Ahadith on the Qiyamah – Day of Judgement
I. Abu Hurayra (ra) says the Prophet (saws) said: “I have been sent with the Day of Resurrection as close at hand as these.”
~ Bukhari, Muslim
Notes:
While saying this, the Prophet raised his middle and forefingers to show how close his appearance and the Day of Resurrection are: But of course, the time scale applied is not that we apply for our lives but that applicable to the life of the universe. In those terms, it could be thousands of years, or less. Yet, the comparison gives us the idea that we are at the fag end of the span of life granted to the human beings on earth.
II. Anas (ra) says the Prophet (saws) said: “The Day of Judgement will not be called for while there is yet someone (left) on earth saying ‘Allah, Allah.’” In another version, he said: “The Day of Judgement will not be called upon someone invoking Allah’s name.”
~ Muslim
Notes:
That is, it is only after people have completely forgotten all about their gods – to the extent that there will be not a soul on earth invoking Allah’s Name – that the Day of Resurrection will be called for. In other words, after the second appearance of Jesus (asws), there will be a steady decline in religion, culminating either in the conversion of all people to atheism, or their total neglect of the acts of worship even with the concept of God and religion remaining alive.
III. Ibn `Abbas (ra) says the Prophet (saws) said: “We are the last of the nations, but first to be subjected to reckoning. It will be said, ‘Where is the unlettered nation and its Prophet?’ So we are the last, (but the) first.”
Notes:
What is meant by the unlettered nation is not the ignorant nation, nor one which does not know how to read and write – which is the definition of the literary word Ummi of the original. It means either the first generation followers of the Prophet (saws) who were largely unlettered, with the inclusion of those that followed them in good works, or it could mean the nation that followed and imitated an Ummi Prophet, that is Muhammad (saws).
IV. Abdur Rahman al‑Hadrami (ra) says he heard from someone, who heard it from the Prophet, that he said, “A People will appear from among the last part of my Ummah whose reward will be the same as the rewards of the first part. They will enjoin the good, forbid the evil and fight with the (unbelieving) wicked people.”
~ Bayhaqi
V. Abu Hurayrah (ra) reported the Prophet (saws): “You will come to me (on the Day of Judgement) with faces, hands and feet shining as mark of ablution. This will be my Ummah’s identification mark that no one will share with it.”
Notes:
How sad then for those who do not offer the Prayers. They won’t even be recognizable to us on the Day the earth will be teeming with tens of trillions of people – and more!
VI. Abdullah (ra) says: “We were with the Prophet (saws) under a dome. He said: ‘Are you satisfied that you should be one third of the people of Paradise?’ We said: ‘Yes.’ He said: ‘I hope you will be one half of the people of Paradise; this because none but a Muslim soul will be able to enter Paradise. And in comparison to the polytheists, you are not but like a few white hairs on the body of a black bull or a few white hairs on the body of a red bull.’”
VII. Abdullah ibn Mas`ud (ra) reports the Prophet (saws) as having said: “The Day of Judgement will not be called upon but on the worst of the people.”
~ Muslim
Notes:
That is, the moral and spiritual state of the people will continuously decline, and faith in God and His message will become weaker and weaker until it will disappear altogether. This continuous decline, on the one hand, renders the theory of evolution false, and, on the other, warns every good Muslim not to accept the influences of his times, rather draw inspiration directly from the Qur’an, Sunnah of the Prophet, and lives of the Companions.
