Popular writing on Islamic end times mixes three layers: what the Quran says, what the hadith (the reports of the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him) add, and what later tradition built on top. Most of the confusion comes from treating them as one.
Each of the five entries below is placed in its layer. Some beliefs rest on the Quran, some on hadith that both major collections record, and some on reports that scholars have graded differently. A Muslim is bound to the first group, may weigh the others, and is never given a calendar.
“They ask you about the Hour: when will it come? Say, its knowledge is with my Lord alone.”[1] That is the Quran’s position, and the Prophet repeated it. When Gabriel asked him about the Hour he answered, “The one asked knows no more than the one asking.”[2] A man once asked him when the Hour would come, and he replied with a question: what have you prepared for it?[3]
This is the first test of any claim about dates. A prediction that the end will come in a given year contradicts the Quran. A critic may reply that the Prophet is also reported to have said that he and the Hour were sent like two fingers held side by side.[4] The hadith expresses nearness, and nearness has no number attached to it. Fourteen centuries have passed since he spoke, and the Quran itself says that a day with God may be as a thousand years of human counting.
The hadith do list signs, and they come in two kinds. The minor signs are social: people competing in building tall buildings, a loss of trust, a spread of ignorance.[5] The Prophet said that when trust is lost, one should wait for the Hour, and that knowledge would be taken away as the scholars die.[6] The major signs are ten, among them the Dajjal, the return of Jesus, Gog and Magog, and the sun rising from the west.[7]
Two of the ten also appear in the Quran: Gog and Magog, and the beast that speaks to people. The sunrise from the west is tied to the verse that says faith will profit no soul on the day some of the Lord’s signs arrive.[8] Scholars separate the signs that have already appeared from those still to come, and they warn against pointing at a current event and calling it the final sign. Every generation has done so, and the signs have been wrongly claimed many times.
The signs are warnings to live carefully. The Prophet is not reported to have given them as a means of working out the date.
The Dajjal, “the deceiver”, is not named in the Quran. He comes from the hadith, which describe a false claimant who is blind in one eye and who will tempt people with wonders.[9] The Prophet said that every prophet warned his people about him.[10] A critic can fairly ask why a figure so grave is missing from the Quran. The answer is that the Quran leaves many matters to the Prophet’s explanation, as it does with the number and form of the daily prayers, and the reports about the Dajjal come through many Companions in both major collections.
The detail Muslims are taught is the test. His wonders are real, and the answer to him is faith and a recitation of the opening verses of Surah al-Kahf.[11] Muslims are also taught to seek refuge from his trial at the end of every prayer.[12] The figure stands for the final trial of belief against appearance.
Many Muslims expect a just leader from the Prophet’s family before the end. The Quran does not mention the Mahdi. The reports come from hadith collections, in particular Abu Dawud and al-Tirmidhi, and scholars have graded them differently.[13] One report says that if only a day of the world remained, God would lengthen it until He sent a man from the Prophet’s family. Neither al-Bukhari nor Muslim includes the Mahdi reports under that name. Some great scholars, among them Ibn Khaldun, who examined the chains in his Muqaddimah, doubted them.[14] Others, including Ibn Taymiyya, accepted that the reports are sound taken together.[15]
So this is the one item on the list that a Muslim can reject or accept without leaving the faith. Belief in the Last Day is required. Belief in the Mahdi is a matter of the scholars’ judgement of the reports. History adds a caution: men who claimed the title, in the Sudan in the 1880s and at Mecca in 1979, were opposed by the great majority of Muslim scholars.
“Who is there that can intercede with Him except by His permission?”[16] The Quran limits intercession at the root: nobody can plead with God unless God allows it, and then only for those He is pleased with.[17] Other verses say that on the Day of Judgement no intercession will benefit those who deny it, which critics read as a contradiction of the hadith below.[18] The verses address two different things. One denies intercession as of right, and the other grants it by permission.
Within that limit, the Prophet said that on the Day of Judgement people will go to the prophets one by one asking for help, and each will excuse himself until they come to Muhammad, who will prostrate before God and then be told to ask.[19] Most commentators take the “praised station” promised to him in the Quran to refer to this.[19] The Mu’tazila denied that intercession could lift a grave sinner out of punishment, and the Sunni schools affirmed it. It is a picture of mercy delivered by permission and not by right.
The bottom line
The evidence sorts itself by strength. The certainty that the Hour will come and that no creature knows its time rests on the Quran. The signs, the Dajjal and the return of Jesus rest on hadith that are widely transmitted, and Muslims accept them as part of the faith. The Mahdi and the details of order rest on reports that scholars have weighed differently, and Muslims may differ there without blame.
Anyone who offers a date, or who names a living person as the Dajjal or the Mahdi, claims more than the sources give. The sources give a warning and a way to prepare: faith, care in conduct and trust in God’s mercy.
Notes
- Quran 7:187; see also 31:34 and 79:42–44.
- Sahih Muslim 8 (the hadith of Gabriel from Umar) and Sahih al-Bukhari 50 (from Abu Hurayra). Al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim, vol. 1, pp. 150 and 158, and Fath al-Bari (Salafiyya edition), vol. 1, p. 114 (Shamela text).
- Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, the hadith of the man who asked about the Hour.
- Sahih al-Bukhari 6503, the report of Sahl ibn Sad on the two fingers. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Fath al-Bari (Salafiyya edition), vol. 11, p. 347 (Shamela text); on the day equal to a thousand years, Quran 22:47.
- Sahih Muslim 8, the hadith of Gabriel, which includes the competition in tall buildings. Al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim, vol. 1, pp. 150 and 158 (Shamela text).
- Sahih al-Bukhari 59 (Book of Knowledge, trust and the Hour) and 80 (the removal of knowledge). Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Fath al-Bari (Salafiyya edition), vol. 1, pp. 141 and 178 (Shamela text).
- Sahih Muslim 2901, the hadith of the ten signs (Book of Tribulations and Signs of the Hour). Al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim, vol. 18, p. 27 (Shamela text).
- Quran 27:82; 18:94–99; 21:96; 6:158.
- Sahih al-Bukhari 3439, the report of Ibn Umar on the Dajjal. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Fath al-Bari (Salafiyya edition), vol. 6, p. 477 (Shamela text).
- Sahih al-Bukhari 3337, the report of Ibn Umar that every prophet warned his people about the Dajjal. Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Fath al-Bari (Salafiyya edition), vol. 6, p. 370 (Shamela text).
- Sahih Muslim 809, the report on the opening verses of Surah al-Kahf (some narrations name the closing verses). Al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim, vol. 6, p. 92 (Shamela text).
- Sahih Muslim 588, the supplication for refuge taught after the final testimony in prayer. Al-Nawawi, Sharh Sahih Muslim, vol. 5, pp. 85–87 (Shamela text).
- Abu Dawud and al-Tirmidhi; the grading of the Mahdi reports varies by scholar.
- Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddimah, the section on the Mahdi.
- Ibn Taymiyya, Minhaj al-sunna, on the Mahdi reports.
- Quran 2:255.
- Quran 21:28; 53:26.
- Quran 2:254; 74:48.
- Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, the hadith of the great intercession; for the praised station, Quran 17:79.