Mohamad Quote I Was I Would Be Reborn to Kill Again
The Problem With the Islamic Apocalypse
ISTANBUL — The cover of the most contempo issue of Dabiq, the slick magazine that the Islamic Country distributes online, shows an image of a jihadist fighter with the group'south notorious blackness flag behind him. He appears to be on the roof of a church building, knocking over a cross. Below him, a headline reads, "Intermission the Cantankerous."
It might seem at start that the Islamic State was just celebrating its barbarous entrada to uproot the Christians of Republic of iraq and Syrian arab republic. Simply "suspension the cross" is not an capricious phrase. It refers to a prophecy that will supposedly exist realized in the final era before the apocalypse.
This prophecy comes from hadiths, or sayings, attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, a literature that is regarded as less definitive than the Quran, merely is yet influential in shaping Islamic doctrine. According to certain hadiths, the apocalypse will come in stages. In the starting time, the world volition be filled with injustice, and Muslims volition exist oppressed. Then two saviors will arise: "the awaited one," or Mahdi, a divinely guided caliph who will unite and empower Muslims, followed by a bygone prophet who will come back to earth to back up the Mahdi and defeat evil. This prophet will non exist Muhammad, equally i could take expected, but Jesus, praised in the Quran as the Messiah and the "Word of God."
Many Christians as well await the 2nd Coming of Jesus, so this might sound to them similar expert news. Merely Islamic literature seems to suggest that Jesus will return to abolish Christianity and ostend the truth of Islam. A much-quoted hadith, to which the Dabiq headline was alluding, says, "The Son of Mary will soon descend among yous as a simply ruler; he will intermission the cross and kill the swine." The usual interpretation of this prophecy is that when Jesus comes back, he will put an finish to his ain worship, symbolized by the cross, and re-establish the dietary laws that Christianity abandoned but Jews and Muslims still observe.
Non every Muslim believes such apocalyptic prophecies, most of which don't exist in the Quran. Almost of those who believe in them would also not have any sympathy for the ferocious, brutal Islamic State. Withal Islamic apocalypticism is all the same a powerful strength. According to a 2012 poll by the Pew Research Eye, half of Muslims or more in nine Muslim-majority countries believe that the coming of the Mahdi is "imminent," and could happen in their lifetime. The Islamic State just goes farther by claiming that information technology is bringing the prophecies to life.
Even bated from jihadist violence, Islamic apocalypticism often has negative consequences. When recent history and current events are seen every bit best explained by prophecies, it becomes difficult to analyze them. Accept, for example, the chief quandary of the Muslim world for the past two centuries: Why have we moved then far astern compared with the West? The apocalyptic narrative, revived since the 1980s by popular Islamic writers such as the Egyptian Said Ayyub and many of his followers, states that this happened because of the forces of "Dajjal" — Islam'due south version of the Antichrist.
If the Dajjal is to blame for the Muslim globe'south bleak state of affairs, then simply divinely guided saviors can find a style out. This belief discourages pursuing the real solutions to the gap betwixt the Islamic world and the Westward: science, economic evolution and liberal democracy.
Muslims — and perhaps other apocalyptic believers as well — should see that obsession with prophecies might cost them not just rationality, simply besides a very primal value of their ain faith: humility. Because to assert that we are at the finish of times means that nosotros are quite special. We are not merely 1 of the countless generations that God has created. We are the chosen few, at the apex of history. Information technology is really non piety that underlies this conviction; information technology is vanity.
Muslims should also consider that the prophecies nigh terminate times might exist better read metaphorically. This could help u.s.a. open our minds, rather than closing them. The 19th-century Islamic scholar Muhammad Abduh, for example, argued that Jesus's Second Coming was a metaphor for reform within Islam. Just like the bourgeois Jews at the time of Jesus, Abduh observed, bourgeois Muslims of today are often too rigid with the letter of the law, but unmindful of its spirit and the moral purposes. Abduh argued that Muslims need a "Messiah-oriented renewal" focusing on "mercy, dear and peace." His vision was focused non on "breaking the cross," but on repairing the crescent.
Muslims tin understand Jesus's Second Coming in the horrifying way of the Islamic State or the inspiring way of Abduh. That is because religious texts come to life at the hands of men. And it makes a great difference whether the believers' purpose is to self-righteously sharpen their blades against others, or to humbly educate and enlighten themselves.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/04/opinion/the-problem-with-the-islamic-apocalypse.html
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