Islamic Vision of Prophecy

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:


Correctness of the prediction itself.

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:


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.


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.’”[Al-Bukhari, al-maghazi, hadith 4359.]