Salvation and Hell in Classical Islamic Thought: Can Allah Save Us All?

Salvation and Hell in Classical Islamic Thought uses classical Islamic sources to trace the development of Islamic eschatology during the formative centuries of Islamic intellectual history. Marco Demichelis draws on classical Islamic scholars, including Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, to bring together concepts from Islamic philosophy, theology and mysticism – including proto-Sufism – to examine the interplay of these concepts between these traditions. The doctrines of salvation from Hell are examined in depth, in particular the theory of the annihilation of Hell, which proposes the idea that there will be a time when Hell will be empty and no longer inhabited. This is the first book to examine Islamic eschatology in the classical period, and adds to the growing scholarship on Islamic views on salvation and the eternity of Hell. It will be essential reading for scholars of Islamic intellectual history, theology, and comparative religion.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Notes on Dates and Abbreviations Introduction 1. Islamic Piety and Annihilation 2. Kalam and the eschatological interpretation of the material and the empyrean 3. Islamic philosophy (Falsafa) and the Annihilation of the non-body rationally explained 4. The final Islamic understanding 5. Conclusion Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Marco Demichelis is Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society, University of Navarra, Spain. His books include Contemporary Islamic Thought (2016), Islamic Ethics (2016), Religious Nationalism (2016).

Review :
The work by Marco Demichelis is a sustained invitation to revisit the diversity of theological thought in Islam, the multiplicity of anthropologies engaged, which stimulates its reader on every page. [T]he substance of the book is thoughtfully presented and centers on the essentially eschatological focus of Islam. Drawing on meticulous reading and synthesis of Islamic sources this is a welcome account of the development of Islamic eschatology during the formative years of Islamic intellectual life. A gift for students of Islamic intellectual history, theology (esp. eschatology) and comparative religion (esp. those studying the Abrahamic traditions), and an excellent contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on Islamic views on salvation and eternity of hell. Demichelis has provided an important contribution to the field of Islamic theology and Islamic intellectual history more broadly with this meticulous diachronic study of hell and the doctrine of its annihilation. Voices from different fields of religious knowledge and historical time periods are deftly marshaled and placed into conversation with one another to reveal a rich and dynamic theological tradition of salvation. A clear and highly documented journey of nine centuries of orthodox and heterodox Islamic thought, through proto-sufism, kalam, and philosophy, concerning the creation of Heaven and Hell, their eternity or end, their inhabitants (is salvation universal or restricted to believers? is Hell a temporary purgatory for sinful believers?), questions that affect the theology of God’s omnipotence and justice, and to which the simplistic ideas of present-day jihadism confers astonishing actuality.