Answer
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.
In this fatwa:
Premeditated murder is an enormous sin. Yet, it can be forgiven once a person has turned to Allah in repentance and expiated for it by doing good deeds.
In responding to your question, Sheikh Ahmad Kutty, a senior lecturer and an Islamic scholar at the Islamic Institute of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, states:
Quran is self-explanatory
We ought to remember the principle that one part of the Quran explains the other. We read in surat al-Furqan (25: 68-71):
“And who call not upon another god along with God, and slay not the soul that God has made inviolable, save by right, and who fornicate not—for whosoever does that shall meet requital, and the punishment shall be multiplied for him on the Day of Resurrection. He shall abide therein, humiliated, save for those who repent and believe and perform righteous deeds. For them, God will replace their evil deeds with good deeds, and God is Forgiving, Merciful. And whosoever has repented and works righteousness does indeed repent to God with true repentance.
Does Allah forgive murder?
It is clear from the above that a person who is guilty of even the most heinous crimes or sins can be redeemed by turning to Allah in repentance.
We have the case of Wahshi who killed Hamzah, and the story of the man who killed one hundred people, and then wanted to repent and redeem himself. He was on his way to do that, and then he died, and then the angels of mercy took his soul ascending to the higher heavens – after the intervention of Allah.
What does Allah not forgive?
The principle we can derive from such stories is that premeditated murder is an enormous sin. Yet unlike shirk, it can be forgiven once a person has turned to Allah in repentance and expiated for it by doing good deeds.
Allah says elsewhere: “Truly God forgives not that any partner be ascribed unto Him, but He forgives what is less than that for whomsoever He will, for whosoever ascribes partners unto God has surely fabricated a tremendous sin.” (An-Nisa: 4:48)
Judging people’s fate in the Hereafter
The following statement of Ibn Taymiyyah would shed some light on this issue:
“We are not allowed to make a judgment concerning any person regardless of the enormity of his sins that he would certainly be sent to hellfire. We have no way to know whether it applies specifically to him or not. Since everyone’s ultimate destiny is bound by conditions and lifting of particular obstacles,”
Such knowledge is the exclusive preserve of Allah, the Knower of the Seen and Unseen realities. We must never arrogate to ourselves such judgments.
Almighty Allah knows best.