Having been raised and brought up in a Christian family, and at the same time having extreme respect for Islam and its teachings, if I die without reverting to Islam, in spite of having the opportunity to do so, can I achieve salvation from an Islamic point of view?
Salvation basically means if you are going to heaven or hell. As a Muslim, we can never specify about any individual whether he or she is going to heaven or hell, because we really don't know what their actual relation with God is. God may forgive some things that we might think unforgivable.
If I ask you that if you have understood both Islamic and Christian teachings, or you think you have, then why is it that you will not convert to Islam? You might say it depends on your family. If you say that you couldn't deal with the pressure that would come with conversion to Islam, then I would say that you are going to be responsible for the choice you have made before God. Because obviously if you believe that Islam is in fact the truth and you did not accept it because of your family, then it simply means that your family has become more important to you than God.
This is exactly what happened in the case of the uncle of Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ), Abu Taalib, who had raised the Prophet (ﷺ). On his death bed, when he was invited to accept the faith, his other brothers told him that he would dishonor and disgrace the tribes if he did so. Therefore he decided to go with the custom and the culture of the people though he knew it was wrong. The Prophet (ﷺ) himself said, "The one who is least punished in the Hellfire is Abu Taalib."[1]. He would have the least punishment of the people of hell but he would be in hell, thinking at the same time that he is receiving the greatest punishment than anybody else.[2]
So, to say would you achieve salvation or not, I would like to get to the bottom of where your concepts lie. If you say that you believe that Jesus was God, and you die in that state then you would be lost because from the Islamic perspective, God is God, man is man. Man is a creation of God. For God to become man is for God to become His own creation. Human beings cannot become God because they have been created and they have beginnings and they have ends. God has certain attributes which are unique to Himself, which distinguish Him from His creation. So if you die believing that God was an animal, a rock, a star or a human being, then you have lost all, unless you were from those people who did not receive the true message of the Prophets, i.e, of Jesus, Moses, Abraham, etc, or you were retarded or in some part of the world where the message never reached. In this case the Muslim belief is that at the time of resurrection you will be brought back separately along with those who did not hear the message of the Prophets, and you would be given the message and the instructions to follow. Those who follow would go into Paradise, and those who did not would go into Hell.
References:
[1] (Muslim,the Book of Faith,Hadeeth #362)
[2] (Muslim,the Book of Faith,Hadeeth # 364)
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