Ali Dawah - September 24, 2018WHY ＂GOOD＂ PEOPLE GO HELL？
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
191.07677
Summary
In this episode, we talk about why good people go to paradise and why bad ones go to hell. We also talk about the problem of evil and how to deal with it in the world and in our own lives.
Transcript
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Everybody says you're good, everybody says you're amazing, you changed the whole world, very good.
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If you are beating your mother, hitting your mother, who cares?
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If I went to these people and said, you know this guy, he's so amazing, he's a good guy, yeah.
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Are you telling me not a single person will come and say this guy's a good man?
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He'll say, I don't care how many people he helped.
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If you're beating your mother and swearing at your mother, to me you're a bad person.
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Now imagine the one who's transgressing against Allah.
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So that's the reason why, when we say why good people go to hell, the definition is who do you define as good?
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They want to know about Islam, we'll give them doubt.
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Assalamualaikum brothers and sisters, hope you guys are doing well inshaAllah.
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Before we start the video, brothers and sisters, don't forget with your support and help, it's how we bring these videos to you inshaAllah.
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If you can share this video, it will mean so much to us, so we can carry on doing this inshaAllah.
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Okay, so basically, you know, there's this, not a phenomenon, but a lot of people ask this question of, you know, why do good people go to paradise?
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Why do good people go to paradise is easy to explain.
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So what they say is that people like Mother Teresa, you know, she was a good person.
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You know, are you telling me that she's going to go to hell?
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For example, some people in my family, they come and say, look, I'm a good person to people.
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You know, are you telling me I'm going to go to hell?
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Like, what would you say is problematic when somebody comes and asks you this question?
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I think the first thing you have to understand is that from an Islamic theological perspective,
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everything links back to the attributes of God.
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And I think that's a very important starting point.
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As Muslims, we believe Allah, God, is most merciful, most gracious, most merciful, all
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So anything that happens as a result of his treatment of a particular situation must, by
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necessary reality, be the perfect thing that happens to whatever it is that he's dealing
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So, for instance, if he's dealing with us as human beings, he can never oppress us.
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That, for example, are you putting limits on God?
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If there's a God who chooses to oppress the people, then you have to ask yourself the question
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You can't have a God with contradictory attributes.
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Because if his attribute is meant to be a just God, then he can't have anything that contradicts that.
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So, the point we're making is this, is that this is what they call the problem of evil.
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How could a God that's omnibenevolent, omniscient, create evil in the world?
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There's lots of problems with this, is that there's a presupposition from their perspective
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Atheists don't even believe atheists objectively exist in the first place.
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I mean, Bertrand Russell, Jacquez Derrida, you know, Nietzsche, all of those individuals
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They mention that evil doesn't exist as an actual objective reality, right?
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So, for an atheist to ask, well, how could evil exist?
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How could there be so much evil in the world, for example?
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I'm just saying, that would be a contradiction in terms.
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They first have to go and prove evil exists from their worldview.
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Another point would be that actually, as Muslims, we believe that Allah tests human beings.
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So, he puts them in a situation where there's forces of good and forces of evil.
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And then, they have an autonomous ability to make a decision between good and bad.
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And as a result of that, they will either be going to heaven or hell, as according to
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So, he would never fall short in judging the situation to be whatever it is meant to be.
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And that's why Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, whenever he talks about in the Quran, whenever
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he talks about people going to hell, he says, for example, jazaa and wufaqa, that this
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is a recompense which is appropriate, which is perfectly appropriate.
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So, it's not something which is inappropriate, something which is...
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Now, we're not saying that everyone is not a Muslim, and we've done videos on this
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This is going to necessarily always just go to hell.
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We're saying that there's certain conditions that have to be met before someone goes to
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So, for example, if someone's a non-Muslim, but has never heard the message of Islam,
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So, Mother Teresa, we don't know what exposure she had to Islam.
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Allah says in the Quran, in chapter 17, verse number 15, it says,
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وَمَا كُنَّا مُعَذِّبِينَ حَتَّى نَبْعَثَا رَسُولًا
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And we were not going to punish them until we sent a messenger to them.
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And so, the ulamat, the scholars say that that means to say that we cannot say that
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a kafir, even if he dies upon shirk and kufr, is going to hell unless we're aware that they
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But we would agree, the scholars would agree that, but the asr is that they're disbelievers.
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So, we say, okay, the asr, the origin is, they're disbelievers, they've died.
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But what they knew, they didn't know, that's between them and Allah.
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So, we can't say they're ashab al-jannah or ashab al-na'ar.
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We can't say they're going to heaven and Allah.
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Because if they have not heard about Islam fully, or they have a distorted version of Islam,
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Another thing is really, really, really important.
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Say, okay, we said it's an exact, exactly appropriate retribution, going to the hellfire, for example.
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And we've been told in the Quran that the hellfire is an eternal punishment.
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So, someone might argue that, how could it be an eternal punishment and the sin was not eternal?
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So, someone might say, if someone was a disbeliever for 60 to 70 years, yeah?
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Why is it that they're going to the hellfire forever?
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Why shouldn't they be going to the hellfire for 60 to 70 years like they've been on the earth?
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I have a way of answering, I don't know if it's correct.
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One brother, Abdullah and Alusi, I had a very good discussion with him.
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Allah, he made a really good point to me one time.
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But the sin is so horrific that the judgment on that individual is much worse.
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Like, to get a knife and to stab someone and kill them?
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To shoot someone in the head takes one second, yeah?
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Alright, so if someone takes a second to shoot someone in the head, we're not going to punish
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We're not, because the idea is, now we have to answer the question, what is shirk?
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Because when you understand the magnitude of shirk, is when you start to appreciate the reasoning
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Because shirk is associating partners with God.
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And if you're doing that for all of your life, then the recompense of that is the worst
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And also, just stay there, just elaborate on that point.
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Is that, yes, they might say, okay, 70 years has been doing that, yeah?
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But the question is this, who said that they would have done something otherwise?
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They would have made me, if they were on earth for a million years, they probably, what
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That if we send them back, they would have done the same thing.
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So, 70 years, that means, Allah's basically saying, we've tested you, we know you're going
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to carry on doing this for the rest of the world.
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And Allah says, what is Allah going to do with your punishment?
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Allah does not need to punish you for any reason.
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Because another misconception could be that, okay, well, actually, Allah is punishing the
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Allah answers that misconception by saying, what is Allah going to do with punishing you?
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If you are thankful and you believe, and Allah is thankful and He's knowledgeable.
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And look at the two things that I've been mentioning in this verse.
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Allah is waiting for the moment where you thank Him so He can thank you.
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Allah is waiting for the moment where you turn back to Him so He can guide you.
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And that's why learning the Arabic is very important.
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One of them is that Allah guides who Allah wants.
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And the other meaning is that Allah guides whoever wants to be guided.
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You want to be guided and Allah wants to guide you.
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If you want to be guided, Allah will guide you.
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That is the promise of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
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فَإِذَا سَأَلَكَ عِبَادِي عَنِّي فَإِنِّي قَرِيبُ
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That if my slave asks about me, tell them I am near.
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I answer the caller of the caller when he calls.
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So the point is this, is that the reason why the hellfire is such a painful punishment
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is because the sin that is done in order for one to go to hell is such a major sin.
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By you telling this, people are going to think, hold on a second.
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Now you're explaining why a good person ends up in hell.
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Let's come to the original of the question is this.
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Because someone might say, okay, you're telling me this is the reason why a good person goes to hell.
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If I give charity to the whole wide world, yeah?
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If I give charity to the whole wide world, why am I going to go to hell?
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Look, everyone's saying you helped me, you changed my life.
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Let's ask a very interesting philosophical question.
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Okay, how do we extrapolate value from human action?
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In other words, the question is, how can you determine that giving charity is a good thing?
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And how do we hierarchically put things in order of this is good, this is second good,
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I would say, to be honest, to me, helping an auntie is better than helping this person.
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We have to understand that for us, we have an epistemic way of prioritizing that which is good
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That which is good to that which is better, or that which is bad to that which is worse.
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So when we start using comparatives and superlatives, this is better, this is best, we have a reason
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for doing that because, for example, we know that Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the
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إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَغْفِرُ وَأَيُشْرَكَ بِهِ وَيَغْفِرُ مَا دُونَ ذَلَكِهِ مَا إِشَاءَ
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That Allah does not forgive that someone does shirk with him, and he forgives whatever else to whoever he wants.
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So for us, the highest, biggest sin is shirk, which is association of partners with God.
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Why? Because in terms of the rights of human beings, who should human beings give their rights to first?
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For us, the relationship between man and God is the most, or woman and God, is the most important relationship.
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So if that relationship is not, justice is not done to that relationship, then that has the most severe ramification.
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To put it in human terms, if you are rude to, let's say you're a teacher.
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Would you say it's bad or worse than being maybe rude to someone online in the comment section?
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She's the one who's looked after, Mr. Faham Allah.
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You've been able to, using your own kind of rationality, say that subjectively in your opinion.
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Here, being rude to your mother is worse than being rude to someone in the comment section.
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Why do you think your mother deserves all that respect?
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She's the one who, you know, she was pregnant with you.
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Now we're saying, if the measure by which you're determining value of something is how much someone has given you,
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If you believe in that, Allah is the one who created you and he's sustaining you and he's giving you breath and he's giving you the pulse.
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He's giving you, you know, everything that you're doing, whether it be consciously or unconsciously,
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whether it be, whether it be, you know, with or without you, whatever it may be, everything Allah has given you.
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Every human being has something to thank Allah for if you believe in Allah.
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If you don't believe in Allah, then that's even, imagine you don't believe in your mother.
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Because you might argue, oh, I've never seen Allah.
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But the point is this, is that the point I'm trying to make here is that if we're basing it on how much has been given to you,
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then the value of what Allah has given to you cannot be, cannot even be measured.
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If you count the blessings of Allah, you won't even be able to count them.
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So the point I'm making to you is if that is the case,
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then the transgression against Allah must by definition be the worst kind of transgression.
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Must by, and the punishment therefore, must be the worst kind of punishment.
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And on the flip side of that, to be fair, on the flip side of that,
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compliance, obedience, and submission to Allah must be the best kind of action.
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So brothers and sisters, it's very, I'll put this in a nutshell.
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If you are beating your mother, hitting your mother, who cares?
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Yes, if I went to these people and said, you know this guy, he's so amazing.
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Are you telling me not a single person will come and say this guy's a good man?
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You say, I don't care how many people he helped.
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If you're beating your mother and swearing at your mother, to me, you're a bad person.
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Now imagine the one who's transgressing against Allah.
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So that's the reason why, when we say, why good people go to hell, the definition is,
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Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala mentions that in Surah Al-Akhzab, verse 35.
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Allah is saying, indeed, the Muslim men and the Muslim women,
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You're trying to bring both sides of the story now
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And the point here is really interesting actually
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So this is showing you the inclusiveness of Islam
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Anyone who's looking to come back to Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
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And also do check brother Muhammad Ijab's channel inshallah