Islamic eschatology
Suggestions have included an era of trials and tribulations, immorality, mighty wars, unnatural phenomena, an invasion by Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog) into Arab lands, and/or the return of justice to the world.
[8] In addition to this information, which also expresses the belief of the "first Muslim scholars", Michael Cook states that Ibn Ishaq calculated the period from Adam to the arrival of Muhammad as 5,432 years.
[10] In the apocalyptic scenes, clues and descriptions are included regarding the nature, structure and dimensions of the celestial bodies as perceived in the Quran: While the stars are lamps illuminating the sky in ordinary cases, turns into stones (Al-Mulk 1-5) or (shahap; meteor, burning fire) (al-Jinn 9) thrown at demons that illegally ascend to the sky; When the time of judgment comes, they spill onto the earth, but this does not mean that life on earth ends; People run left and right in fear.
[60]One of the primary beliefs pertaining to Islamic eschatology during the Early Muslim Period was that all humans could receive God's mercy and were worthy of salvation.
[62] According to scholars Jane I. Smith, Yvonne Y. Haddad, "the vast majority of believers", understand verses of the Quran on Jannah (and hellfire) "to be real and specific, anticipating them" with joy or terror.
[65] On the issue of Judgement Day, early Muslims debated whether scripture should be interpreted literally or figuratively, and the school of thought that prevailed (Ashʿarī) "affirmed that such things as" connected with Judgement day as "the individual records of deeds (including the paper, pen, and ink with which they are inscribed), the bridge, the balance, and the pond" are "realities", and "to be understood in a concrete and literal sense.
[67] Islamic Modernists, according to Smith and Haddad, express a "kind of embarrassment with the elaborate traditional detail concerning life in the grave and in the abodes of recompense, called into question by modern rationalists".
[68][69][70] Consequently, most of "modern Muslim Theologians" either "silence the issue" or reaffirm "the traditional position that the reality of the afterlife must not be denied but that its exact nature remains unfathomable".
[73] Amina Wadud notes that the Qur'an does not mention any specific gender when talking about hell, Q.43:74–76, for example, states that "the guilty are immortal in hell's torment"; and when discussing paradise, includes women, Q.3:14–15, for example, states that "Beautiful of mankind is love of the joys (that come) from women and offspring..."[74] In terms of classical Islam, "the only options" afforded by the Qur'an for the resurrected are an eternity of horrible punishments of The Fire or the delightful rewards of The Garden.
[78] In Classical Islam, there was a consensus among the theological community regarding the finality of Jannah (also called Heaven, paradise, the Gardens); after Judgement Day, faithful servants of God would find themselves here for eternity.
Hadith narrate Muhammad warning his followers to "refrain from speaking about qadar";[91] and according to the creed of Al-Tahawi, "the principle of providence" is such a secret that God did not let even angels, prophets and messengers in on the mystery.
)[104] Based on these categories, four "well-known and particularly influential Muslim thinkers" can be sorted as: Ashʿarism (/æʃəˈriː/; Arabic: أشعرية: al-ʾAshʿarīyah), one of the main Sunni schools of Islamic theology, founded by the Islamic scholar, Shāfiʿī jurist, Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī in the 10th century,[105] is known for an optimistic perspective on salvation for Muslims, repeatedly addressing God's mercy over God's wrath.
[109]: 215 Ash'arite scholar al-Ghazali divided non-Muslims into three categories for purposes of the Afterlife according to Mohammad Hassan Khalil:[110][102] Of these three, only the last group would be punished.
[114]: 5 [109]: 215 [108]: 110 While some (like Rifat Atay) regard Māturīdism to be exclusivistic, only allowing people who are Muslims to enter paradise,[108]: 110 others argue that Māturīdi understood that "to believe in Islam" meant having a subjective conceptualization of God and his laws by reason alone.
[13]: 285 Similar, most Salafi authors reiterate works produced in the premodern period, but add personal preferences adjusting them to comply to their moral and sectarian convictions.
Desire to counter colonialism and "achieve material and technological parity with the West" turned modern thinkers to stress this world (dunyā), without suggesting ākhira was less important.
[130][nb 4] However, in 2012 poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 50% or more respondents in several Muslim-majority countries (Lebanon, Turkey, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco) expected the Mahdi (the final redeemer according to Islam)[131] to return during their lifetime.
[138] During Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's presidency (2005-2013), he shared with Iranians his "avowed conviction" that believers must actively work for the Mahdi's reappearance, despite this bringing him "into conflict with the highest authorities of Shiism".
[139] "Dramatic and sensational stories" of the apocalypse first made an impact in the mid-1980s when Said Ayyub's Al-Masīh al-Dajjāl (The AntiChrist) started a whole new genre of Islamic "apocalyptic fiction"[140] or "millenarian speculation"[141] throughout the Arab world.
[143] The book (and the genre) was noteworthy for rupturing the "organic link between Islamic tradition and the last days of the world",[140] using Western sources (such as Gustave Le Bon and William Guy Carr) that previously would have been ignored; and lack of Sahih Bukhari (i.e. top quality) hadith (he does quote Ibn Kathir and some hadith "repeated at second hand"); and for an obsessively anti-Jewish point of view ("in all great transformations of thought, there is a Jewish factor, avowed and plain, or else hidden and secret",[144] "the Jews are planning the Third World War in order to eliminate the Islamic world and all opposition to Israel",[145] and cover art featuring a grotesque cartoon figure with a Star of David and large hooked nose).
[144][146] Unlike traditional popular works of Islamic eschatology that kept close to scripture and classical manuals of eschatology in describing al-Dajjāl, Said Ayyub portrayed the Dajjāl as 1) the true Jewish messiah, that Jews had been waiting for, 2) a figure who will appear or reappear not only in end times, but one who has been working throughout the history of humanity to create havoc with such diabolical success that human history is really "only a succession of nefarious maneuvers" by him.
He concludes that the dajjal is hiding in Palestine (but will also "appear in Khurasan as the head of an expansionist state") and the Great Battle between Muslims and his forces will be World War III fought in the Middle East.
[147] Later books, The Hidden Link between the AntiChrist, the Secrets of the Bermuda Triangle, and Flying Saucers (1994), by Muhammad Isa Dawud, for example, move even farther away from traditional themes, disclosing that the Anti-Christ journeyed from the Middle East to the archipelago of Bermuda in the 8th century CE to make it his home base and from whence he fomented the French Revolution and other mischief, and now sends flying saucers to patrol Egypt and prepare for his eventual triumphal return to Jerusalem.
[142] In the early 1980s, when Abdullah Azzam, called on Muslims around the world to join the jihad in Afghanistan, he considered the fight "to be a sign that the end times were imminent".
[149] Al-Qaeda used "apocalyptic predictions in both its internal and external messaging" according to Jessica Stern, and its use of "the name Khorasan, a region that includes part of Iran, Central Asia, and Afghanistan, and from which, it is prophesied, the Mahdi will emerge alongside an army bearing black flags", was thought to be a symbol of end times.
[151] A prominent jihadist, Abu Musʿab al-Sūri, (called a "sophisticated strategist" and "articulate exponent of the modern jihad"),[152][153] somewhat independent and critical of Al-Qaeda, was also much more interested in end times.
He wrote, "I have no doubt that we have entered into the age of battles and tribulations [zāman al-malāhim wal-fitan]"[154] He devoted the last 100 pages of his magnum opus on jihad (A Call to Global Islamic Resistance, made available online around 2005) to matters such as the proper chronology and location of related battles and other activities of the Mahdi, the Antichrist, the mountain of gold to be found in the Euphrates river, the Sufyani, Gog and Magog, etc.
Dabiq, Syria – a town understood "in some versions" of the eschatological "narrative to be a possible location for the final apocalyptic battle" – was captured by ISIS and made its capital.
"[179] Filiu has also stated that "the apocalyptic narrative was decisively influenced by the conflicts that filled Islam's early years, campaigns and jihad against the Byzantine Empire and recurrent civil wars among Muslims.
The fact of the resurrection of the body has been of continuing importance to Muslims and has raised very particular questions in certain circles of Islamic thought, such as those reflected in the later disputations between philosophy and theology.
