For a Muslim, to demand perfection in order to gain salvation is not practical. That would be demanding the impossible and is therefore unjust. Islam teaches a person to be humble and to learn that we cannot achieve salvation by our own righteousness.
How can sin be washed away? The Quran gives the prescription:
“Those who avoid the greatest sins and indecencies, except for oversights (will find that) surely your Lord is ample in forgiveness.” (Quran 53:32)
Another moving passage reads:
“Those things that are good remove evil deeds.” (Quran 11:114)
Islam teaches repentance, stopping evil ways, feeling sorry for what one has done, and being determined to follow the path of Allah as much as humanly possible. Religious-minded and virtuous people have always tended to consider carnal and physical desires as impediments to spiritual growth. They have considered suffering, deprivation from worldly pleasures and abstention from the means of worldly sustenance to be acts of goodness and indispensable for achieving proximity to God. This is not in line with Islamic message. The Muslim does not believe in the necessity of the shedding of blood, much less innocent blood, to wash away sins. The idea that someone else has died not only for your sins but entire nations, finds little credence in Islam. Allah is not interested in blood o sacrifice but in sincere repentance and the discontinuation of sinful acts.
The belief that everyone is born condemned and the only way to redeem yourself is for you to believe in another human as your Lord and Savior, does not appeal to human reasoning and again finds no acceptance in Islam. In other words even an innocent newborn baby is a sinner, for if he does not redeem himself by affirming his so-called faith in the Savior and dies before doing so, he is condemned to hell. This is gross injustice. What about a mentally retarded person that cannot think for himself? Is he a sinner by nature and will be doomed to hell simply because they cannot think for himself?
Unlike Christianity, which teaches that all the children of Adam are sinful for Adam’s sin, Islam teaches that all humans are innocent by birth and they become sinful only when they consciously commit a sin. Islam regards the concept of “original sin” and the need for atonement by God Himself – via dying on the Cross – as a pure invention of those who came after Jesus Christ, declaring themselves as Christians.
“If anyone does evil or wrongs his own soul, but afterward seeks Allah’s forgiveness, he will find Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” (Quran 4:110)
Islam teaches that everyone is born a Muslim (one submits completely to the will of Allah). In Islam one man’s sin cannot be transferred to another; nor can be the reward due to a person be transferred either. Every individual is responsible only for his or her own actions, for Allah is never unjust. This is made clear in the Quran:
“Who receiveth guidance, receiveth it for his own benefit: who goeth astray doth so to his own loss. No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another: nor would We punish until We had sent a messenger (to give warning).” (Quran 17:15)
