Praise be to Allaah.

According to a saheeh hadeeth, “Allaah has ninety-nine names. Whoever counts them will enter Paradise.” Counting them means memorizing them, understanding their meanings, acting in accordance with their implications and calling upon Allaah by them. Whoever does that and does not commit any major sin, and upholds regular prayer, will have the hope of entering Paradise. But the one who commits major sins has to repent, and he is still subject to the will of Allaah – if Allaah wills He will forgive him and if He wills He will punish him. But the person who dies by drowning or being crushed by a falling building is a shaheed (martyr) if he is Muslim, and there is the hope that all his evil deeds will be forgiven except for debt. 

Shaykh ‘Abd al-Kareem al-Khudayr.

But according to the most correct scholarly view the person who deliberately neglects prayer altogether is a kaafir who has disbelieved in Allaah Almighty, and his abode will be the Fire even if he was drowned or a building collapsed on him.

The proof for this is that the ahaadeeth which promise a specific reward such as entering Paradise or being saved from Hell are subject to the conditions being fulfilled and the obstacles being removed. One of the obstacles to entering Paradise, for example, is neglecting prayer, and one of the conditions for the reward of the shaheed who is killed in battle is that his intention is to fight so that the word of Allaah may be supreme, and so on.

We also wish to point out to our brother that Muslim should not object to the rulings of Allaah once they have been proven and their meanings have been understood. If he finds something hard to understand, he should question his own reasoning and understanding, not the texts of sharee’ah.

And Allaah is the source of help.