Hence, the correct position upheld by the leading scholars concerning those who were not held accountable in this world, such as the children of polytheists and others like them, is what the authentic hadith states: Allah knows best what they would have done. We therefore do not judge that all of them will enter Paradise, nor that all of them will enter Hell. Rather, they fall into different categories according to what becomes manifest of His knowledge when they are charged with obligations on the plains of the Resurrection, as the transmitted reports state.
Likewise, His saying, Exalted is He:
“Whoever does good, it is to his own benefit; and whoever does evil, it is to his own detriment. Your Lord is never unjust to His servants.”
The wording indicates that He does not wrong someone who does good by diminishing his good deeds or crediting them to someone else, nor does He wrong someone who does evil by burdening him with another’s sins. Rather, each soul receives the good it has earned and bears the evil it has earned.
This is like His saying:
“Or has he not been informed of what is in the Scriptures of Moses, and of Abraham, who fulfilled his obligations: that no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another, and that a person will have only what he has striven for?”
He thus declares that no one bears any of another’s burden of sin, and that a person is entitled only to what he has striven for. Both statements are true in their plain meaning.
Some people may think that the deceased’s suffering because of his family’s weeping over him contradicts the first statement, but this is not so. The person who wails is punished for his own wailing; the deceased is not made to bear his sin. Rather, the deceased experiences pain because of this person’s actions, just as a person suffers from things beyond his own doing, even when that suffering is not recompense for his deeds. Suffering is broader in meaning than punishment, as the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:
“Travel is a portion of suffering.”