Wisdom Behind Concealing the Time of the Hour
People may ask:
What is the wisdom behind concealing the exact time when the Hour will come and
the Day of Resurrection will occur?
The answer is
that its concealment is connected to the well-being of the human soul. The Hour
belongs to the realm of the unseen. When a person is certain that a tremendous
event will occur but does not know when it will suddenly arrive and overtake
him, he remains in a constant state of anticipation.
Sayyid Qutb
(may Allah have mercy on him) said:
“The unknown is
an essential element in human life and in human psychological development.
Human beings must have something unknown in their lives toward which they
aspire. If everything were fully disclosed to them, then, given their nature,
their activity would cease and their lives would become stagnant. It is after
the unknown that they pursue; because of it they exercise caution, nurture
hope, experiment, learn, and uncover the hidden potentials within themselves
and within the universe around them. Keeping their hearts and emotions attached
to the Hour, whose time is unknown, protects them from going astray. Since they
do not know when it will come, they remain continually cautious and continually
prepared for it. This applies to those whose natural disposition remains sound
and upright. As for those whose nature has become corrupted, who follow their
desires and remain ignorant, they fall and their destination is ruin.” (1)
It Is
Impermissible to Occupy Oneself with Determining Its Time
People
frequently asked the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) about the time of the Hour, and the answer came from
the One who revealed the Book: the Hour is part of the unseen, and knowledge of
its timing belongs exclusively to Allah.
{People
ask you ˹O
Prophet˺
about the Hour. Say, “That knowledge is only with Allah. You
never know, perhaps the Hour is near.”} [Al-Ahzab
33:63]
{They
ask you ˹O
Prophet˺
regarding the Hour, “When will it be?” But
it is not for you to tell its time. That knowledge rests with your Lord ˹alone˺. Your duty is only to warn whoever is
in awe of it.} [An-Nazi`at 79:42–45]
Allah did not
disclose this knowledge to any angel brought near to Him, nor to any prophet
sent as a messenger. For this reason, when Jibril asked the Prophet (peace
be upon him) about the Hour, he replied: “The one who is
asked knows no more than the one who asks.”
Therefore,
investigating this matter and claiming that the Hour will occur in a specific
year constitutes speaking about Allah without knowledge. Those who engage in
such speculation oppose the Quranic and Prophetic methodology, which directs
people to refrain from pursuing this subject and instead calls them to prepare
for that Day through faith and righteous deeds.
Those who
engage in such inquiries act as though they can know what neither the Messenger
of Allah (peace
be upon him) nor Jibril (peace be upon him) knew. That fact alone
should suffice as an admonition and a deterrent for anyone who possesses a
heart or listens attentively while being present in mind. We say to them: it
should be enough for you that which was sufficient for the Messenger of Allah (peace
be upon him), his Companions, and the scholars of this Ummah
throughout history.
Had there been
goodness and benefit for humanity in knowing the exact time, Allah would have
informed them of it. Instead, He concealed it from them, and therein lies their
welfare.
Those who came
later should take heed from those who came before. Some earlier scholars
ventured into this matter and assigned dates either to the Hour itself or to
certain signs they believed would immediately precede it. Yet the dates they
specified arrived, and none of what they predicted occurred—neither the Hour
nor the signs they had identified.
Among them was
At-Tabari (may Allah have mercy on him and forgive him), who inferred from
certain texts that the end of the world would occur five hundred years after
the beginning of the Muhammadan mission. (2)
More than nine
hundred years have now passed beyond the date he proposed, and his expectation
proved incorrect.
Another example
is the eminent scholar As-Suyuti (may Allah pardon him), who argued in a
treatise entitled Al-Kashf that the Hour would occur at the beginning of
the fifteenth century after the Prophetic mission. (3) According to
that calculation, only a few decades remained before the coming of the Hour,
despite the fact that many of the minor signs had not yet occurred, while none
of the major signs had appeared.
As-Suhayli
gathered the isolated letters that appear at the beginnings of certain chapters
of the Quran, removed the repetitions, calculated their numerical values
according to the traditional abjad system, and on that basis proposed a date
only a few centuries away. (4)
Many others
have spoken on this subject and speculated without evidence. Their claims
amount to nothing more than conjecture and guesswork. One of the most recent
examples I encountered was a Baha’i scholar who claimed that the Hour would
occur in the year 1710 CE. He alleged that he had derived this conclusion from
the numerical values of the disconnected letters appearing at the beginnings of
some Quranic chapters. We respond by saying that this methodology has already
been proven false. Others before him followed the same approach but arrived at
different dates. They agreed with him in method while differing in their
conclusions, and the falsehood of their claims became evident.
Shaykh Al-Islam
Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him and grant him abundant reward)
addressed those who ventured into this subject and attempted to determine a
specific date for the Hour. He said:
“Among those
who spoke about its specific time was the author of a book entitled Ad-Durr Al-Munazzam
fi Ma`rifat Al-A`zam, in which he presented ten indications by which he
claimed to determine its time. Likewise were those who based their calculations
on the letters of the alphabet, and the author of `Anqa’ Mughrib (5),
and others like them. Although such people may enjoy considerable prestige
among their followers, the majority of them are liars and fabricators. (6)
It has become clear through many indications that they speak without knowledge,
even though they claim spiritual unveiling and knowledge of hidden secrets.
Allah the Exalted has said: {Say, “My Lord has
only forbidden open and secret indecencies, sinfulness, unjust aggression,
associating ˹others˺
with Allah ˹in
worship˺—a practice He has never authorized—and
attributing to Allah what you do not know.”} [Al-A`raf
7:33] (7)
There is no
doubt that claiming knowledge of the precise time of the Hour is speaking about
Allah without knowledge.
Read Also:
-
What Are the Five Keys of the Unseen in Islam?
-
The Quranic Philosophy of Knowledge
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Footnotes
1.
The
Hereafter in the Shade of the Quran, compiled and
edited by Ahmad Fa’iz, p. 98.
2.
Al-Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun, p. 590.
3.
Lawami`
Al-Anwar Al-Bahiyyah, 2/66.
4.
Al-Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun, p. 591.
5.
Referring
to Ibn Arabi, the proponent of the doctrine of the Unity of Being.
6.
Ibn
Taymiyyah said “the majority of them” because some who engaged in such
calculations erred without intending deception, such as At-Tabari and As-Suyuti
(may Allah have mercy on them).
7.
Majmu` Al-Fatawa of Shaykh Al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, 4/342.
8. Source: Umar Sulayman al-Ashqar, The Minor Resurrection and the Major Signs of the Hour, Dar Al-Nafa'is, Jordan; Al-Falah Library, Kuwait, 1991.
