Whenever in their anguish they desire to come forth therefrom, they
shall be turned back into it (22:22).
The inmates of Jannah will be spared the sight of this slough of
despondence:
They shall not hear the slightest sound thereof (21:102).
They will continue their forward march, steadily rising in the
scale of existence and testing the joys of self-fulfilment. The
process of their self-development will be continuous and unlimited.
When they have attained a high stage, the vision of a still higher one
will spur them on to put forth fresh efforts. For them, the reward of
victory will not be well^ earned rest but a greater zeal for action and a
new vista to their ambition.
Such is the picture of heaven and hell that the Qur'an presents
for the edification of man. According to the view upheld by the
Qur'an, salvation is not liberation from "evil"; evil in ourselves or in
the world. To achieve salvation is to prove one's fitness for entering
on a higher plane of existence. Reward and punishment are wrongly
conceived as coming from an external source. They are the natural
consequences of what we do and think and manifest themselves in
the enrichment or impoverishment of our self. Heaven and Hell do
not exist outside us, somewhere in the outer space. They are states
of the self. Hell is the state in which the self finds its progress
blocked. Heaven is the state in which the way to development lies
open to the self. To cease to aspire is to be doomed to Hell, to be
able to aspire is to be in Heaven. There is, therefore, no room for
intercession and redemption in Islam. What we become, we become
through our own actions. We cannot carry the burden of any other
person and no one can relieve us of the burden we bear. The
concept of sin also must be reformulated so as to bring it into
harmony with the above view. Sin should not be conceived as the
taint of evil that clings to the soul from birth, being either the legacy
of our forefathers or the result of our own previous life. Sin is the ill
effect on our self of our own wrongdoing. It can be obliterated by
our own right action and not by the action of anyone else. If we
have committed wrong unwillingly, heedlessly or even with our eyes
open, we can draw solace from the reflection that we hold the
remedy in our own hands.
Finally we can define "wrong" – A'mal-us-Sayyiah as an act which
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