Signs of the Last Day and the End of History

 

Signs of the Last Day and the End of History

Insights from Sheikh Imran Hosein

History is more than a mere record of events. History not only records the constant changes that take place in the world but also seeks to interpret that phenomenon of change. An analysis of the historical process, of the movement of history, and of the end of history, emerges from the interpretation of change in the world. It answers many nagging questions.

Is change taking place randomly, or is there a pattern to change? Is the historical process one that would persist unto eternity, or would there be a Last Age and an end to history?

A strange and mysterious Euro-world-order now controls the entire world in its iron grip. It has derived unprecedented power from a continuing scientific and technological revolution that completely changes the whole world. But its power rests on foundations that are essentially godless, decadent and corrupt.

• It possesses great powers of deception to the extent that it makes falsehood appear to be truth and vice versa. 

• It tells monstrous lies while relentlessly and unjustly pursuing the goal of oppressing all those who resist its supreme authority.

• It establishes world government in the name of universal democracy but imposes, instead, universal dictatorship over all mankind.

• It proclaims the doctrine of free trade but establishes a usurious economy that destroys the fair market.

• It rips off mankind through a process of legalized theft that reduces the masses around the world to permanent poverty and destitution.

• It reaps far more blood-stained income in its capacity as the money-lender par excellence of the world than it deceptively doles out in face-saving aid and debt-forgiveness.

• It is racially, culturally and intellectually arrogant and assumes itself to be not only superior to non-Europeans but that it is the ‘white man’s burden’ to ‘civilize’ the rest of mankind.

• It is only when non-Europeans imitate their European way of life that they would be recognized as civilized.

• It leads mankind to dual feminist and sexual revolutions which bring in their wake so much sexual promiscuity and perversity that the institution of the family itself begins to fail and self-destruct.

• It brings about a mysterious alliance between Christians and Jews, and this is something previously considered impossible. It then uses that mysterious Euro-Christian/Euro-Jewish alliance to liberate the Holy Land, bring the Israelite Jews back to the Holy Land after 2000 years of divinely-ordained exile, and restore a State of Israel in the Holy Land.

There is absolutely nothing in history that can explain the emergence of that strange and mysterious Euro-world order. Is it itself a sign of the Last Day? And can such a civilization and world-order continue to dominate the world indefinitely, or is the world a moral order with a historical process that must eventually culminate with victory for truth, justice, peace, happiness, righteousness, sexual chastity and modesty, racial fraternity, freedom, and equality?

The period 1965-66 was the most exciting of all in our student life at the Aleemiyah Institute of Islamic Studies in Karachi, Pakistan. The head of the Institute, and my learned teacher of blessed memory, Maulana Dr. Muhammad Fazlur Rahman Ansari, succeeded in persuading his distinguished colleague, the philosopher of history, Dr. Burhan Ahmad Faruqi, to leave the city of Lahore and to join the teaching staff of the Institute in Karachi. Dr. Faruqi and Dr. Ansari were colleagues at the Aligarh Muslim University in the 1930s where they both studied philosophy under the guidance of that formidable Muslim philosopher, Professor Dr. Syed Zafarul Hassan. Dr. Faruqi wrote his doctoral thesis in Islamic metaphysics on the topic, ‘A Mujjadid’s Conception of Tauheed’. He courageously undertook, in that book, a critical comparative evaluation of Muhiyuddin Ibn ‘Arabi’s theory of ‘wahdah al-wujud’ (i.e., that all existence is a real unity) with Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi’s rival theory of ‘wahdah ashshuhud’ (i.e., that all existence only appears to be a unity). More than half a century has passed since he wrote that book and it remains unsurpassed as a landmark in modern Islamic metaphysics. Dr. Ansari’s doctoral thesis, on the other hand, was written on the topic of ‘The Qur’anic Foundations and Structure of Muslim Society’ (in two volumes) and that book remains unsurpassed as a landmark of modern scholarship in Islamic moral philosophy. (If I may, I would like to recommend both these books to the gentle reader.)

These two intellectual giants, Dr. Faruqi and Dr. Ansari, interacted with each other at the Institute with sparks flying in all directions. We, the students, were tremendously stimulated by their exchanges. Dr. Faruqi taught us the Islamic philosophy of history for two unforgettable years before he returned to Lahore. It was Dr. Ansari’s far-sightedness that opened for us those doors to Islam’s conception of the philosophy of history. Such studies are conspicuously absent from today’s Dar al-Ulum where rote learning carries the day.

It is with that philosophy of history that we now attempt to explain Islam’s view of the end of history and to locate the place of the ‘Signs of the Last Day’ in the scheme of things. Let us begin by explaining that Islam conceives of the ‘end of history’ and the ‘end of the world’ as two quite different things.

The ‘end of the world’ would occur with the earth, and skies above, transformed into something spatially and temporally different. Mankind would then be resurrected into the new world to face judgement.

However, the ‘end of history’ would occur sometime prior to the ‘end of the world’, and when it occurs it would close the door of free choice through which human beings could accept the divinely revealed truth and be rewarded for such choice. Islam has provided a substantial body of information known as ‘Signs of the Last Day’ concerning events that would culminate with the ‘end of history’. Only Allah Most High, of course, has knowledge of when the world itself would end.

The Qur’an itself has revealed that the supreme sign of the end of history would be the return of the true Messiah, Jesus, the son of the virgin Mary. And Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah Most High be upon him) went on to inform that the Messiah’s return would herald the final triumph of truth over falsehood, and of justice over oppression and tyranny. The European war on Islam which commenced with the barbaric European crusades, and which witnessed its present foolhardy phase in the brutal and bloody western occupation and oppression of Afghanistan and Iraq, would then end with the divinely ordained destruction of the oppressor. An essentially godless and decadent western civilization would self-destruct through disease. An unstoppable Muslim army that would emerge from Khorasan (i.e., modern-day Afghanistan and neighbouring territories), would eventually sweep away every obstacle in its path as it liberates all occupied territories all the way to Jerusalem. Thus history would end with victory for Islam.

The non-Muslim reader must pause to ask himself a question. What would be the consequence for him if Muhammad (peace be upon him) is indeed truthful when he declared that he is a Prophet, like unto, Abraham, Moses and Jesus (peace be upon them all), and that the Qur’an which he delivered to mankind is indeed the true and uncorrupted word of the One God?

Let us note at the time of writing of this essay that the armed Islamic resistance to the oppressor in both Afghanistan and Iraq has not only emerged but is already demonstrating a capacity to stay the course for the next 20 or 30 years until victory is achieved. I doubt whether this final war of all wars would take more time than that to end.

The word of Allah Most High has declared such an end to history, and the ‘Word’ of Allah Most High never changes:

“For them (the believers in Allah Most High who, for example, resist the war on Islam) are Glad Tidings in the life of this world (i.e., victory for Islam) as well as in the Hereafter (the reward of paradise). No change can there be in the Words of Allah. This is indeed the supreme Felicity.” (Qur’an, Yunus, 10:64)

Before we turn to the rest of the essays in this book and to ‘Signs of the Last Day’ in Islam, we attempt to make a very brief comparative review of the different conceptions of the historical process, the movement of history and the end of history in Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity and, finally, in the view of modern western civilization. The Hindu view is that the movement of history is continuously cyclic. The Jewish view is linear and regressive, and so too is the Christian view. Western civilization conceives of the movement of history as linear and progressive, while the Islamic view is that it is zig-zig since it is conditioned by the triumphs and failures in a moral struggle that is waged by essentially free moral agents.

Source: Signs of the Last Day and the End of History

to be continued....