day and to righteous deeds, and the label of a community does not carry it. Verdict: the verses stand in the text. How far they reach after the coming of Muhammad ﷺ is a real difference among the scholars.

Verse 17:15 ends: “And never would We punish until We sent a messenger.” Verse 4:165 says that messengers were sent so that people would have no argument against God after the messengers.^[10] The principle is that God does not hold people to account for a message that never reached them.

The classical scholars drew a conclusion from it. A person who never heard of Islam, or who heard only a distorted picture of the faith, is not in the same position as one to whom the message was shown clearly. The theologian al-Ghazālī, in a short work on the boundaries of unbelief, is described in a scholarly review as saying that God’s mercy would encompass most of the Christians of Byzantium and the Turks of his age, those to whom the message had not been presented as it was.^[11]

The principle does not make everyone innocent. Many people have heard the message plainly and turned away, and the Quran speaks of them with severity. It does mean that the Quran leaves the judgement of who has been reached to God. Verdict: yes, this is a real principle of the Quran, and it is why the classical scholars did not teach that every non-Muslim is damned.

Verse 4:123 says that Paradise is not “[obtained] by your wishful thinking nor by that of the People of the Scripture. Whoever does a wrong will be recompensed for it.” The next verse promises Paradise to whoever does righteous deeds, “whether male or female, while being a believer”.^[12]

The verse is addressed first to Muslims. It denies that a name or a lineage gives immunity, and the Quran says the same about other communities. This is a corrective for readers who suppose that Islam teaches that every Muslim is saved. It teaches that every person, whatever the label, is judged by what he did and by what he believed.

The same book that warns the outsider warns the insider, which suggests that the standard is not tribal. That matches al-Fārūqī’s reading, in which God “has no favorites” and makes no exceptions.^[13] Verdict: yes. The Quran does not promise safety to any community by its name.

The Quran does criticise parts of the Jewish and Christian communities, and says so sharply. It also says: “They are not all the same: among the People of the Scripture is a community standing [in obedience], reciting the verses of Allah during periods of the night and prostrating.” It adds that they believe in God and the Last Day, enjoin what is right, forbid what is wrong, and “those are among the righteous” (3:113-115).^[14]

Verse 5:82 says that “the nearest of them in affection to the believers” are those who say, “We are Christians”, because among them are priests and monks and they are not arrogant. Verse 5:83 describes them hearing what was revealed and their eyes overflowing with tears at the truth they recognise.^[15]

A book that taught universal condemnation of other communities would not contain these verses. They do not cancel the verses of warning. They show that the warnings fall on conduct and on belief, and that the Quran praises goodness where it finds it. Verdict: yes. The portrait is mixed, and the mixture is on the page.

God says in 7:156, “My mercy encompasses all things”, and then names those for whom He will decree it especially: those who fear Him, give zakāh and believe in His verses.^[16] The structure is worth noting. The mercy is wide, and a promise is attached to those who respond.

Verse 39:53 is addressed to people who have wronged themselves: “Do not despair of the mercy of Allah. Indeed, Allah forgives all sins.” Taken with 4:48, it is read to mean that no one is beyond repentance while he lives.^[17]

For this reason Muslim teaching forbids a believer from declaring a particular person to be in Hell. Judgement belongs to God, and the practice of pronouncing unbelief on individuals was condemned from the first century, as the article on the Kharijites sets out. Verdict: yes. The text keeps room for mercy and gives the verdict on any one person to God alone.