Last Day and Islamic Spirituality The Forgotten Path

Islamic Spirituality - The Forgotten Path

 

A lecture delivered by Maulana Imran Nazar Hosein

at the Maulana Abd al-Aleem  Siddiqui Masjid, Singapore

The stranger asked question four. When will the last day come? The Holy Prophet ﷺ replied, ‘The one who is being questioned has no more knowledge than the one who is questioning.’ Next question please! That’s the way to respond to anybody who wants to engage us on this subject. Only Allah ﷻ knows when the world will come to an end. None of us knows. I said in my previous lectures  that by my calculation  using the  hadith and external  observation  that  I expect  sometime within the next fifty years. The Muslim army will come and destroy the state of Israel. One fellow responded to me from Pakistan saying, ‘Shaykh, I can’t wait for fifty years that is too long.’ This next fifty years is going to be the worst in our history. The greatest suffering and oppression will come this next fifty years. The wickedest  of  the  wickedest  of  the  people  will  be  the  rulers  of  the  people. Mercilessly  and shamelessly they will be attacking  Islam whilst hiding behind a curtain called terrorism. So watch it! If you want to be a part time Muslim, no problem, but the minute you want to be a true servant of Allah ﷻ they’re coming after you.  When they come after you, you had better have protection from Allah ﷻ. If you are not reciting Suratul Kahf every  Friday they are going to cut you down. While it is only Allah ﷻ who knows when the Last Day will come, the Holy Qur’aan tells us that the heart of the believer always feels that it is close while the disbeliever always thinks its far away.

Then came question five which teaches  us the application of spirituality of al- ihsaan. How do you apply it?  What  is its practical  utility?  The  stranger  asked, ‘What are the signs of the Last Day?’ The Holy Prophet ﷺ  replied and he said:

1. ‘You will find a naked, barefooted shepherd – [meaning  people who have the brains; the intellectual acumen of naked, barefooted shepherds] – competing with each other to build high rise buildings.’

I have the tallest building in the world. They have the intellectual acumen of naked, barefooted shepherds because they measure progress in this way. Hence we have built the  tallest  building, the  grandest  airport in the  world and all  these  PR projects that make our place look like heaven we have achieved progress. So they measure progress with PR projects. Allah  ﷻ says [in  the 49th  Sura, al-Hujeraat [The Inner Chambers] in verse 13]:

Indeed the more honourable among you, in the sight of Allah, is one who is more pious among you

You  shouldn’t  measure  progress  with  high  rise  buildings  but  rather  measure progress with how much fear of Allah ﷻ is there in the heart. You have made no progress. You may have built the tallest building but you have no fear of Allah ﷻ in your heart. So you and all those that stand with you represent no progress at all. He is underneath a mango tree, a shoemaker making shoes but in his heart there is the fear of his Lord, so he is superior to you. When you see a world acclaiming  those who build these high rise buildings, the tallest  building in the world and the world considers that to be progress and the world looks down upon his one who has the fear of Allah ﷻ in his heart, you know that is a major sign of the Last Day. How many can see it today and how many are fooled? Then he came to the last one:

2. He said, ‘You will find that the slave woman will give birth to her mistress.’

 

Source:  Islamic Spirituality - TheForgotten Path

 to be continued  . . . .

The Way to God’s Kingdom - Lessons From History

The Way to God’s Kingdom

Belief in the most certain event of Doomsday is part of our faith as Muslims, and, in this context, the global happenings of our age clearly indicate that the end of the world is probably a matter of near future. This opinion is based upon the predictions of Prophet Muhammad (SAW), many of which have already come true in the world around us, and the stage is obviously being set for the final set of events before Doomsday — the grand finale of the global drama. We shall now discuss these coming events which will precede the establishment of the domination  of  Islam,  as  disclosed  by  Prophet  Muhammad (SAW).

Indications regarding the greatest World War of human history that appear in the Hadith collections are, in general, couched in allegorical language. It seems that The War will take place in three phases, and will be fought predominantly in the Middle  East.  During  the  first  phase,  Muslim  and  Christian armies will join hands and fight against a third force, the identity of  which  is  uncertain.  The  allies  will  defeat  their  common enemy,  but  then  serious  discord  and  hostility  will  break out between them, leading to the second phase of The War characterized  by  fierce  fighting  between  the  Muslim  and Christian  armies.  Initially  the  Christians  will  have  the  upper hand, and the Muslims will lose important strongholds like Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. Although during the first and second  phases  the  Jews themselves will not take part in the battle,  their  resources,  technical  know-how,  and  their propaganda  machinery  will  be  used  with  utmost  destructive effect against the Muslims.

According to the prophecies, at this point the Muslims will select a rightly guided man as their military and political leader. This leader, called Mahdi in Hadith literature, will reorganize and unite the Muslim forces against the Christians, shifting the fortunes of The War in favor of the Muslims.

The third phase of The War will commence with the appearance  on  the  scene  of  an  exceedingly  cunning  Jewish leader — Dajjal or Anti-Christ. From then onwards the Jews will start to take active part in the fighting, and the combined forces of Jews and Christians will inflict heavy losses on the Muslims. At this stage — Prophet Muhammad (SAW) has told in unequivocal words — Prophet Isa (AS) will reappear to strengthen and reinforce the Muslim armies. He will deliver the final installment of Divine punishment to the Jews, and will kill their leader, Dajjal. The reappearance of Prophet Isa (AS) will mark the end of Christianity as a separate religion, and the most glorious and peaceful era of human history will commence. This will be “God’s Kingdom on earth,” when the Deen of Allah (SWT) will reign supreme, and the world will enjoy unprecedented bounties and blessings of the Lord.

This period of Khilafah on the pattern of Prophethood will last so long as Almighty Allah (SWT) wills; then, after this blissful era, the world will once again be filled with wickedness. All the faithful population of the world will die peacefully and calmly one day, just before the end of the world. In this way, only the unbelievers and the wicked shall be left to face the dreadful events of the Doomsday.

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

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