ISLAM AND THE FUTURE COURSE OF HISTORY

The future course of history as it appeared to early Muslims: this not a topic treated in the Koran, but it is abundantly, and by no means consistently, treated in early tradition. The futu of Lydda in Palestine; then future is nasty, brutish and short. The Islamic community will break up into a mass of conflicting sects, as the Children of Israel had done before them. Sedition will follow sedition like strips of the darkest night, and living will envy the dead. Eventually God will send a redseemer, a descendant of Muhammad. This redemeer, the Mahdi, will receive allegiance to the sanctuary in Mecca, whence his emigration (hijra) will be toi Jerusalem; there he will reign in justice. Yet this interluyde will last less than a decade. Thereafter Antichrist (the Dajjal) will appear from Iraq, reducing the Muslims to a remnant making their last stand on the peak of a mountain in Syria. In tghe hour of their need, Jesus will descend to earth in armour and lead them against Antichrist, slaying him at the gate of Lydda in Palestine; then Jesus will reign in justice and plenty, exterminating the pig ang breaking the crosses of the Christians. Yet this too will pass, giving way to the final horrors of human history. At last a wind takes up the souls of the believers, the sun rises in the west, and history gives way to the cataclysmic eschatology of the Koran.
Casalino Pierluigi, on June 1st 2014