“Indeed, if We had sent an angel as messenger, We would
have made him in the form of a man as well, and would have
thus added to their confusion.”
This verse tells us that although God sends His revelations
through an angel, the pronouncement of this revelation to human
beings is made by a human being. This is done so that, according
to the divine scheme, the element of doubt should remain. Had
the angel who brought the revelation appeared in his original
form to communicate the divine message, the element of doubt
would have been affected. Perhaps it is due to this principle of
the element of doubt that the Quran has used the word
dabba
.
Had the Quran used the word ‘man’, the wisdom of the element
of doubt would have been affected.
The role of
dabba,
we are told in the Quran, is that it will
appear to reveal the hidden signs of God and, in the language of
reason, it will ask man why, in spite of clear signs, he did not
believe in God’s signs. The signs referred to in the above-
mentioned verse of the Quran are perhaps those which will be
revealed during the last phase of human history and which will
clearly reveal the truth of the divine religion.
In this way,
dabba
or the
dayee
, appearing during the last
phase, will present the final evidence of God to man. After this,
one should await only the trumpet of the angel Israfil to be blown
to bring about Doomsday.
The predictions in the Hadith about the final phase of
human history
T
HE
H
ADITH TELLS
us that a grave
fitna, fitna duhaima,
will appear
at the end of human history. (Sunan abi Daud,
Kitab Al-Malahim
).
This probably refers to a kind of intellectual fog, a state of affairs
which materialized after the invention of the printing press, and
reached its culmination in the age of the internet. Through the
print and electronic media, huge quantities of information have
been circulated to all and sundry. Now everyone is living in a
The predictions in the Hadith...
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