Dajjal (Anti-Christ), the Qur’an and the Beginning of History
The Qur’an and Internal Sight
In the following verses in which the Qur’an directs attention to a fate which can await those who are blind, it is quite obvious that the reference to blindness is not to be understood literally. Rather, the verses of the Qur’an obviously refer to internal blindness:
(Qur’an, al-An’am, 6:50)
Allah Most High asks whether someone who is blind, can be deemed equal with someone who can see. Obviously, they cannot be equal—hence, will people not think?
(Qur’an, al-An’am, 6:104)
The Qur’an declares above, that means of insight have now come unto mankind from their Lord-God through this revealed Book.
Whoever, therefore, chooses to ‘see’ and recognize the Truth, does so for his own good; and whoever chooses to remain ‘blind’ to the Truth, does so to his own detriment. And (say unto the blind): I am not your keeper.
(Qur’an, al-An’am, 6:110)
Those who reject this Qur’an will pay a price for that rejection. Allah Most High will keep their hearts and their eyes turned away from the truth, even as they did not believe in it in the first instance; and so they will be left in their overweening arrogance blindly stumbling to and fro.
(Qur’an, al-‘Araf, 7:64)
When his people rejected Noah and Allah Most High responded to punish them, Allah saved him and those who stood by him, in the Ark, then He caused those who had rejected the Truth sent with Noah to drown. The Qur’an then declared that they were a people who were ‘blind’!
(Qur’an, Yunus, 10:43)
Among the people there are those who pretend to look towards the Prophet: but can he show the right way to the ‘blind’—when they are a people who cannot ‘see’?
(Qur’an, Hud, 11:24)
The Qur’an directs attention to two kinds of men who may be likened to the ‘blind’ and ‘deaf’, on the one hand, and the ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’, on the other. Can these two be deemed alike in their nature? Will people not, then, keep this in mind?
(Qur’an, al-R’ad, 13:19)
The Qur’an asks whether one who knows and accepts that whatever has been bestowed from on high upon the Prophet by the Lord-God is the Truth, be deemed equal to one who is ‘blind’? Only they who are endowed with insight keep this in mind.
(Qur’an, al-Isra’, 17:72)
The Qur’an declares that whoever is ‘blind’ in this world will be ‘blind’ in the life to come as well, and still farther astray from the path of truth.
We can now conclude that Dajjal’s capacity to see with his left eye, and his blindness in his right eye, ought to be recognized as information that is Mutashabihah, i.e., allegorical, and hence subject to Ta’wil, or interpretation. Our interpretation of the description given by Prophet Muhammad ṣallā -llāhu taʿālā ʿalayhī wa-sallam is that Dajjal has external sight, but he is internally blind!
There is an ominous implication which follows from the above interpretation. All those from amongst mankind who follow Dajjal will all eventually be similar to him, i.e., internally blind; and since he has the word Kafir or ‘disbeliever’ written on his forehead, the further implication is that all those who follow him would become Kuffar (plural of Kafir) or ‘disbelievers’, and thus be debarred from entering into Jannah or paradise.
It is, perhaps, because of this implication that the Qur’an has delivered a truly ominous warning to those who remain internally blind, that the hellfire can await them, since Dajjal can get them to dance to every tune he plays:
(Qur’an, al-‘Araf, 7:179)
Allah Most High has warned that huge numbers of Jinn and men who have hearts with which they fail to grasp the truth, ‘eyes’ with which they fail to ‘see’, and ‘ears’ with which they fail to ‘hear’, are destined to enter the Hell-fire. He considers them to have a status like unto cattle—nay, they are even less conscious of the right way: it is they, they who are the truly heedless!
Protestant Islam, which seems, mysteriously so, to be a carbon-copy of Protestant Christianity, may remain unconvinced by our argument in favor of an interpretation that Dajjal’s blind eye should be interpreted to mean internal blindness, and may consequently remain steadfastly adamant in their literal understanding of his ‘blind’ right eye. Such a people would obviously refuse to recognize Dajjal when he eventually appears in Jerusalem with the claim to be the Messiah, unless he is literally blind in the right eye.
Protestant Islam should reflect over the mysterious incapacity of all disbelievers, regardless of how perfect their eyesight may be, to be able to read what all believers would be able to read, namely the word Kafir which would be written between Dajjal’s eyes—on his forehead! Such die-hards, who cling to a literal understanding of Dajjal’s blind right eye, and to the word Kafir written on his forehead, must explain to us why the Prophet singled out the Mu’min, i.e., believer, and hence excluded the Kafir, i.e., disbeliever, when he declared that the believer would be able to read what was written on Dajjal’s forehead? Why can the believer read what the disbeliever cannot read? Protestant Islam must either deliver an answer which is convincing, or abandon its defective methodology.
Indeed, unless they change their defective methodology they will never be able to explain why Tamim al-Dari, who saw Dajjal (who is so blind in his right eye that it looks like a bulging grape), failed to mention anything about his blind right eye when he reported the event to the Prophet:
It was narrated that Fatimah bint Qays (may Allah be pleased with her) said: . . . (what follows are the words spoken by Tamim al-Dari) ... Then we set off, rushing, until we came to that monastery, where we found the hugest man, we had ever seen, bound strongly in chains with his hands tied to his neck and his legs bound from the knees to the ankles with iron shackles ... (Sahih al-Bukhari)
Protestant Islam has an even greater obstacle to overcome when they attempt to offer a credible explanation how Prophet Muhammad ṣallā -llāhu taʿālā ʿalayhī wa-sallam could suspect Ibn Sayyad, a Jewish youth in Medina, to be Dajjal, when he was not blind in the right eye?
While the above exhausts our physical description of Dajjal, the false Messiah, derived from a literal understanding of scriptural texts in Islam, there is more information concerning Dajjal’s unique profile which can be discovered through a process of deduction from those texts; and it is to that process of deduction that we now direct attention.
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