Answer

Wa `alaykum as-salamu wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.

In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.

All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.

Dear brother in Islam, thanks a lot for your question which reflects your care to have a clear view of the teachings of Islam. Allah commands Muslims to refer to people of knowledge to get themselves well-acquainted with the teachings of Islam as well as all aspects of life.

Hell, we Muslims believe, is the place where those who did not follow the guidance of Almighty Allah in this world will face the consequences of their misguidance in the world to come. This horrible abode has been described in Divine Books and on the tongues of the noble prophets warning the inhabitants of this world against its unimaginable punishment. We know nothing about such unseen matters except that which we have been told about by means of revelation. Therefore, it is beyond our knowledge to speak about Hellfire or Paradise except within the information that has reached us.

Although astronomy has taught human beings a lot about celestial bodies and activities and has disclosed many of the secrets of this universe, astronomers themselves still believe that they know but very little.

In its response to this question, the Scientific Research Committee affiliated to IslamToday.net stated,

Black hole is a name given to any object whose gravitational pull is so powerful that the speed required to escape from it exceeds the speed of light. Therefore, anything that comes too close to a black hole will be unable to escape from it.

There are countless black holes in the universe. They are quite common objects. There is a super-massive black hole at the center of our galaxy – within or near Sagittarius A – and presumably at the center of all galaxies.

Normal stellar black holes (formed from collapsed stars) are quite plentiful within our own galaxy. Stars that are about 20 times as massive as our Sun are likely to end their lives as black holes.

Black holes are very dense and massive objects. Their gravity is so powerful that the laws of nature within them behave differently, and we still do not know all about what the conditions within a black hole are. However, it is not likely that there are fires burning within them in any way that we could possibly define fire. What we know about black holes scientifically would not predict the existence of anything like fire within them. Indeed, it seems that the inside of a black hole might be quite cold.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that Hellfire is located inside a black hole. There is no evidence for this claim, neither in the Qur’an, the Sunnah, nor from science.

Hellfire is a matter of the Unseen. We only know about Hellfire what Almighty Allah informs us by way of revelation to His prophets (peace be upon them). Its location is a mystery to us.

May Allah protect us from speaking about matters of the Unseen without knowledge.

Allah Almighty knows best.

Excerpted from www.islamtoday.com.