Jahannam

[36] It can be thought that the narrative of Hell in Islam is largely shaped by the offerings of human sacrifices by passing it over fire or burning it to Molech, which the Torah describes as taking place in the Gehenna (Jeremiah 7; 32–35).

[57] In addition are those who have committed serious criminal offenses against other human beings: the murder of a believer (Q.4:93, 3:21), usury (Q.2:275), devouring the property of an orphan (Q.4:10), and slander (Q.104), particularly of a chaste woman (Q.24:23).

[57] Its wretched inhabitants sigh and wail,[61] their scorched skins are constantly exchanged for new ones so that they can taste the torment anew,[62] drink festering water and though death appears on all sides they cannot die.

[63] They are linked together in chains of 70 cubits,[64] wearing pitch for clothing and fire on their faces[65] have boiling water that will be poured over their heads, melting their insides as well as their skins, and hooks of iron to drag them back if they should try to escape,[66] and their remorseful admissions of wrongdoing and pleading for forgiveness are in vain.

[84][85][86] (According to at least one scholarly salafi interpretation, the hadith expresses the large disparity between the number of saved and damned rather than a specific literal ratio.

Seven sins doom a person to Hell, according to reports of as-Saheehayn, (i.e. the reports of the two most esteemed Sunni hadith collections: al-Bukhaari and Muslim): "Associating others with Allah (shirk or idolatry); witchcraft; killing a soul whom Allah has forbidden us to kill, except in cases dictated by Islamic law; consuming orphans' wealth; consuming riba (usury); fleeing from the battlefield; and slandering chaste, innocent women.

"[94][95][96][97] According to a series of hadith, Muhammad claims the majority of the inhabitants of hell will be women, due to an inclination for gossip, conjecture, ungratefulness of kind treatment from their spouses and idle chatting.

[109] According to the hadith collection Muwaṭṭaʾ of Imam Mālik (711–795), Muhammad said: "Truly a man utters words to which he attaches no importance, and by them he falls into the fire of Jahannam.

[Note 6] Other manuals—such as texts by al-Ghazali and the 12th-century scholar Qadi Ayyad – "dramatise life in the Fire", and present "new punishments, different types of sinners, and the appearance of a multitude of devils," to exhort the faithful to piety.

[121] According to Leor Halevi, between the moment of death and the time of their burial ceremony, "the spirit of a deceased Muslim takes a quick journey to Heaven and Hell, where it beholds visions of the bliss and torture awaiting humanity at the end of days".

[122] In The Soul's Journey After Death, Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya, a theologian in the 14th century, writes explicitly of punishments faced by sinners and unbelievers in Jahannam.

[123] In addition to those who engage in traditional sins of wine drinking, fornication, sodomy, suicide, atheism (dahriyya); hell is where those "who sleep during prayer (or speak of worldly matters during it),[124][125] or deny the doctrine of predestinarianism or assert absolute free-will (Qadarites), are punished.

Some thought the sea was the top level,[132][133] or that the sulphourus well in Hadramawt (in present-day Yemen), allegedly haunted by the souls of the wicked, was the entrance to the underworld.

Still lower, hired mourners and professional women singers hang head downwards and howl with pain as devils cut their tongues with burning shears.

Lastly, in the fourteenth and lowest mansion of the first storey, are being crucified on burning pillars those who failed to keep the rule of prayer; as the flames devour them, their flesh is seen gradually to peel off their bones.

Islamicity notes "the animalistic nature" of "The Fire" in Quranic verse 25:12: "When the Hellfire sees them from a distant place, they will hear its fury and roaring".

Factors involved in who will be consigned to hell are: "Ultimately" the view of the Ash'arite school prevailed in "classical Islamic theology": God was free to judge as he chose, but on the other hand all believers can feel assured of salvation.

[42][161][162] It is also a common belief among Muslims that hell, like paradise, is not awaiting the destruction of earth and arrival of Judgment Day, but "coexists in time" with the temporal world, having already been created.

[139] Ahmad ibn Hanbal argued the eternity of hell and paradise are proven by the Quran, although earths and heavens (sun, moon, stars) will perish.

[citation needed] In modern times Shia cleric Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari argues against the idea that hell will not last for eternity.

Ibn Taymiyya (d.728/1328) also argued for a limited abode in hell, based on the Quran and God's attribute of mercy[181] (in more recent times fanāʾ al-nār has been supported by Rashīd Riḍā (d. 1936), İzmirli Ismail Hakkı (d. 1946) Yūsuf al-Qarādāwī (d.

[202] Islamic Modernists, according to Smith and Haddad, express a "kind of embarrassment with the elaborate traditional detail concerning life in the grave and in the abodes of recompense, called into question by modern rationalists".

[202][203] Consequently, most of "modern Muslim Theologians" either "silence the issue" or reaffirm "the traditional position that the reality of the afterlife must not be denied but that its exact nature remains unfathomable".

Al-Tha'alibis (961–1038) in his Qisas Al-Anbiya[236] and Al-Suyutis Al-Hay'a as-samya fi l-hay'a as-sunmya[237] describes Iblis as chained to the bottom of hell, commanding his hosts of demons from there.

[247] Muslims Mouhanad Khorchide and Faheem Younus write that since the Quran states that God has "prescribed to himself mercy",[247] and "... for him whose scales (of good deeds) are light.

Hell will be his mother,"[248][249] suffering in Jahannam is not a product of vengeance and punishment, but a temporary phenomenon as the sinner is "transformed" in the process of confronting the truth about themselves.

"[252] Arabic texts written by Jews in Judeo-Arabic script (particularly those which are identified with the Isra'iliyyat genre in the study of hadith) also feature descriptions of Jahannam (or Jahannahum).

Two black angels named Nākir and Nakīr (identified with Munkar and Nakir in Islamic eschatology) strike the dead with a whip of fire and take him to the lowest level of Jahannam.

In a final quote alluding to Isaiah 58.8, the narrative states that "nothing will help Man on the last day except good and loving actions, deeds of giving charity to widows, orphans, the poor and the unfortunate.

[254] In terms of a finite hell, as asserted by some Sufi thinkers, conceived as a circulation of beginning and reset, the cosmology resembles the Hindu notion of an eternal cosmic process of generation, decay, and destruction.

A depiction of Muhammad visiting Jahannam; artwork from Miraj Nameh .
Valley of Hinnom (or Gehenna), c. 1900. The former site of child-sacrifice and a dumping-ground for the bodies of executed criminals, Jeremiah prophesied that it would become a "valley of slaughter" and burial place; in later literature it thus became identified with a new idea of Hell as a place where the wicked would be punished. [ 35 ]
A depiction of Muhammad visiting the inmates of Jahannam being tormented by the guardian angels of Hell , and showing the tree Zaqqum with the heads of devils; miniature from " The David Collection ".
Diagram of "Plain of Assembly" ( Ard al-Hashr) on the Day of Judgment, from an autograph manuscript of Futuhat al-Makkiyya by Sufi mystic and Muslim philosopher Ibn Arabi , ca. 1238. Shown are the 'Arsh ( Throne of God ), pulpits for the righteous (al-Aminun), seven rows of angels , Gabriel (al-Ruh), A'raf (the Barrier), the Pond of Abundance , al-Maqam al-Mahmud (the Praiseworthy Station; where Muhammad will stand to intercede for the faithful), Mizan (the Scale), As-Sirāt (the Bridge), Jahannam (Hell), and Marj al-Jannat (Meadow of Paradise). [ 119 ]
Satan is trapped in the frozen central zone in the Ninth Circle of Hell, Inferno , Canto 34.