In his treatise Fay?al al-tafriqa bayna al-Isl?m wa-al-zandaqa, Ab? ??mid al-Ghaz?l? (d. 1111) delineates three categories of non-Muslims: (1) those who never heard of the Prophet; (2) damned unbelievers who learned of the Prophet’s true nature but were arrogant, resistant, or negligent in investigating his message; and (3) those who heard only negative rumors about the Prophet. Al-Ghaz?l? asserts that God on Judgment Day will not condemn the first and third groups. The same is also true of non-Muslims who learned of the Prophet’s message and then investigated it with “sincerity” – even if they passed away as non-Muslims. Not so fortunate, however, are non-Muslims who encountered the Islamic message in its true form yet rejected it because its truth was not evident to them. This criterion for non-Muslim salvation was adopted and revised considerably over eight centuries later by Mu?ammad Rash?d Ri?? (d. 1935) in his periodical al-Man?r. Whereas al-Ghaz?l? avers that learning of the Prophet’s message, his attributes, and his miracles provides “sincere” non-Muslims – including those who had previously heard only negative things about the Prophet – with “enough incentive to compel them to investigate,” Ri?? repeatedly makes a distinction between learning of these things and being provided with “enough incentive” to investigate. As Ri?? would have it, the former does not necessarily lead to the latter. This, even though Ri?? cites al-Ghaz?l? as the primary source for his soteriological pronouncements. In a September 1910 fatwa published in al-Man?r, Ri?? (immediately after citing al-Ghaz?l?) notes that those things that motivate investigation into the Islamic message vary from era to era. According to Ri??, the only non-Muslims whom God will not excuse for remaining outside the fold of Islam are those for whom the truth of the Islamic message was evident, yet rather than accept or investigate it, they resisted it. To substantiate this assertion, Ri?? points to Q. 4:115, a verse that condemns those who “oppose” the Prophet and who “follow a path other than that of the believers” after “guidance has been made clear” to them. In the present paper, I shall discuss the ways in which Ri?? modifies and reinterprets al-Ghaz?l?’s criterion for non-Muslim salvation. Taking into account recent scholarship on salvation in Islamic thought, I shall also explore some of the underlying causes for modern soteriological paradigm shifts and the broad implications of these shifts.