Predictions of Doomsday
One of the predictions in the Quran is the coming of doomsday, or the end of human history. What is strange about this is that what had been predicted in the Quran and Hadith has only now come to the knowledge of man as facts through scientific observations.
At a number of places it has been recorded in the Quran that before Doomsday certain signs indicating its approach will appear.
The change in the earth that has been predicted in different verses of the Quran will probably not be a sudden change, but will rather be gradual. Today this is actually happening. It is noteworthy that extraordinary progress has been made in different fields in the present times, which have enabled man to understand the changes over a period of time, whereas it has not hitherto been possible for man to observe these changes. That is, on the one hand, God will bring about eye-opening changes through advance news of Doomsday, while exactly at the same time He will provide man with modern scientific methods by which he may directly learn about these changes.
The predictions like that of the devastating effects
of global warming that science is now making
known through its discoveries, especially in the
21st century has already been made known in
Islam through revelation in the form of signs of
Doomsday 15 hundred years ago in the
7th century AD.
By the beginning of the 21st century, scientists all over the world had become unanimous in their warning that the earth was changing rapidly as a result of global warming and climatic changes. Recently, the American Science Magazine published one such report by James Hansen (67), a top scientist, who is Director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. A summary of this report was published in The Times of India, New Delhi, on April 9, 2008, under the caption of “Earth in Crisis.” According to this report, (p. 35) “we have already reached a dangerous level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
The news given by scientists regarding the disturbance of the balance governing the life support systems on earth is based not on theoretical calculations or conjecture, but rather on the information garnered from observations. In our times the latest scientific methods have been employed to enable continuous study and observation on the basis of which these reports have been published in the media. All such information is of a kind which is accessible to anyone with a scientific background.
The traditions of the Prophet of Islam have predicted such occurrences.
- According to a Hadith, “When the Qiyamah approaches, the sun will come closer to man.” (Musnad Ahmad, Hadith No. 17439) As a result of this, great heat will be generated on earth. This hadith tells us exactly what we have been told in the report.
The sun coming closer does not mean that the distance of the sun and the earth will become less, for in such a case life on earth would immediately come to an end. This coming closer, in fact, is symbolic of the heat of the sun becoming more intense, thereby raising the temperature, thus, predicting global warming.
- What will happen to man when the sun’s heat increases? This has been expressed thus in the hadith: “The people will be sweating. Some will sweat till their ankles, some till their knees others till their waist and yet others till their faces.” (Sahih Muslim, Hadith No. 2864)
(The Arabic word araq in this tradition, which is used to mean sweat, literally means ‘squeezed water’. Sweat is called araq because it squeezes [or oozes] out of the human body. That is why the wine which is squeezed out of grapes is also called araq)
This tradition, in fact, symbolically tells us that during the last days, when the sun’s heat will increase and the glaciers of ice and the ice sheets at the polar caps of the Arctic and Antarctica will start melting, then the sea level will rise. As a result, the coastal settlements will be submerged in sea water. Some areas will be totally submerged, while others will be less affected, depending upon the altitude of the land mass affected. Now both revealed and scientific knowledge have confirmed that Doomsday is near.
