Before the Doomsday - Lessons From History

Before the Doomsday

It is an essential part of our faith as Muslims that we take the universe in which we live as created and contingent and not eternal. Unlike the early Greeks, who thought that the universe had always existed, the Holy Qur’an teaches us that ours is a very large but finite universe in terms of both space and time, and as such it has a definite beginning and a certain end. The following scenario emerges when we study modern cosmology from an Islamic perspective.

In the beginning, Almighty Allah (SWT) created a concentrated core of light-energy, and then, later on, He caused it to explode in a Big Bang, leading to the creation of time, space, and matter. This phenomenon of creation out of nothing represents the manifestation of divine command “Be!” The Big Bang did not happen at any specific place, as the “space” itself was created with this explosion. Similarly, it did not occur at any particular instant, as the “time” itself came into being with the Big Bang.

Since then, the universe has been continuously expanding, rotating, and evolving. At a predetermined point in the future, it will stop expanding, and from then on the contraction or folding-back phase of the universe will commence — either due to the gravitational pull of the unseen matter exceeding the forces of expansion, or as a result of the swallowing up  of  entire  galaxies  by Black Holes — leading ultimately to the Big Crunch, which is the disappearance of the cosmos in a catastrophic implosion, like the Big Bang in reverse.

The Big Crunch will be followed by another Big Bang, leading to the creation of a new universe that will last forever, and which will be totally different from our present universe, utterly beyond the realm of our imagination. We believe, on the authority of the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad (SAW), in the rebirth of all humanity, their final judgment, the Hell and the Paradise, though the exact nature of that state of existence is simply inconceivable.

As far as the end of our own world is concerned, it seems that a major catastrophe will befall, destroying a part of our galaxy including the sun and the earth, and that this will happen well before the universal doomsday or the Big Crunch. It is this local doomsday that is referred to in the Holy Qur’an as the “Startling Calamity” or the “Inevitable.”

Source:Lesson from History (Book) by Dr. Israr Ahmad

Allies of One Another - Lessons From History

We know that the Jews had always viewed themselves as a special breed of people, superior to the rest of the humanity as the “Chosen People of the Lord,” who are born to rule the Gentiles. As a result, they couldn’t come to terms with their shockingly unexpected humiliation, and thus the episodes of Divine retribution — instead of softening their hearts and producing in them a desire to repent and the willingness to atone for their collective crimes — has produced in them a revengeful and malicious envy and a sort of diabolical bitterness.

It would of course be unfair to make sweeping generalizations because individual persons vary greatly, but as far as the collective psyche of the Jewish nation is concerned, it is  undeniable  that  they  have  developed  a  deeply  ingrained tendency to conspire and to maneuver things surreptitiously for their own gain, without ever appearing on the stage. It may be pointed out that this character of the Jews was already prominent during the days of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), and that it is this very inclination towards behind-the-scene subversive activities that has produced the present state of alliance and so-called friendship between them and the Christians.

The persecuted Jews were well aware that the only way to turn the table on their arch enemy, the Christians, was by way of minimizing the influence of religion over them and by debilitating the authority of the Church. Thus, they ingeniously used the spirit of rationalism — that was already spreading form Muslim Spain into Christian Europe — to make a breach in the bastion  of  Christian  faith.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  highly irrational   and   almost   ridiculously   illogical   dogmas   being enforced by the Church in the name of religion were never in a position to stand against the tide of Reason. 

The Renaissance in Europe was characterized by an intense interest in the physical world and in the knowledge derived from concrete sensory experience, and a decline in metaphysical beliefs and interest in the life after death, both of which were prominent themes during the Middle Ages. This rise of Reason, therefore, turned out to be the beginning of the end for Christianity and the onset of the domination   of   materialism   and   pragmatic   morality.   The European Jews — by playing a key role in polluting the essence of rationalism with the evils of licentiousness and promiscuity, as well as with that of intellectual vagrancy which is euphemistically  called  “liberalism”  —  were  able  to  increase their influence in the Christian society. The rise of sexual permissiveness and the resulting breakdown of traditional family values in the West represents only one aspect of the defeat of Christian morality against the financial interests and the growing influence of the Jews.

At the same time, the rise of Protestantism and the movement for “Reformation” opened the gates of unlimited individual freedom and destroyed the unity of Christendom. Although  usurious  money-lending  activity  of  the  Jews  had existed on a small scale throughout the middle Ages, the weakening of the Church, along with the liberal views of John Calvin (1509-1594) in Economics, ultimately led to an enormous rise   in   the   previously   prohibited   practice   of   usury.    

The acceptance by the Christians that such transactions are unavoidable for economic growth and material prosperity made them  willing  hostages  of  the  money-lending  institutions  — banks, insurance companies, stock exchanges and the like — all of which were, and still are, strongholds of the Jewish people. Today these financial institutions are the uncontested rulers of the Western World, particularly of Great Britain and the United States. The introduction of paper money instead of gold and silver has also greatly bolstered this wicked web of control and exploitation. This is how the Jews were able to take control of the affairs of the world without really exposing or endangering themselves.

This unnatural and artificial alliance between the Jews and  the  Christians  —  the  basis  of  the  so-called New World Order — is actually nothing more than the relationship between a parasite and its host, or between a master and his slave. One of the recent manifestations of this bizzare friendship is the decree issued by the Pope, exonerating the Jews from the two-thousand years old charge of crucifying Jesus Christ. The Holy Qur’an had prophetically warned us of the dangers of this coalition thus:

O Believers, do not hold Jews and Christians as your allies. They are allies of one another; and anyone who makes them his friends is surely one of them; and God does not guide the unjust. (Al-Ma’ida 5:51)

Source:Lesson from History (Book) by Dr. Israr Ahmad

Christians and Jews persecution on eachother - Lessons From History

The  early  Christians  were  generally  considered  as nothing more than a Jewish sect, but with the passage of time the alien  concepts  implanted  by St.  Paul  —  Trinity,  Atonement, Abolition of the Mosaic Law — made them a different people altogether. The initial three centuries of the Common Era were characterized by severe persecution being inflicted upon the Christians, a considerable segment of which still consisted of Unitarians, at the hands of both the Jews and the Romans. 

However, the whole situation changed dramatically when the Roman Empire embraced Christianity, as a result of which the Jews became the target of official harassment and oppression. As  the  Christians  saw it,  Jews  were  guilty of “deicide,” the murder of their God, and therefore they excluded the latter from the mainstream of socio-economic life. This trend continued unabated in the Middle Ages, often manifiesting as wholesale killings of the Jews. In 1096, for example, the Crusaders on their way through France and Germany massacred thousands of Jews. Widespread killings took place in 1146 by the armies of the second Crusade. More than a thousand Jews were hanged in England, in 1234, for allegedly circumcising a Christian boy. In 1290, Jews were banished from England by King Edward. In 1350, they were held responsible for the spread of plague, and hundreds of thousands were murdered in Europe. They were forced to live together under subhuman conditions called “Ghettos.”   Religious   courts,   or   “Inquisition,”   ordered   the burning of thousands of Jews during the 15th century, and these events were witnessed and celebrated as popular holidays.

Ironically enough, during more than a thousand years of humiliation and persecution, the only respite of peace and prosperity enjoyed by the Jews was in the Muslim territories. Jewish historians like Abba Eban and Solomon Grayzel have acknowledged and recognized their “Golden Age of Diaspora” — the period of Jewish affluence and growth in Muslim Spain. When the Arab rule came to end in 1492, and the Jews were immediately expelled from Spain by the Christian rulers Ferdinand and Isabella, they were given refuge and asylum in the Ottoman Empire. Large population of Jews continued to prosper peacefully in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Egypt, during the time when their brethren were suffering miserably in Europe, particularly in the Russian lands.

According to the Holy Qur’an, the hatred and enmity between the Jews and the Christians will last till the end of the world (Al-Ma’ida 5:14 & 64). However, we can clearly see that their mutual rancor underwent a very slow and gradual decline during  the  last  few  hundred  years.  The  Qur’an  seems  to  be saying, therefore, that the present coalition between the Jews and the Christians is only superficial and cosmetic as well as transient, and also that the end of the world is not very far.

Source:Lesson from History (Book) by Dr. Israr Ahmad