Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

200 t CHAPTER EIGHT
faithful in the world to come. God enjoys preeminently the quranically
attested attributes of omnipotence, omniscience, life, will,
hearing, seeing and speaking, as well as all those others that constitute
His “most beautiful names.” The Quran is the uncreated
speech of God.
Then, God’s Will:
God’s will is sovereign in the world and is always and everywhere
effective; indeed, as many hold, God predestines events beforehand.
All human acts, like all events, are created by God but they are
attributed to humans, or as some say “acquired” by them, since
they proceed from an internal power created in humans at the moment
they act.
The Last Things:
The signs of the End Time are all genuine and real, including the
questioning by Munkar and Nakir and the torments of the tomb,
and when the End does arrive, God will judge all humankind. Some
few people, Muhammad chief among them, will be permitted to
intercede for sinners among the Muslims at the Judgment; prayers
and alms offered by the living will also avail the dead; Paradise and
Gehenna exist now and will forever.
Revelation:
Belief:
God has sent both apostles and prophets to humankind. Muhammad
is the “seal” or last of them, and he and the other prophets
have been preserved from sin (though perhaps only grave ones).
Against the Shiites, it must be held that after Muhammad the first
four caliphs were the best of men; only good must be spoken on the
Companions of the Prophet.
Faith is knowing in the heart, confessing by the tongue, and, according
to most, performing good works. Faith is due solely to
God’s guidance and unbelief to abandonment by Him.