Man's Innocence
\r\n Al-Najm (The Star) Chapter 53: Verses 38-39
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"No person is responsible for the guilt of another. To every person belongs the merit or demerit of what he has wrought."
Islam holds that man is created innocent, and plays out the drama, as it were, after his birth, not before. No matter who his parents were, who his uncles and ancestors, his brothers and sisters, his neighbours or his society were, man is born innocent. This repudiates every notion of original sin, of hereditary guilt, of vicarious responsibility, of tribal, national or international involvement of the person in past events before his birth. Every man is born with a clean slate, it asserts, basing its stand on the absolute autonomy and individuality of the human person. No soul, the Quran declares, will bear any but its own burden. To it belongs all that it has itself personally earned, whether merit or demerit. None will receive judgement for the deed of another, and none may intercede on behalf of another.
\r\nIslam defines man's responsibility exclusively in terms of his own deeds and defines a deed as the act in which man, the sane adult person, enters into bodily, consciously, and voluntarily, and in which he produces some disturbance of the flow of space-time. Guilt and responsibility are ethical categories and are incurred only where a free and conscious deed is committed.
\r\nCompiled From:
\r\n "Tawhid: Its Implications for Thought and Life" - Ismail Raji Al-Faruqi, pp. 68, 69