2. Islamic Vision of Prophecy

The future is known only to Allah, but in His infinite wisdom, He allows some of His servants to see some future events. The greatest means of seeing the future is through revelation, which is restricted to the prophets –may Allah's peace and blessings be on them; true dreams, which are revelation for prophets, and good or bad tidings to ordinary people. True dreams happen to believer and unbeliever, pious and impious. Furthermore, there are other means such as intuition, inspiration, and discernment.

Any prediction of the future requires two things to be accurate:

  1. Correctness of the prediction itself.
  2. Correctness of its interpretation.

The Christians and Jews speculate concerning future events and calamities more than any other religion. Some Muslims have also engaged in this since early times. Thus, do the scholars explain the relative neglect of hadith narration among the scholars of Syria/Palestine and Egypt compared to those of Hijaz and Iraq by the fact that they were busy studying the predictions of future events and calamities. Amazing examples are attributed to Ka`b al-Ahbar which we cannot take the time here to detail. Their sources for this study were their Holy Books and their glosses and commentaries, especially those using symbolism and numerology.

In accordance with the innate yearning of mankind to unveil the future, it has not only occupied theologians, but even secular scholars and well-known natural scientists such as Newton in the past, and some computer scientists and mathematicians of today. Their writings on this subject are numerous, some of which are included in our references.

The captivity and dispersal of the Jews, and the Roman persecution of the Christians had a great effect on their occupation with predictions of a savior or redeemer, fabricating prophecies concerning him, and interpreting every text as referring to him.

One of the best examples of this is their distortion of prophecies and predictions so that they would conform to the circumstances of the era and people of the interpreter. For this reason, the interpretations of the prophecies are more contradictory than those of the disputes of the various denominations and sects. Most of them have committed an even worse crime, which is to efface or distort any prediction of the prophet of the last days and his community, and arbitrariness in interpreting them to be about the Jewish Messiah called 'the Prince of Peace,' or Christ –peace be on him.

Furthermore, the variations within the texts, discrepancies of the translations, and the numerous interpretations only add heap upon heap, so that getting to the buried truths requires great care and patience, along with guidance of the light of the accurately preserved revelation of the Qur'an and Sunna.

Because of the Christian and Jewish rejection of this light, they have forbidden of themselves the sources of certainty, and lost themselves in darkness from which there is no other means of escape.

Our position concerning the prophecies of the Christians and Jews is identical to our position concerning their texts and statements in general, which are of three categories:

First: That which is doubtlessly false. This consists of that which they have fabricated or whose actual meanings they have distorted, such as their claim that the prophet of the last days will be a descendent of David, that the promised Messiah will be Jewish, and their effacing of the prophecies concerning Islam and its messenger –Allah's blessing and peace be on him. In general, it is everything that contradicts that which is found in the Qur'an and the authentic Sunna.

Second: That which doubtlessly correct. This is of two types:

  1. That which is confirmed by a revealed text. Examples of this are their description of the seal of prophethood, of the Second Coming of Christ, the coming of the Anti-Christ, and their description of great battles in the last days between the forces of unbelief and the forces of faith. Included in this type are texts of whose details or interpretation we may dispute with them.
  2. That which is confirmed by actual events, such as the hadith of Sahih al-Bukhari narrated on the authority of Jarir ibn `Abd Allah: “I was in Yemen when I met two Yemeni men: Dhul Kila` and Dhu `Amru. I began to talk to them about Allah's Messenger –may Allah's peace and blessings be on him- when Dhu `Amru said, 'If what you say about your leader is so, then he has passed away three days ago.' They traveled along with me until we met a caravan from Madinah on one of the roads. We asked them and they informed us that Allah's Messenger had died, and that Abu Bakr had been appointed to succeed him, and that the people were fine. The two Yemenis then said, 'Tell your leader that we have come, and that perhaps we will return.' They then returned to Yemen. I then told Abu Bakr their story and he said, 'Why did you not bring them here?' Later Dhu `Amru said to me, 'Jarir, I owe you a favor. I will tell you something: You Arabs will be fine as long as you continue to choose a leader to replace the one who has died, but when they (assume power by) the sword, then they will be kings, angered by what angers kings, and pleased with what pleases kings.'” 4

Third: That which we neither confirm nor deny. It consists of all that is not included in either of the two previous categories. As the Prophet –may Allah's blessing and peace be on him- said, “Do not believe what the followers of the Bible say, but do not deny it.” 5

Examples of this are their predictions concerning the Assyrian, the Abomination of Desolation, and similar things. Our neither confirming nor denying them means that it is outside the bounds of doctrine and revelation, and within the bounds of opinion and historical narrative in which error, modification, or addition are possible. That is, the negation does not imply that it is absolutely unacceptable to research the issue, but it is research into that which is conditional, and which is circumscribed with doubt and vagueness.

Today, when nearly the entire world is following the course of events occurring in Palestine through the media, we find that there are many people in America and elsewhere who have another concern. There is another marketplace besides the marketplace of the visual and printed media, it is the marketplace of prophecy and fortune-telling. It is a market whose business never slows or ceases. Its goods are the books of the Old and New Testaments and their commentaries. Its merchants are the priests of literalist fundamentalism. Its customers are from all classes of society from the rulers of the White House and the Pentagon, to the man in the street. Of this group there are many divisions:

Some await the coming of Christ.
Some await the coming of the Anti-Christ.
Some await the battle of Armageddon.
And some predict the end of the State of Israel due to the intifadha, and the destruction of the peace process.

This last is what interests us since the end of that state is the most urgent of these issues in respect to our real life situation, and the most removed of them from the sphere of Allah's exclusive knowledge which would lead to speculation on matters concerning the Day of Resurrection which are known only to Allah.

Furthermore, any secular strategic study can arrive at conclusions, which are similar or nearly identical to that which Biblical Prophecy states concerning the end of the State of Israel.

The one decisive component which is unique to the prophecies is specification of the actual number of years until the end of the State of Israel, which makes this to be an article of faith for believers in the Old and New Testaments, and not simply a matter of opinion for researchers. In this case we hope that many of them will benefit from the truth which we will attempt to uncover for the sake of the truth alone.

Since Christian Zionism is the most dangerous to humanity of all contemporary movements, and since the foundation of its doctrines and hellish plans is the coming true of the prediction of the establishment of the State of Israel; it is necessary for every lover of justice and peace on earth to know the reality of their prophecies and to join hands with them to destroy with truth and reason, the fundamentals on which their fundamentalism is based, before they can destroy world peace and change our troubled planet into lump of flame.

The reality of our world today which is recognized by many intellectuals, is that it is possible for a terrorist organization in Europe or Russia to demolish world peace completely, so why are we ignoring this huge movement which has seized the minds of a third of the people in the most powerful nation on earth, and which strives with all persistence to control the affairs of this nation, and which expends all its energy to support the largest terrorist organization in the world –the Zionist state?

We hope –if the intelligentsia of America and elsewhere would do their duty- that the fundamentalists will realize their error, and that many of those who have been deceived or ignorant will awaken from their stupor. When we work together to show them the falseness of their concept and the error of their prophecies, then we will have opposed falsehood with the truth, enmity with justice, and terrorism with logic. This is one of the greatest goals of Islam. As Allah says addressing His Messenger in His scripture:

“We have sent you only as mercy for all the worlds.”
4 Al-Bukhari, al-maghazi, hadith 4359.
5 Ibid., al-Tafsir, hadith 4485.