Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions pdf download

Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions

Edited by Christian Lange

LOCATING HELL IN ISLAMIC TRADITIONS

In regard to the afterlife, scholars of Islam in the West have demonstrated a remarkably irenic temper, preferring to give far more attention to paradise than to hell.

The Islamic hell, for the most part, has been viewed as no more than the mirror image of paradise, an ugly reflection of the beauties and the joys in heaven.

 Consequently, it has been considered a phenomenon of secondary logical and ontological order, as well as interest.

The few general overviews of Islamic eschatology largely bypass the infernal regions,1 and the dedicated studies of the Islamic paradise, of which there is a fair number,2 cannot be said to be paralleled by the same number of scholarly forays into the Islamic hell.3 While the entry on paradise in the second edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam (1954–2005) counts eleven columns in the printed edition, its entry on hell is awarded less than one column.4

The more recent Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān (2001–6) shows a more balanced approach, but still favours paradise (sixteen columns) over hell (twelve columns).5 Scholarly symposia and museum exhibits in the area of Islamic eschatology likewise gravitate toward the upper regions of the otherworld.6

Why (Not) Hell?

There are two reasons, in my view, for this neglect of hell in Western Islamic Studies.7 The first is quite simply that hell is not a particularly comfortable space to inhabit, whether for sinners or scholars.

The stigma of bad religion adheres to it as if it were a subject not worthy of the academy’s quest for truth and beauty.8 In fact, unless the subject is sublimated into philosophical, ethical and psychological discourse, any kind of eschatology is regularly met with suspicion by scholars of Islam.

“The whole basic view of ultimate origins and the hereafter,” wrote Fritz Meier, “is hidden in Islamic literature behind a decorative structure of baroque traditions.”9 One recognizes in such statements a preference for “profound” rather than “decorative” structures, for taxonomy and categorization, for theological rationalization of the “ultimate.” When the literature is found to be internally diverse, or even contradictory (as is the case