In answer to the video "The Chances of Islamic Salvation?"
Sure Allah will fill hell with people, but not any, those that deserve it. The creation of man is a natural consequence of God's mercy. After detailing the divine law of retribution on a nation of rejectors and saying how Allah only destroys it after it has become utterly corrupt 11:116-7 the Quran says that God could prevent such doom by forcing mankind to be a single nation, united in truth. However, people will keep differing regarding the Truth 11:118 and that is because, as a natural consequence of freedom of choice
92:4"Your striving is most surely (directed to) various (ends)".Allah then states that those who are united owe it to His mercy, and all mankind has been created for that goal: to receive God's mercy
11:119"and for this did He create them"or as the Psalmist says in the HB
Ps144:9"The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are on all His works".Mercy is a particular attribute of God, described as being "written" upon God's self 6:12,54. None of the other divine attributes have been described with this expression "kataba ala nafsihi". This statement is meant to emphasize that Allah is merciful but also that Allah made mercy a self imposed mandate upon himself. When something is written, it conveys the sense that it is well established and solid. God is the Creator and Owner, Sustainer of the universe. He makes it function in accordance with the laws He likes and these laws are rooted in His mercy. He in addition decided to inform His servants of that self imposed commitment, yet He owes them nothing. The prophet portrayed that notion by paralleling a mother's love for her baby to God's love for His creation. While the companions were looking at a woman frantically searching for her child, the prophet said
"Do you think that this lady can throw her son in the fire?" We replied, "No, if she has the power not to throw it (in the fire)." The Prophet then said, "Allah is more merciful to His slaves than this lady to her son".
Another hadith demonstrates how, if Allah were to create anything to make it enter into one of the abodes of the hereafter, it would be to make it enter paradise
"The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "(The people will be thrown into Hell ( Fire) and it will keep on saying, 'Is there any more?' till the Lord of the worlds puts His Foot over it, whereupon its different sides will come close to each other, and it will say, 'Qad! Qad! (enough! enough!) By Your 'Izzat (Honor and Power) and Your Karam (Generosity)!' Paradise will remain spacious enough to accommodate more people until Allah will create a new creation and let them dwell in the superfluous space of Paradise".
These new creation could be the dwellers of hell that will eventually be admitted to paradise, or something else known to Allah.
Divine mercy is thus hardwired into the teachings of the prophet and the Quranic revelation,
even in those passages most quoted by Islam critics attempting to cast it as an evil and wantonly violent religion. There is simply no plausible way to understand the Quran in a manner bereft of mercy and compassion. An interesting parallel can be made with a statement from the Tanakh Psalms89:3"a world which manifests Your loving kindness, You did build".Giving requires a receiver. So God created human beings to be the recipients of His bounty, as said earlier, the creation of man is a natural consequence of God's mercy. He has brought mankind into existence and established a system of moral accountability it is therefore natural that He makes all necessary arrangements for a just retribution
41:2"A revelation from the Beneficent, the Merciful Allah".Spiritual guidance is a natural consequence of this Mercy, despite most men being unworthy of it
43:5"shall We then turn away the reminder from you altogether because you are an extravagant people?"But since Allah's mercy is contingent on man's initial willingness and openness to guidance, all people do not receive it automatically as stated in
11:118"and if your Lord had pleased, He would have certainly made people a single nation".This forceful submission to the truth would negate freewill, as stated in many other places
13:11"surely Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change their own condition"
7:156"and My mercy encompasses all things; so I will ordain it (specially) for those who guard (against evil) and pay the poor-rate, and those who believe in Our communications",11:119 is a confirmation of this law of causality, that men will by nature always differ regarding the truth 11:118, with perspectives and opinions as varied as the ever-changing patterns and meanders in the sky 51:7-9. As the prophet reportedly said
"if you did not sin, Allah would replace you with people who would sin and they would seek forgiveness from Allah and He would forgive them".Humans, as volitional creatures, will always be prone to intellectual dissension, especially in religious matters which God has decreed will never be a compulsion 2:253, leaving each one to choose his path freely after guidance has been clearly conveyed 2:213,10:19,42:14,21. Consequently to that decree or "word" by Allah there will inevitably be dissensions, people choosing the right and others the wrong, and who will then have to go through Hell for a prescribed time. The HB contains the same concept when it states that
Prov16:4"The LORD has made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil".God has thus pre-ordained that the wicked will be led to painful suffering, not that they were from the onset made wicked and consequently punished for it. This is a very important nuance which very often those approaching an intricate text only to enforce their paradigms and draw their hasty conclusions, rarely pay attention to.
That is thus the meaning of "the word" and its "fulfillment" referred to in 11:119 and elsewhere
36:7,40:5-6,41:25,46:18,38:84-5"The truth then is and the truth do I speak: That I will most certainly fill hell with you and with those among them who follow you, all".Allah will, according to His pre-ordained plan of causality in which He is in full control, fill hell with those creatures endowed with freewill who choose misguidance over guidance
"and the Word of thy Lord shall be fulfilled: "I will fill Hell with jinns and men all together".This law of causality to which humans and jinn have been subjected to and that may lead them to either punishment or reward obeys to a simple common sense logic referred to in many places such as in 32:15-20 or
7:179"And certainly We have created for hell many of the jinn and the men; they have hearts with which they do not understand, and they have eyes with which they do not see, and they have ears with which they do not hear; they are as cattle, nay, they are in worse errors; these are the heedless ones".As stated in the second part of the verse, the category of people that have been made for hell are those who are heedless to their spiritual senses, not that they have been made from birth with those characteristics, meaning their final destination is nothing but a natural consequence of the spiritual condition they have brought upon their own selves. Their destination is a consequence of the spiritual condition they have brought upon their own selves. God did not will this finality for them, rather God created mankind for the purpose of worshiping Him 51:56. He has however willed for that worship to be the result of freewill, hence the inevitability of finding people on both ends of the spectrum. A holistic understanding of the Quran and the traditions does not allow for a deterministic view of creation, only an isolate and dogmatic approach does. The Quran places great emphasis on guidance as being a mercy sent by the Most Merciful to bring mankind to spiritual awareness. This link between divine mercy, guidance and the creation of mankind is eloquently portrayed in the opening verses of surah rahman.
In summary we can see how the traditions and the Quran interconnect. Humans are born with a state of moral neutrality, and capacity to recognize the divine presence. Before coming to this world, God, by virtue of His omniscience knew who would be in paradise or hell. He has made them for their respective abodes, because it is according to His decreed law of causality that eachone will reach a destination in the hereafter corresponding to his level of spiritual awareness, or lack thereof. God has decreed this law of causality, He sustains it or interrupts it at any point in a person's life, as seen with the example of the boy slain by Khidr. That is why God in the Quran is the indirect cause of all things, maintaining every aspect of the functioning of the universe. But God has not made these people righteous or sinners from the onset. No tradition or Quranic verse states so, hence all dead infants belonging in paradise, they are dead in a state of moral neutrality, neither righteous nor sinners, although some were made for hell. This means, as stated in 7:179, they have been made for the destination they will choose for themselves, through a system of causality established and allowed by God
"We were with the Prophet in a funeral procession, and he started scraping the ground with a small stick and said, "There is none amongst you but has been assigned a place (either) in Paradise and (or) in the Hell-Fire." The people said (to him), "Should we not depend upon it?" He said: carry on doing (good) deeds, for everybody will find easy such deeds as will lead him to his destined place".
The prophet then recited sura 92 which encapsulates well the connection between willful causality and destination in the hereafter.
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