What is the fate of deceased children in the life to come? This has long been a contentious question in Islamic thought. Ab? l-?asan al-Ash?ar? (d. 324/936) purportedly abandoned Mu?tazilism on account of the failure of his teacher al-Jubb??? (d. 303/916) to resolve the well-known “three brothers” dilemma: one brother passes away as a righteous man, another as a wicked man, and the third as an infant. Al-Jubb??? reportedly maintained that the first will be in paradise, the second in the fire, and the third in a state of limbo. But, according to Mu?tazilite principles, how could one deem this outcome just? If the deceased infant had only lived a full life as a virtuous believer, God would have awarded him an everlasting life in the gardens of paradise. If, however, the child had been spared punishment in hell because he was bound to become sinful as an adult, this would leave unresolved the question of why God would not simply take the life of the second brother—the wicked man—before the latter committed the transgressions that sealed his fate. In the hadith corpus we find various, sometimes conflicting reports concerning the fate of deceased children. We read that they will be judged by God according to what they would have done had they lived longer (which naturally calls into question the purpose of adulthood); that they will be transformed into flying creatures and occupy paradise; that they will be cared for by Abraham in paradise; and so on. In the present paper, I shall outline various ‘classical’ approaches to the dilemma of deceased children. I shall then focus on the writings of the traditionalist Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328). I shall show how he addresses the Mu?tazilite dilemma by (a) privileging a relatively obscure hadith and (b) developing a universalist soteriology of progression, according to which human growth continues after death.