An Islamic View of Gog Magog in the Modern World
Responding to Islamic sectarianism
There are many today who beat their sectarian drums with fury while portraying themselves as the only rightly-guided believers. They also relish in exposing their sectarian rivals, particularly the people of Tasawwuf, as misguided, while splitting hair over trivia and pouncing upon issues of peripheral importance. This book directs attention to that sectarian rivalry with dogmatic claims to truth, and challenges those sects to produce scholarly works on ‘Signs of the Last Day in the Modern Age’ in which are located Dajjal as well as Gog and Magog.
There would be some readers who would probably have no knowledge whatsoever of Islamic sectarianism, hence the need to provide information about at least some of those sects. And then there would be other readers who, despite the above paragraph, would still be curious about the identity of Islamic sects. Since the blessed Prophet (sallalahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) himself prophesied the emergence of Islamic sectarianism and warned Muslims to stay away from such sects, Muslims need a criterion by which they can identify such sects. The subject of ‘Signs of the Last Hour’ and the method of response to those Signs provides such a criterion. Dajjal as well as Gog and Magog are most certainly located within the ‘Signs of the Last Hour’, hence the relevance of this subject as a response to Islamic sectarianism.
The Shia sect
Islamic sectarianism emerged within a few decades of the Prophet’s death when the Shia sect was born. The most cherished of all their beliefs concerning prophecy is that a descendent of the Prophet (sallalahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) known as Imam al-Mahdi would eventually emerge and lead Muslims to victory over those waging war on Islam. The Prophet himself clearly prophesied that such would occur and both Sunnis and Shias have held firmly to this prophecy. Shias also believe that the advent of Imam al-Mahdi would validate their sectarian claim to truth within Islam.
However Prophet Muhammad (sallalahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) clearly located the advent of Imam al-Mahdi to occur at a time that would be contemporaneous with the return of the true Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary:
“How would you be (i.e. how wonderful a time that would be for you) when the son of Mary descends amongst you and your Imam (i.e. Imam al-Mahdi) would be from your own (ranks).” (Sahih Bukhari)
This prophecy concerning a time when the Imam (i.e. ruler) of the Muslims would be from within their own ranks indicates that for some time prior to that event they would be ruled by non-Muslims. In other words the world of Islam would lose its freedom to rule itself. Perhaps the entire post-Caliphate Sunni world is today ruled (by proxy) by the European Jewish-Christian rulers of the world. They force so-called Muslim (Sunni) governments into such a state of submission that those countries become client-states of the West. It is almost impossible for any Sunni Muslim community today to escape from their vicious grip and recover such independent self-rule that would free them from Judeo-Christian political and economic influence and control.
Shia Iran, on the other hand, has claimed that the successful Iranian Islamic revolution has taken that country out of the sphere of influence and control of the non-Muslim rulers of the world. So long as Shia Iran continues to successfully defy the West (Imam al Khomeini demonized USA, appropriately so, as the “Great Satan”) while maintaining
a credible claim to independent self-rule, Shias would have to concede that a valid Imam or ruler from within their community rules over them. The implications for the Shia claim to truth in the context of the above Hadith concerning the advent of Imam al-Mahdi and the return of Jesus (‘alaihi al-Salam) should be obvious.
The above Hadith also makes it clear that the advent of Imam al-Mahdi cannot take place until the time draws close for the return of Jesus (‘alaihi al-Salam). But Jesus cannot return until Dajjal the false Messiah has completed his mission of impersonation of the true Messiah. And Dajjal cannot complete that mission of impersonation until the Holy Land is liberated for the Jews and the Israelite Jews are brought back from exile to the Holy Land to reclaim it as their own.
The Qur’an itself has declared in Surah al-Anbiyah’, 21:94-95 that a return to the “town” from which they were expelled (we recognize that town to be Jerusalem) would take place only when two things have occurred:
• when Gog and Magog are released, and
• they have spread out in all directions.
Now that the Israelites have returned to reclaim the Holy Land as their own, it should be clear that a Shia sectarian claim to represent the true Islam cannot be validated in the absence of demonstration of understanding and penetration of the subjects of Gog and Magog as well as Dajjal. The world continues to await scholarly Shia works on those subjects as they impact upon the modern world.
Ahmadiyyah
Pride of place in the galaxy of deviant sects in the contemporary world of Islam belongs however, and mysteriously so, to the most-favored of modern Western secular civilization and of the State of Israel, i.e. the Ahmadiyyah Movement. A remarkable feature of this manifestly and dangerously misguided sect is that its founder, a man named Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, correctly located Gog and Magog in the nations of modern Western civilization. Indeed this false Prophet was amazingly correct on several other very important issues. However, despite the fact that he so exposed modern European nations, his movement yet continued to find abiding favor with them. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad deceptively corrupted the subject of ‘Signs of the Last Hour’ by falsely identifying Dajjal the false Messiah with Gog and Magog. (See ‘The Antichrist and Gog and Magog’, Muhammad Ali. No date. www.aaiil.com)
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad also startled the world with the equally false claim that the Hadith prophecy concerning the return of the true Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary (‘alaihi al-Salam), was fulfilled in him. Even while he accepted the truth of the blessed Prophet’s prophecy pertaining to the return of the true Messiah, he argued that Jesus died in Kashmir, was buried there, and will not himself return. Rather, he claimed, Prophet Muhammad was actually referring to him, i.e. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, when he made that prophecy. Mirza made that false claim in shameless denial of the fact that he was the son of a Punjabi woman while Prophet Muhammad clearly identified the Messiah who would return to be son of the Virgin Mary:
“ . . . It will be at this very time that Allah will send the Messiah, the son of Mary. He will descend at the white minaret on the eastern side of Damascus, wearing two garments lightly dyed with saffron and placing his hands on the wings of two Angels. When he lowers his head, there will fall beads of perspiration from his head, and when he raises it up, beads like pearls will scatter from it. Every Kafir (i.e. disbeliever) who smells the odour of his body will die and his breath will reach as far as he is able to see . . . .” (Sahih Muslim)
In another Hadith, also prophesying that momentous return, the blessed Prophet made mention of Jesus (‘alaihi al-Salam) by name:
“Hudhaifa bin Usaid Ghifari reported that Allah’s Messenger came to us all of a sudden as we were (busy in a discussion). He asked: “What are you discussing about?” They (the Companions) said, “We are discussing about the Last Hour”. Thereupon he said: “It will not come until you see ten signs” and (in this connection) he made mention of the ‘smoke’, ‘Dajjal’, ‘the beast’, ‘the rising of the sun from the west’, ‘the descent of Jesus the son of Mary’, ‘Gog and Magog’, and sinking of the earth in three places, one in the east, one in the west and one in Arabia at the end of which fire would burn forth from Yemen, and would drive people to their place of assembly.” (Sahih Muslim)
An Ahmadiyyah claim to represent true Islam (and this applies to both sections of the Ahmadiyyah movement) should have provoked Ahmadi scholars to respond to ‘Jerusalem in the Qur’an’ published in 2002.
The Wahhabi sect
Among the strange and misguided sects is one that mysteriously emerged out of the region of Najd in Arabia to declare all its Muslim rivals to be Mushrikun (i.e. a people who blaspheme against the one God), and to further declare it obligatory to kill all such rivals. Members of that Najdi Wahhabi sect entered into an alliance with a Saudi clan in order to win control over first, the Nejd, and then the Hejazi Arabian heartland of Islam. They sought this control over the Hejaz in order to cleanse it of what they considered to be Shirk (blasphemy) and to thus restore the true faith. When they succeeded in winning that control they proceeded to slaughter thousands of innocent Muslims.
The raison d’etre for the mysterious emergence of the SaudiWahhabi alliance was clearly revealed when both the Saudi clan and the Wahhabi sect conspired in the creation in Arabia of a Saudi Anglo-American client-State that they audaciously named Saudi Arabia. In the process of creating that client State they destroyed Dar al-Islam and the Caliphate (i.e. Khilafah State) that the blessed Prophet had himself established. They were duped by Dajjal since their betrayal of Islam paved the way for Gog and Magog to fulfill their mysterious role described in the Qur’an (al-Anbiyah’:95-6). The Saudi-Wahhabi alliance also joined Europe’s mysterious Judeo-Christian alliance in preference to fraternal solidarity with those who proclaimed their faith in Islam.
The final and formal consummation of this momentous deal with the very heartland of Islam was of such critical importance to the Judeo-Christian alliance that an American President had to travel himself on an American warship to meet personally with the Saudi King. The USS Murphy secretly took King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud from the Arabian port of Jeddah to the Great Bitter Lake in Egypt’s Suez Canal where the USS Quincy waited with US President Roosevelt on board. The two leaders met on February 14, 1945, to seal their alliance. The Saudi Wahhabis reaped the bitter fruit of that alliance just three years later when the State of Israel was born and USA was proud to be the first State to recognize Israel.
The fact that the Saudi-American alliance has not only survived but also prospered since that cataclysmic event in 1948 clearly indicates that the Wahhabi sect is complicit in the betrayal of Islam.
So long as the Saudi-Wahhabi alliance maintained its client-State relationship with the European Jewish-Christian alliance which ruled the world, it remained impossible for any Muslim or combination of Muslims to dislodge them from control over the Hejaz, the Haramain and the Hajj. The predictable result was that this upstart sect with a claim to represent the true religion of Islam actually played a crucial role in delivering to the Jewish-Christian alliance the capacity to eventually rule over the entire world of Islam. (See ‘The Caliphate the Hejaz and the Saudi-Wahhabi Nation State’, www.imranhosein.org).
Prophet Muhammad (sallalahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) clearly anticipated this betrayal when he declared of Najd, in a Hadith recorded in Sahih Bukhari, that from it would emerge “earthquakes trials tribulations and the ‘Qarn’ (i.e. age) of Satan” (the Saudi clan and leadership of the Wahhabi sect have both emerged from Najd). There was much debate in early Islam concerning the geographical location Najd. Some argued that it was located in Iraq rather than in Arabia. Sufficient time has now elapsed, however, for concrete evidence on the ground to confirm that the blessed Prophet’s prophecy has today been fulfilled. The courageous Muslims of Iraq are waging a magnificent armed struggle to liberate that territory from American/Israeli occupation while the Najdi religious and political leadership of Saudi Arabia slavishly and religiously preserve their ‘satanic’ alliance with those oppressors.
A curious feature of Wahhabi religious thought in the modern age is its insistence on a literal interpretation of verses of the Qur’an as well as Ahadith that deal with the subject of ‘Signs of the Last Hour’. As a consequence the Wahhabi scholars (with few exceptions) remain handicapped by a methodology which renders them incapable of penetrating and correctly interpreting religious allegory and hence the reality of both Dajjal and Gog and Magog in the modern age. On the other hand Shia religious scholarship seems to be more willing to interpret allegory in the Qur’an and Hadith, and hence we hope to find them more receptive than others of such interpretations found in this book.
Tableegh Jamaat (i.e. Jama’ah al-Tableegh)
Yet another strange and mysterious Indian sect declared those within its fold to be a people of Tabligh (i.e. missionary preaching). Their methodology of reaching out and leading people back to the non-strategic Sunnah of the blessed Prophet has succeeded in many peripheral parts of the Muslim world. Many of their members are sincere Muslims who do lead lives of overt piety. Hence it is quite mysterious that members of this apolitical sect would oft-times rather close their ears than join in a conversation or discussion that questions the truth of the American Government’s false claim that Arabs and Muslims planned and executed the 9/11 attack on America.
The blessed Prophet (sallalahu ‘alaihi wa sallam) indicated very clearly that Muslims should respond in a different way to oppression. He declared about Dajjal: An-Nawwas b. Sam'an reported that the Prophet said (concerning Dajjal):
. . . If he comes forth while I am among you, I shall argue with him on your behalf (i.e. I shall respond with arguments against him), but if he comes forth while I am not amongst you, then each must himself argue (i.e. respond with arguments against him) . . .” (Sahih Muslim)
Members of this sect betrayed their sectarianism by establishing their exclusive control over the Masajid of Allah Most High and then stubbornly excluding all others from preaching or teaching in Masajid under their control. They have stubbornly insisted on monopolizing knowledge imparted in the Masjid. Even so, this sect also adopted ‘an ostrich with its head in the sand’ policy in responding to the political, economic and other forms of oppression inflicted on Muslims by modern Western secular civilization. It was certainly not a question of defective methodology that has rendered scholars of this sect incapable of penetrating the reality of Dajjal as well as Gog and Magog in the modern age – rather this subject has been avoided as a matter of policy and principle, or rather as a plague.
The only concern that the enemies of Islam harbor in respect of this strange and mysterious sect appears to be the fear that it can be infiltrated by Muslims (inspired by the likes of Malcolm X) who embrace the strategic Sunnah and respond courageously and fearlessly to the European Judeo-Christian alliance’s unjust war on Islam, and to their racism and oppression in the modern world.
The world continues to wait for a scholarly work from the Tableegh Jama’at on the subject of ‘Signs of the Last Day in the Modern Age’.
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