With respect to the second question about the different kinds of heaven and hell...

With respect to the second question about the different kinds of heaven and hell, the following opinions have been presented: Allah’s (awj) threats, warnings, promises, and glad tidings concerning heaven and hell are simply means of keeping human beings in line. It is not necessary that heaven and hell actually exist. The mere fact that people do good out of their desire for paradise and refrain from bad out of fear of hell, is in itself a virtual paradise.

Paradise is another word for a classless, utopian, Islamic society. Hell on the other hand is a capitalistic society. Therefore, those seeking heaven should work to establish the ideal proletarian state, so that they can avoid the hell of capitalism. Paradise is actually a planet in our universe that will be discovered when the technology of space travel advances sufficiently. We shall then be able to colonize “paradise” and escape from the “hell” of earth.

Heaven is tantamount to the attainment of positive attributes and hell is the attainment of evil attributes. These four explanations are materialist in nature, and are at odds with the Qur`an and ahadith, and contradict the philosophy and rationale behind sending prophets and revealing books. The heaven and hell described in the Qur`an will only appear after death on the Day of Judgment, and are eternal abodes, not evanescent and fleeting.

The paradise in which Adam and Eve (ع) resided after being created, and from which they subsequently descended to earth, was in reality a part of this temporal, material world. If this were not the case, they would not have been expelled from it, and its form would have been determined by their prior actions. Manifestations of the esoteric reality of human actions are sometimes witnessed by gnostics even before death, and by pure believers and extreame disbelievers after death, in their graves.

Such manifestations will be a source of pleasure or pain for these people prior to Judgment Day. Because these manifestations of heaven and hell are witnessed before Judgment day, they are in reality part of the temporal world. They envelop every person and are perceptible to saints or in the realm of dreams. This view of heaven and hell accords with the third and fourth opinions mentioned above concerning the interplay between actions and retribution.

The Qur`an and ahadith indicate that the heaven and hell of the Hereafter exist at present.