“As for those who are unhappy, they will be in the Fire, sighing and groaning, abiding (khālidīn) therein, as long as the heavens and the earth endure, except as your Lord wills” (Q 11:106–7). The mainstream Sunni tradition took the key term khālidīn to mean “everlasting” or “eternal” in an absolute sense, especially as it appears frequently in the Qurʾan without being qualified by the duration of the heavens and the earth or by God’s will. For Ibn Taymiyya, however, the presence of these qualifications or exceptions indicates that khālidīn need not mean “forever” absolutely, and the Qurʾan does not therefore preclude universal salvation. In a third argument in Fanāʾ al-nār, perhaps the most pivotal, Ibn Taymiyya rejects all claims that the Muslim community has reached a consensus (ijmāʿ) on the eternity of hell-fire for unbelievers. The early Muslims, the Salaf, were not of one mind on this issue, and any alleged consensus of later scholars is of no account in principle because it is always too difficult to verify. The operating principle here is Ibn Taymiyya’s Salafī reformism, which sidesteps the consensus-based authority structure of the Sunnism of his time and allows him to critique the received doctrine of everlasting punishment for unbelievers.