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When a believer offers a sincere repentance, he emerges from his sins as pure as the day his mother bore him. Allah loves him, and he attains rewards, recompense, blessing, and mercy that defy all description. By Allah’s permission he is also granted safety and deliverance.
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The People of the Qiblah are three categories: “the successful, the punished, and the saved.”
• The successful: they are either the muqarrabūn (those brought near) or the Companions of the Right. They perfected the foundations of faith, performed every obligatory act, avoided the major sins, and did not persist in the minor ones. According to the strength of their faith and certainty, they will join either the muqarrabūn or the Companions of the Right.
Whoever commits a major sin, neglects an obligation, or even abandons Islam, but then repents with a genuine repentance before death approaches, is counted among those who never sinned, for “the penitent from a sin is like one who has no sin.”
• The punished: these are the ones who die without repenting from a major sin. They are in peril and remain under Allah’s will. Should He punish them, the punishment will be proportionate to the enormity of their sins and the length of their persistence in them.
• The saved: here salvation means simply being spared punishment. They are people who neither rendered outstanding service that would earn them robes of honor, nor fell short so as to deserve chastisement.
A similar ruling appears to apply to the insane, the children of unbelievers, and those to whom the call of Islam never reached—people who therefore possessed neither knowledge nor denial, neither obedience nor disobedience. It is conceivable that they constitute the People of al-Aʿrāf.