104Rizvi; I personally enjoy his keen mind and scru-
pulously logical approach. The quotation from the
Taliban supporter he translates that you cite above
is in fact a perfect illustration of the vacuous cer-
tainty in one’s approach to religion that I aim to
highlight. Our antidote to such hellish certainty
cannot be to similarly concur with certainty that his
is the only correct approach to the concept of para-
dise, hell, and sending people there.
One of the most prolifi c and (in)famous jurists,
whose ancient writings are held responsible for
the revival of Wahhabism today, is Ibn Taymiyyah.
Ibn Taymiyyah’s best student, Ibn al- Qayyim al-
Jawziyyah, took the idea of paradise and hell and
looked at it and thought, hold on: one belief we
have is the concept of an infi nitely merciful God,
and another is the possibility of infi nite punish-
ment in hell. But how can God be both infi nitely
merciful and infi nitely vengeful? That doesn’t make
sense. Ibn al- Qayyim therefore took the view that
hell is not really eternal. He focused in par tic u lar
on passages in the Qur’an, after God’s description
of “eternal” hellfi re, where caveats such as “except
as God wills” and “ everything terminates except
His grace” appear.
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