20.The Ones Who Will Receive Eternal Torment

They are the disbelievers and the hypocrites.

Allah subhaana wa ta’aala says: “But those who disbelieve and belie our ayaat, such are the dwellers of the fire, they shall abide therein forever.” (2:39) A thought used to come up in my mind: How come these people are punished for eternity when they only sinned for 60 or 70 years? Why not just punish them for 60 or 70 years and that’s it? Death came to them unannounced – but if they lived until 65, 100, forever, they would have still rejected the truth. Because they had the intention of sinning forever, they are punished forever. That is why intention is so important.

The ones that receive the worse punishment in hell are the hypocrites. Allah says: “The hypocrites will be in the lowest depths of the fire [...]” (4:145) The situation of the hypocrites is worse than the disbelievers because there is deception, lying and other bad qualities aside from disbelief. They are closer to the truth – they know it, they are around it, but they are pretending they are following the truth, and still they reject it. Also, the harm of the hypocrites is worse for the believers than the harm of the disbelievers because of their underground, deceptive conspiracies against the Ummah. If we looked at the early disputes of the Muslims and biggest fitan [trials], they were caused by the hypocrites. Look at the time of RasulAllah sallallahu ‘alayhi wa sallam – the greatest harm to him was caused by hypocrites who were living with him in Madinah.