Islamic Incoherence

A perfect example of how incoherent Islamic theology is: in chapter 1 of 'The Fundamentals of Tawheed (Islamic Monotheism)', I learned that belief in free will is blasphemous, because this belief goes against the idea that Allah has complete control over his creation (and the Qur'an verses which attest this); in chapter 3, I learn that if humanity doesn't have free will, then the whole reward and punishment thing is, obviously, pointless, therefore humans have free will, otherwise this religion doesn't make sense. Presumably this book went through multiple drafts. Presumably people proofread it. Doublethink at its finest.

Like early Christianity, Islam believes in bodily resurrection on Judgement Day, rather than the immediate post-mortem transition to Heaven or Hell envisioned by modern Christianity. When someone dies, their body disintegrates and their soul is put in a suspended state called 'Barzakh': the soul is frozen, oblivious, until Judgement Day, when the body is rebuilt and the soul has to confront its life choices, with their resultant reward or punishment. From the soul's perspective, it is an immediate transition to Judgement Day: suspended souls to do not perceive time, like one in a deep sleep.

Christianity, over the centuries, came up with a few explanations for what happened to people who died before Jesus, people who lived too early to share in the salvation he brought. They had to be in Hell. Some Christians just accepted this in an uncaring 'oh well, tough for them, lucky me being born when and where I was!' way. Others developed the idea of the 'Harrowing of Hell', which is alluded to in the New Testament: Jesus' descent into Hell after the crucifixion. In some interpretations, he smashed his way through Hell to rescue the old prophets and preach to the righteous, saving as many as he could and leading them to Heaven. In the 4th century Gospel of Nicodemus, Jesus conquers Hell and turns it from Satan's Kingdom into Satan's Prison. In Dante's Inferno, the two poets pass some ruined sections of Hell laid waste during Jesus' assault on the underworld (I imagined this as a sort-of holy equivalent of the Dead Scar in Quel'thalas from the Warcraft games).

Muhammad got in early so no speculations on this subject would be necessary, and also covered what would happen to people from different cultures who didn't know anything about Islam and God's rules. Obviously, he's already established that free will doesn't exist but also does, so don't expect anything too profound:

Shortly after creating Adam, the first man, God extracted from Adam's loins all of the future generations of humanity. He laid these out in front him, and spoke to them all face-to-face, saying:

"Am I not your Lord?"

And every single human who has ever existed or ever will exist replied: "Yes, we testify to it."

God then explained why he decided to have this meeting:

"That was in case you (mankind) should say on the Day of Resurrection, 'Surely we were unaware of all this. We had no idea that You, Allah, were our God. No one told us we were supposed to worship you alone."

Presumably, God then wiped all their memories so he could surprise them on Judgement Day, then shoved everyone back into Adam's testicles.