Late Comers to Jannah

RasulAllah sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam says in Bukhaari, “Some people will come out of the Fire after they have received a touch of the Fire, changing their color, and they will enter Paradise, and the people of Paradise will name them Al-Jahannamiyin the people of Hell Fire.” [Bukhaari, 8/76/564].

This is not discrimination, because there is no discrimination in Jannah. There are no second class citizens in Jannah. They will not be stripped of any of their rights in Jannah. They will have what everyone else is having in Jannah.

We now think that they think it is an insult to call them Al-Jahnnamiyin. That is because we are unforgiving. If somebody makes a mistake 10 years ago, even after tawbah, we will say, “You made a mistake.” We bring up the past as humans, but Allah is forgiving and merciful. Allah punished these people in hell, but now the past is over with and Allah loves them; He will be pleased with them and their past is closed. You will know that if it weren’t for the forgiveness of Allah, you would not have made it here.

When you are calling them the people of hell fire, that is just a way of knowing them. It is not a degrading term in any way. Everyone in Jannah is in the same boat; they are all human beings and they all sinned. There was just a different variation of how much they sinned.

RasulAllah sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam says, “The (permanent) inhabitants of the Fire are those who are doomed to it, and verily they would neither die nor live in it. But the people whom the Fire would afflict (temporarily) on account of their sins, He would cause them to die till they would be turned into charcoal. Then, they would be granted intercession and would be brought in groups and would be spread on the rivers of Paradise and then it would be said: ‘O inhabitants of Paradise, pour water over them.’ Then they would sprout forth like the sprouting of seed in the silt carried by flood. A man among the people said: (It appears) as if the Messenger of Allah lived in the steppe. [The other narrator says: The man said that because there was no vegetation in Makkah. RasulAllah did have that expertise because he was a shepherd.]” [Muslim, 1/357]

In another hadith, RasulAllah sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam says, “When Allah has finished His Judgments among the people, He will take whomever He will out of Hell through His Mercy. He will then order the angels to take out of the Fire all those who used to worship none but Allah from among those whom Allah wanted to be merciful to and those who testified (in the world) that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah. The angels will recognize them in the Fire by the marks of prostration (on their foreheads), for the Fire will eat up all the human body except the mark caused by prostration as Allah has forbidden the Fire to eat the mark of prostration. They will come out of the (Hell) Fire, completely burnt and then the water of life will be poured over them and they will grow under it as does a seed that comes in the mud of the torrent.” [Part of the hadith Bukhaari, 9/93/532]

The ones who believe in la ilaaha illallah will eventually be bought out of Hell.

There is an interesting hint in this hadith – if somebody doesn’t pray, how will the angels find them in Hell Fire? So Salah is a very serious matter. Even though the person will come out of the Fire because of saying la ilaaha illallah, the angels will recognize them because of their salah.