I often times wonder if Muslims believe that people such as St. Francis, Augustine, Mother Theresa or Saint Nicholas must go to Hell. The Koran is very clear that all Unbelievers will go the great fire. Someone like St. Francis, who tried to convert a Sultan of Islam to Christianity must surely have been sent to the Hellfire. How could an Unbeliever have the temerity not only to reject Islam, but try to convert a Muslim-Egyptian Sultan whose dominion was Islamic and therefore superior and divinely sanctioned ?

The Dominion of Al-Allah is of course the entire planet. All people must follow the Meccan Allah cult. The male moon idol, who is re-purposed by Mohammed into a supernatural 'God'-like force of nature which controls all events at all times in real-time, is the only permanent and immanent will that matters. Human free-will does not exist within Islam. As the first 5 verses of this Sura state, which are repeated endlessly in the poorly written and exhaustingly repetitive Koran or Recital:

“He Who created Death and Life, that He may try which of you is best in deed: and He is the Exalted in Might, Oft-Forgiving;” [67:2]

Thus this Allah thing may reward you the earnest follower for good deeds. These deeds are of course, following the Koran, its rituals and the humbling if not the humiliation of yourself to the idol of Allah. Good deeds in the Koran do not mean using your free-will, your rationality, your judgement or your humanistic instincts. These concepts don't exist in Islam. So how can Muslim good deeds possibly be conflated with the Judeo-Christian tradition of faith through good works [St. Francis for example]; and pleasing the divine power by using rationality merged with morality [see St. Thomas Aquinas or Augustine]? Muslim traditions have nothing in common with Western Christendom. Consider this expostulation repeated no less than 5 times in this short Sura, about the punishment this Allah force will mete out to those who don't follow the cult:

“For those who reject their Lord (and Cherisher) is the Penalty of Hell: and evil is (such) destination. When they are cast therein, they will hear the (terrible) drawing in of its breath even as it blazes forth.” [67:6, 7]

The only Lord is the thing Allah. But Allah bears absolutely no resemblance to the Christian ideal of God, nor to Yahweh. Allah is the unknowable force which recreates the world every second and commands every action, deed and thought of every animate being. He controls all inanimate objects and can make and remake whatever he desires in the natural world. Your job is simply to follow this Allah, even though the Koran never explains what Allah is, or why you should follow it – except to escape hellfire. The program is thus entirely negative. Follow the cult and you might be saved for an afterlife of pleasure and repose. Reject it and you will certainly be eternally punished. This is not a program which emancipates the human mind, soul, or physical being. It cannot be a surprise to know that Islam famously endorses slavery, war, persecution of the 'other', control and use of women as breeders and sex slaves; and the endless Jihad against those who refuse to follow the cult:

“They will further say: 'Had we but listened or used our intelligence, we should not (now) be among the Companions of the Blazing Fire! They will then confess their sins: but far will be (Forgiveness) from the Companions of the Blazing Fire!” [67:10, 11].

Allah is thus not a forgiving idol for those who reject Islam. It matters not if you were a perfect example of piety, morality and charity, living the most pristine life imaginable such as the itinerant preacher and impoverished chivalric hero St. Francis. Perhaps no greater and more munificent spirit exists in history, than St. Francis of Assisi. But what would this buy him in regards to the 'oft forgiving' and quite predestined fatalism of the Allah idol? Since Francis was a Christian hypocrite who never embraced Allah, and who could never have followed the Allah's ritualized demands, he would perforce according to this Sura and every Sura in the Koran which is of any length, be sent to the Blazing Fire. As Allah angrily remonstrates:

“But indeed men before them rejected (My warning): then how (terrible) was My rejection (of them)?” [67:18]

Rejecting a 'warning' is to ignore the messages of Mohammed, not follow the Koran and not acknowledge that as aforementioned, all natural phenomena both animated and lifeless, result only from Allah's will. St. Francis stupefied from his belief in Christ and poverty, would simply be cast into Hell by Allah as yet another worthless non-Believer who refused to see the 'signs' of his power.

“Say: 'You see? - if Allah were to destroy me, and those with me, or if He bestows His Mercy on us, - yet who can deliver the Unbelievers from a grievous Penalty?” [67:28]

Pious mendicants like St. Francis would never be delivered from the 'grievous Penalty'. Nor would anybody who was not a Muslim, no matter how wonderful a human being they might be, or have been. The key to Islamic grace and life ever-lasting is to mindlessly follow the ritual prayers and prostrations demanded by the Allah idol and repeat ad-nauseum, 'He is (Allah) Most Gracious: we have believed in Him, and on Him we have put our trust:” [67:29].

It is very curious indeed when Muslims try to 'sell' to the Infidel the concept that this Allah is the same as the idealized view of the Christian God. If Muslims want to make the argument that this thing Allah is actually the same as the Christian God, why is the Allah so exclusive ?  Why isn't the God of St. Francis the God of Islam? Why can't Muslims accept St. Francis for example as an exemplary human character, a man who taught abstinence, free-will, rationality and the use of poverty to achieve salvation? Why would a deity of any variety send St. Francis to Hell, except if it was the idol of the most intolerant and ruthlessly vile of theologies ?

[Note: This sura is taken from 'The Holy Quran', translated by Abdullah Yusuf Ali, reprinted in 1995, Goodword Books. Regarded as one of the best translations from Arabic to English of the Koran.]