Friday, February 25, 2011

A PARADIGM SHIFT


"And We sent thee not (O Muhammad), but as a Mercy unto (all) the worlds"
The Holy Qur'an, Chapter 21, Verse 107

Allah tells us in the Qur’an:
"Behold! In the creation of the heavens and the earth; in the alternation of the Night and the Day; in the sailing of the ships through the Ocean for the profit of mankind; in the rain which Allah sends down from the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in the change of the winds and the clouds which they trail like their slaves between the sky and the earth, (here) indeed are Signs for a people that are wise"

He is Allah, there is nothing worthy of worship but He. He knows all things – hidden and revealed. He is the Beneficent, the Merciful. He is Allah, there is no deity but He. The sovereign, the Holy, the Sublime, the Guardian of (True) Faith, the Watcher over his creation, the Mighty, the Irresistible, the Supreme, Glory to Allah! (High is He) above what they ascribe to Him! He is Allah, the Creator, the Originator, the Bestower of Forms. To Him belong the Most Beautiful Names. All in the heavens and the earth glorify Him. And He is the Almighty, the Wise. (Quran, 59:22-4)

If God sent a religion, how would people who do not know of the religion believe in it? What means did God put in the human beings by which they can decide right from wrong? Surely the religion was not revealed to the whole of humanity at once. It must have started from one point. How would others know of it and more so accept it and believe in it? What is that one faculty that is shared by all human beings by which a message can be analyzed and determined to be right?

The answer is quite simple; it is the human mind and the faculty of reasoning. It is the mind that helps us judge things and decides between right and wrong in every matter of our lives. The word of God, if it is to be transferred to other people who are foreign to it, must conform to the faculty of reasoning that God put in all of us. This is why in Islam faith in God is not the outcome of dogmas and doctrine but rather the product of reasoning and deep scrutiny of revelation.

When one era ends and a new one begins’ , as we wittness the end of decades of ruling elite, dictors, kings and preveleged rulers, we can't help but suspect that some major shift is in the works.  Couple this with the strange death of birds, bees, fish and other animals, we can be certain this will be a year never unlike any other. Or is it can we look back in history and find other times in Man's existance when such things happened?  If so, what were the outcomes?

When you talk to people from any faith or even no-faith you get the sence that something foreboding is about to happen, anyone with just average intelligence can feel and read the signs.  Depending on your perspective and knowledge base this can be anything from "The End of the known World" Senerios to a period of Global Consciousness Raising.  There certainly are changes occuring on a universal scale wittnessed in planetary alignments, sunflare eruptions, climate changes, mass blood shed, mass insanity, sucides, murders, earthquakes, vocanic eruptions, corruption, dictators being ousted, revolutions, social unrest, you name it and it is happening and increasing at an alarming rate!

So what does a person do in this uncertain times, we of the Islamic faith can look to our Prophet's legacy and the Quran for answers:

”Surely, knowledge of the Hour is with Allah alone. ” (Holy Qur’an 31:34)



 There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades, Earth will not cross the galactic plane in 2012, and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.

 A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-shift to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway.



 The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA NEO Program Office website, so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.

Solar activity has a regular cycle, with peaks approximately every 11 years. Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are learning how to build electronics that are protected against most solar storms. But there is no special risk associated with 2012. The next solar maximum will occur in the 2012-2014 time frame and is predicted to be an average solar cycle, no different than previous cycles throughout history.

Islam believes in Doomsday - a day when the entire world will be destroyed. This day is called “Day of judgement.”
Holy Quran has explicitly stated this

 “Verily, Allah! With Him (Alone) is the knowledge of the Hour“ (Surah Luqman 31/34).

So there is no indication in Quran or the saying of the prophet Muhammad (SA)  that 2012 is the end of the world - according to what is projected by the mayan calender, and as potrayed by the movie.





The exact time of the Doomsday is given neither in Qur’an nor in Hadith. But Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) have pointed out the distinctive signs in Hadiths and in Qur’anic verses, which will happen near to the last hour constantly warned the believers for the appointed day.

The Major Signs:
Although they appear here in no particular order, it is important to point out that the Prophet (peace be upon him) said that these last, major signs will follow each other like pearls falling off of a necklace…
  1. Coming of Masih ad-Dajjal (The AntiChrist)
  2. Arrival of The Mahdi
  3. The appearance of Masih al-Isa (Jesus Christ), the son of Mary (peace be upon him)
  4. Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog)
  5. The destruction of the Kabah and the recovery of its treasure
  6. Emergence of the Beast
  7. The smoke
  8. Three major landslides (one in the East, one in the West, and one on the Arabian peninsula)
  9. The wind will take the souls of the believers
  10. The rising of the sun from the west
  11. The fire will drive the people to their final gathering place
  12. Three blasts of the trumpet (fear & terror, death, resurrection)
The Minor Signs:
  1. The disappearance of knowledge and the appearance of ignorance (Bukhari, Muslim, Ibn Majah, & Ahmad)
  2. Books/writing will be widespread and (religious) knowledge will be low (Ahmad)
  3. Adultery and fornication will be prevalent (The Prophet, peace be upon him, said that this has never happened without new diseases befalling the people, which their ancestors had not known.) (Bukhari, Muslim, Ibn Majah, & Al-Haythami)
  4. When fornication becomes widespread among your leaders (The Prophet, peace be upon him, said that this will happen when the people stop forbidding evil) (Ibn Majah)
  5. Adultery and fornication will be performed in the open
  6. The consumption of intoxicants will be widespread (Bukhari & Muslim)
  7. Women will outnumber men……eventually 50:1 (Bukhari, Muslim, & Ahmad)
  8. Killing, killing, killing (Bukhari, Muslim, Ibn Majah, & Ahmad)
  9. The nations of the earth will gather against the Muslims like hungry people going to sit down to a table full of food. This will occur when the Muslims are large in number, but “like the foam of the sea”.
  10. People will beat others with whips like the tails of oxen (Muslim) ?The Slave Trade
  11. The children will be filled with rage (at-Tabarani, al-Hakim)
  12. Children will be foul (at-Tabarani, al-Hakim)
  13. Women will conspire (at-Tabarani, al-Hakim)
  14. Rain will be acidic or burning (at-Tabarani, al-Hakim)
  15. Children of fornication will become widespread or prevalent (at-Tabarani, al-Hakim)
  16. When a trust becomes a means of making a profit (at-Tirmidhi, Al-Haythami)
  17. Gains will be shared out only among the rich, with no benefit to the poor (at-Tirmidhi)
  18. Paying zakat becomes a burden and miserliness becomes widespread; charity is given reluctantly (at-Tirmidhi & Al-Haythami)
  19. Miserliness will be thrown into the hearts of people (Bukhari)
  20. Episodes of sudden death will become widespread (Ahmad)
  21. There will be people who will be brethren in public but enemies in secret (He was asked how that would come about and replied, “Because they will have ulterior motives in their mutual dealings and at the same time will fear one another.”) (at-Tirmidhi)
  22. When a man obeys his wife and disobeys his mother; and treats his friend kindly while shunning his father (at-Tirmidhi)
  23. When voices are raised in the mosques (at-Tirmidhi)
  24. People will walk in the marketplace with their thighs exposed
  25. Great distances will be traversed in short spans of time
  26. The people of Iraq will recieve no food and no money due to oppression by the Romans (Europeans) (Muslim)
  27. People will hop between the clouds and the earth
  28. A tribulation will enter everyones home (Ahmad)
  29. The leader of a people will be the worst of them (at-Tirmidhi)
  30. Leaders of people will be oppressors (Al-Haythami)
  31. People will treat a man with respect out of fear for some evil he might do (at-Tirmidhi)
  32. Men will begin to wear silk (at-Tirmidhi)
  33. Female singers and musical instruments will become popular (at-Tirmidhi)
  34. When singers become common (Al-Haythami)
  35. People will dance late into the night
  36. When the last ones of the Ummah begin to curse the first ones (at-Tirmidhi)
  37. People will claim to follow the Qur’an but will reject hadith & sunnah (Abu Dawood)
  38. People will believe in the stars (Al-Haythami)
  39. People will reject al-Qadr (the Divine Decree of Destiny) (Al-Haythami)
  40. Time will pass rapidly (Bukhari, Muslim, & Ahmad)
  41. Good deeds will decrease (Bukhari)
  42. Smog will appear over cities because of the evil that they are doing
  43. People will be carrying on with their trade, but their will only be a few trustworthy persons
  44. Wealth will increase so much so that if a man were given 10,000, he would not be content with it (Ahmad & Bukhari)
  45. A man will pass by a grave and wish that he was in their place (Bukhari)
  46. Earthquakes will increase (Bukhari & Muslim)
  47. There will be attempts to make the deserts green
  48. The appearance of false messengers (30 dajjals) (Bukhari)
  49. Women will be naked in spite of being dressed, these women will be led astray & will lead others astray (Muslim)
  50. The conquest of Constantinople by the Muslims (Ahmad)
  51. The conquest of India by the Muslims, just prior to the return of Jesus, son of Mary (peace be upon both of them)(Ahmad, an-Nisa’i, at-Tabarani, al-Hakim)
  52. When people begin to compete with others in the construction of taller buildings (Bukhari)
  53. There will be a special greeting for the people of distinction (Ahmad)
  54. The Euphrates will disclose a treasure (The Prophet, peace be upon him, said that whoever is present should not take anything from it) (Bukhari & Muslim)
  55. Two large groups, adhering to the same religious teaching will fight each other with large numbers of casualties (Bukhari & Muslim)
  56. Wild animals will be able to talk to humans (Ahmad)
  57. A man will leave his home and his thigh or hip will tell him what is happening back at his home (Ahmad)
  58. Years of deceit in which the truthful person will not be believed and the liar will be believed (Ahmad)
  59. Bearing false witness will become widespread (Al-Haythami & Ahmad)
  60. When men lie with men and women lie with women (Al-Haythami)
  61. Trade will become so widespread that a woman will be forced to help her husband in business (Ahmad)
  62. A woman will enter the workforce out of love for this world (Ahmad)
  63. Arrogance will increase in the earth (at-Tabarani, al-Hakim)
  64. Family ties will be cut (Ahmad)
  65. There will be many women of child-bearing age who will no longer give birth.
  66. There will be an abundance of food, much of which has no blessing in it.
  67. People will refuse when offerred food.
  68. Men will begin to look like women and women will begin to look like men


We are fortunate to have been given so much knowledge of the coming events as the Last Day (Qiyamah) draws closer. No other people have been blessed with such details of the future trials and events that will overcome mankind. While the prophecies in the Qur'an and those told to us by Muhammad (Peace be upon him) are already coming true as time unfolds, Muslims are either unaware or remain unserious regarding their value. Use this knowledge to prepare yourselves and strengthen your faith.

 

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