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32chapter onebeing interrogated by Allah, being sent straight to Hell (whose existencethey had always denied). 17Why are they not interrogated by Allah? 18 It is because a mujrim,a dissenting atheist, does not believe in the existence of God. Thisalone sends him straight to Hell. He will not even be asked by Godabout his acts in this world. The reason is that he has no accountwith God. The omission of prayer, the breaking of the fast, the tamperingwith weights and scales (corruption in trade and commerce)and such, which are all sins that Allah might forgive an assenter(muslim) 19 , will not even be mentioned in the case of a dissenter,because a mujrim has cut off his ties with God. A person cannot bemade accountable for things whose consequences for the Afterlifehave never been acknowledged by him in the first place. The Booksays:Except the companions of the right hand. (They will be) in gardens (ofdelight): they will question each other, and ask of the sinners: “Whatled you into Fire?” They will say: “We were not of those [mußallÊn],nor were we of those who fed the indigent; but we used to talk vanitieswith vain talkers, and we used to deny the Day of Judgement.”( Al-Muddaththir 74:39–46)We learn that the ‘companions of the right hand’ will ask the mujrimånwhat had led them into Hell. They will reply that they had notassented to al-isl§m—in belief and practice: they did not accept theexistence of God and had cut off their ties with Him (‘We were notof those who [are connected to God]’); they also denied the Hereafter(‘we used to deny the Day of Judgement’), and they did nothing thatwas good for His creation (‘nor were we of those who fed the17‘The guilty ( al-mujrimån) will be known by their mark and will be seized by theirforeheads and their feet. Which, then, of your Lord’s blessings do you both deny?This is the Hell the guilty ( al-mujrimån) deny…’ ( Al-RaÈm§n 55:41–43, AH); see alsoY§-SÊn 36:59; Al-Råm 30:12; Al-Naml 27:69; Al-Mursal§t 77:18–19. For even moredetails about the Mujrimån see Al-MuãaffifÊn 83:29; Al-Qaßaß 28:78; Al-Qalam 68:44;Al-\ijr 15:95; Al-Muddaththir 74:42.18‘The guilty will not be questioned about their sins’ ( Al-Qaßaß 28:78, AH).19Verbs of the root s-l-m, in particular sallama/yusallimu and aslama/yuslimu, arecommonly translated as ‘to submit’, ‘to resign’, even ‘to surrender’, which all connotea passive act of submission and lack the element of putting obedience to Godinto active practice, an element that the verbs sallama and aslama also contain in thesense of ‘to consent’, ‘to approve’, or ‘to accept’. In the light of MS’s thesis that theopposite of disobedient dissent (an active practice) is not surrender or submission butan active process of approval, al-muslimån has been translated as assenters or, in orderto distinguish them from the Muslim-Believers, as Muslim-Assenters.