This is an excerpt from an email regarding a discussion on whether the Non-Muslims can go to paradise or not. Though the example is specific (and disagreeable) but the concept is generic.
Object Oriented Paradigm is a very useful programming paradigm specially when one has to work in a team. One important feature of this paradigm is encapsulation. Encapsulation deals with restricting the information to the relevant circle. On the face of it its a little thing but it has a great impact in a team environment. Its effect is that lots of unnecessary information (we can call it noise) is hidden from a programmer, as a result the programmer is more clear about defining his Scope, his Objective, his circle of influence and contributes within that circle. The reason behind this email is that I strongly feel the need of encapsulation in many real world issues.. The chapter discussing "circle of influence" in "Seven habits of highly effective people" is probably a similar concept.
Quran guides us that some ayaat have Muhkamaat and some are Mutashabehat.. At the same time the ayaat are a source of deep thinking for us.. The tricky part is that there is no formal way to decide whether one particular ayat is Mutashabeh or it demands deep thinking but in both cases one may find it hard to understand the ayat on the first reading. My personal decision parameter in such cases is to consider my scope (just like in case of encapsulation) and consider whether that specific topic lies within my scope or not. For example the question whether christians or jews are going to end up in hell or not?
I have read the specific ayat (Al-baqra 62. Also repeated in Al-Maeda 69) quite a few times before this discussion and there are other ayaat as well that give an impression that is different from the common perception that only a person who recites kalma-e-tayyiba shall go to heaven. But when I look at the question itself it looks like an out of scope question, because it does not affect what my role should be... My role should be to ask the people of the book to come to common terms, Try to convince them about one God and Prophet hood of Muhammad SA and if they don't accept Prophet Muhammad SA try to convince them that at least they should not seek partners with Allah (what I infer from the ayat that come to common terms between you and us).. But if they do not agree on seeking partners with Allah then we may ask for Mubahila with them if its a formal discussion.. Its in the scope of Allah almighty to decide the destiny of individuals and Allah has complete knowledge to judge even the intent of individuals.(Allah is at a more abstract level than us and He can access all the information of derived classes like humans. At His level it would be very simple to implement a method for correctly finding who deserves heaven and who deserves hell. Exact implementation of this method is encapsulated at His level)
Similarly we should evaluate most of the questions that we want to think on, and focus only on the questions that are in our scope.