Mohamad Al-Zawahreh

You ask, “Goodness or submission?” Let me answer you as a Muslim. When you call this man good, do you mean he did good by his fellow man? I grant you that. Do you mean he gave everyone their due? That’s a much bigger claim. You’ve told us how he treated his neighbors and said nothing about what he owed his Creator. Why should the first settle the second? Consider why you’d call me ungrateful if I spoke as though I owed my mother nothing. She carried me when I couldn’t carry myself. She fed me when I couldn’t lift a spoon. Even if I spent the rest of my life feeding other people’s children, my mother would still be entitled to my gratitude. Her claim on me comes from what she did for me. It holds even if she never asks for thanks. The Qur’an reminds us of what our mothers endured and tells us to be grateful to Allah and to our parents in the same verse (31:14). Imam al-Maturidi draws out something worth considering. My mother gave me milk. Who gave her the ability to feed me? I owe her thanks for every night she sat up with me. I owe Allah thanks for her, for my life, and for every morning we woke up together. Allah has no need of my praise (31:12). The question is what kind of man I would be if I recognized what I’d received and refused to acknowledge whom I’d received it from. That is my answer to “If I’m good, why submit?” Because if I take seriously the duty to give others their due, that duty reaches all the way back to the One who created me. If you mean a man who sincerely never came to believe, then we can discuss what he had reason to know. That matters to his accountability. It leaves the question of what is owed to our Creator exactly where it stood. Now consider the murderer. You gave him one morally significant act in your own example. He repented. He admitted that he had taken a life he had no right to take and could never give back. In the very passage where the Qur’an condemns murder, it speaks of repentance, faith, and a change in conduct (25:68–71). And the Prophet ﷺ warned that a man could come before Allah with prayers, fasting, and charity, only to see his good deeds handed over to the people whose blood he shed (Sahih Muslim 2581). So where did you get the idea that declaring submission makes it pointless to be good? What do you suppose he was submitting to when Allah commanded him to spare that life? And you ask what reason remains to do good once a person knows he has been forgiven. The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ was asked something remarkably close to that. He stood in prayer at night until his feet swelled. Someone asked why he still did this when Allah had already forgiven him. His answer was, “Should I not be a grateful servant?” (Sahih al-Bukhari 4836).