End Times in Islam...
The last day may arrive at any moment
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Next Thursday: Jihad!
IN ISLAM, as in Christianity, there would be a time of reckoning: the ‘last day’, or ‘Judgement Day’ (al-Qiyamah), when God would judge human souls as worthy of salvation or damnation.
The Koranic vision of Heaven and Hell is astonishingly vivid. Reading it, one feels the agony of perdition and the pleasures of paradise. They were (and are) as real to believers as the sparkling oases and blazing dawns on the Hijaz.
The prospect of salvation or condemnation had (and has) tremendous sway over the lives of the Muslim faithful. Faith and the eschaton – the last event in God’s plan to end the world – were (and are) indelibly associated in the Muslim mind.
The phrase ‘Believe in God and the last day’ appears throughout the Koran. In fact, a third of the surahs are given over to the afterlife and how one should prepare for it.
Allah the Merciful would hold every soul accountable for his or her thoughts and actions, weighed (literally) in the world beyond, as the Koran records:
‘We shall set up the just balances for the Day of Resurrection . . . Those whose balances are heavy – those are the successful; And those whose balances are light – those are the ones who lose their souls, remaining forever in Jahannam [Hell].’
Your strength of faith, your most intimate secrets, even your dreams were all visible to Allah the Omniscient: God neither erred nor forgot, and at the Last Judgment he would ‘tell you everything you ever did’.
All Muslims were therefore instructed to prepare their souls. ‘Guard yourselves against a day on which you will be returned to God,’ the Koran warns. ‘Then every soul will be paid in full what it has earned, and they will not be wronged.’
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How should one prepare for doomsday?
‘O you who believe, bow down and prostrate yourselves and serve your Lord and do good, so that you may prosper,’ advises the Koran.
Salvation was assured those who observed the ‘Five Pillars of Islam’ throughout their lives: prayed five times a day; gave to charity; fasted regularly; made the pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca; and sought forgiveness for their sins.
There would be plentiful warnings of the coming of the Last Day, the Koran notes. These varied in Sunni and Shia tradition. They tended to include the proliferation of ‘deviant sexual behaviour’ such as homosexuality, adultery, perversity and bestiality; the spread of usury, lies, greed, music, alcohol and ignorance (of Islam); the rise of false prophets, false gods, idolatry and blasphemy; and the complete inversion of a ‘just’ world, in which the wickedest seemed happiest and the worthless held all the power.
In sum, the world as it usually is, in our flawed, freedom-loving, easy going, tolerant Western society. So Islam offers necessarily precise, more ominous signs of Judgement Day: eg the sudden acceleration of time; the outnumbering of men by women (fifty women to every man); the discovery of a mountain of gold in the Euphrates; a bout of torrential rain that destroys everything; and even the rhythm of women’s buttocks as they circulate the Dhi-al-Khalasa (a pagan phallic symbol that Muhammad had demolished).
Wars, too, would herald the end times: the Muslim defeat of Constantinople and the coming of a great war between the Romans and Muslims would culminate in Al-Malhama Al-Kubra (or Armageddon).
After these hints, those who still entertained doubts about the arrival of Judgement Day were alerted to a few inescapably apocalyptic, last-minute signs: the appearance of a vast pall of black smoke, blanketing the Earth; three colossal earthquakes; the coming of the Mahdi, a messianic figure and the bringer of divine guidance; and even the return of Jesus Christ.
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On the Last Day, the Sun will rise in the west: all who see it will be saved, and those blind to it will be damned, records the Hadith (literally ‘remnant’, a gathering of Muslim texts that record what Muhammad said and did, and form the intellectual foundation of Islam).
And the end will come in a flash. There will be no time for work or pleasure: ‘The Hour will be established (so suddenly) that . . . a man is carrying the milk of his she-camel, but cannot drink it . . . when some of you has raised his food to his mouth but cannot eat it.’
Woe to those who ignore the signs, the Koran warns, invoking a famous image from the New Testament: they won’t be admitted to Heaven ‘until the camel passes through the eye of the needle’.
At the sound of a thunderclap and a trumpet’s blast, the mountains will crumble to dust, the seas will boil over, the Sun will darken and the stars will fall from the sky. All humankind – the living and the dead, resurrected by Allah – will gather before him to be judged.
It is now that they will queue up to hear the registry of their thoughts and deeds, for good or evil, as listed in the Book of Deeds. Allah the ‘Merciful and Compassionate’ has already read the Book of Deeds, and knows whose souls are going to Heaven and whose to Hell.
He forgives the repentant and condemns to eternal punishment those ‘who buy the life of this world at the cost of the world to come’.
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Souls judged irredeemably evil are moved to the left, to Jahannam, the Islamic conception of Hell.
Jahannam smells and sounds much like the Christian version – non-believers writhe in a boiling vat (or a fiery pit) forever, for instance – but it also includes torments unique to Islam.
The pit itself is so deep that, according to the Hadith Shareef, if a rock were thrown in it wouldn’t hit the bottom for at least seventy years.
The damned are beaten over the head by angels using iron rods of such a weight that ‘all the humans and jinns together’ would not be able to lift a single rod off the ground.
The stings inflicted by snakes and scorpions that look like long-necked camels ‘are so venomous and painful that the pain and effect will be felt for a thousand years’.
The inmates of Hell are served oil ‘that has been boiled to its highest intensity’. When they draw it to their mouths, the intense heat causes ‘the skin on their faces to fall off’.
The food is no better. The only dish on the menu is a bitter, thorny plant called zaqum, ‘which neither nourishes nor avails against hunger’. When swallowed, it boils inside the stomach, causing the intestines to disintegrate and flow out of the body.
There are many fouler punishments in the Islamic Hell that are too hideous to record.
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Unbelievers who die ‘unbelieving’ – that is, the entire non-Muslim world – will be cursed by Allah forever: ‘The torment will not be lightened for them, nor will they be given respite.’
And: ‘The riches and children of those who disbelieve will avail them nothing against God. They are the companions of the Fire, in which they will remain for ever.’
In short, non-Muslims are damned. There will be no mercy. Subjected to the torments of Islamic Hell, the faithless will say, ‘O, I wish I were dust.’
If these are the actions of Allah the Merciful, one shudders to contemplate Allah the Pitiless.
On the other hand, the torment of the faithless is contradicted elsewhere in the Koran, by the flow of love and forgiveness; ‘My mercy encompasses everything,’ Allah says. And: ‘God will love you and forgive you your sins. God is forgiving, merciful.’
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Souls deemed worthy of Paradise are ushered to the right and introduced to the ascent to the seven levels of Jannah, the Islamic heaven.
The first is Jannat-al-Adan, the ‘eternal place’ of the repentant; the sixth, Dar-ul-Maqaam, is where the soul finds an eternal resting place; and the last is Dar-us- Salam, the abode of wellbeing and the splendid ‘Seventh Heaven’.
(An eighth Heaven said to exist is called lliyyun, according to some Islamic scholars, where the Hafaza angels protect the souls of the perfect Mumins, or devotees.)
A smorgasbord of luxuries greet the worthy who enter this verdant paradise, many of which were denied them on Earth: a line of ‘immortalized youths’ serve pitchers of ‘sparkling drinks’ that cause ‘neither headache, nor intoxication’.
The blessed hear ‘no nonsense, and no accusations. But only the greeting: “Peace, peace”.’
They enjoy lush orchards and abundant fruit and extended shade (a gift to a desert-dwelling people), as well as:
‘. . . lovely companions.
The likenesses of treasured pearls.
As a reward for what they used to do. . . .
We have created them of special creation.
And made them virgins.
Tender and un-aging.
For those on the Right.’
The rewards, then, for a lifetime of faith, charity, prayer, pilgrimage, and sexual and alcoholic abstemiousness are fountains of sparkling wine, delicious food, endless peace and an abundant supply of perennially young virgins (or ‘pure spouses’, depending on your preferred translation). Notably, the Koran does not specify that the virgins in paradise will number seventy-two, although Islamic holy traditions in the Hadith suggest that ‘every man will have 70 (or 72) wives’.
It is not true that Muslim women were excluded from Heaven. When an elderly woman begged Muhammad to tell her what she must do to reach Paradise, he replied: ‘My good lady, Paradise is not for old women.’ When she wept on hearing this, the Prophet consoled her: ‘There will be no old women because they will become young again.’
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In March 628 CE, Muhammad announced that he had had a prophetic dream.
He’d pictured himself standing in the haram of Mecca with his head shaved, wearing the hajj costume and holding the key to the Kaaba. It was a sign that he must make the hajj to Mecca.
He gathered his disciples and off they went. At this time, the Muslims were not welcome in Mecca, but the Quraysh elders had made a deal to allow them back.
The Quraysh evacuated Mecca, as agreed, and watched from a hillside as Muhammad and his crowd of followers entered the city.
The Muslims’ discipline and faith – as heard in the cry, ‘Here I am, O Allah! Here I am!’ – amazed the Meccans.
The Muslims filed solemnly into the empty city, led by Muhammad on horseback. They drew up before the Kaaba, where the prophet dismounted, kissed the Black Stone and began the clockwise circuit around it. His disciples followed.
A former slave called Bilal mounted the roof of the Kaaba and called the Muslims to prayer: ‘Allahu Akbar!’ (God is the greatest!)
Nobody who witnessed this scene would doubt the pre-eminence of the Islamic god over the fallen idols of the haram. Muhammad’s pilgrimage marked the triumph of faith over pagan cynicism and decadence, and inaugurated the tradition of the hajj, the journey every Muslim must make to Mecca at least once in their lives.
When Muhammad died, in 632 CE, every Arab recognised him as their sayyid, or their ‘de facto lord’: he was the prophet of Allah, the messenger of God.
The Arabian desert warrior looked out on a changed world. There was nothing he would not now do in the service of Allah and Muhammad, no task, no raid, no act of war or peace to which he would not dedicate his life.
Next Thursday, 15th May 2025: Jihad!
Selected sources and further reading:
Al-Mehri, A.B. (ed.) (2020) The Qur’an – Saheeh International, independently published.
El-Ali, L. (2022) ‘Virgins: There Are No 72 Virgins Waiting for Anyone in Paradise’, No Truth Without Beauty: God, the Qur’an, and Women’s Rights, pp. 273–82.
Hadith Collection, https://hadithcollection.com/.
Haleem, M.A. (2017) ‘Quranic Paradise: How to Get to Paradise and What to Expect There’ in Günther, S. and Lawson, T. (eds.) Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam, Leiden: Brill.
Islamic Education Team, Beliefs about Hell (Jahannam), Islamic Education, https://www.islamieducation.com/beliefs-about-hell-jahannam/.
Jones, A. (transl.) (2007) The Qur’an, Harrow UK: The E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Trust.
Khaldun, I. and Rosenthal, F. (transl.) (2005) The Muqaddimah, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
Martin, R.C. (ed.) (2003) Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World, New York: Macmillan Reference USA.
Mohammad with Le Gai Eaton, C. and Mostafa, M. (transls.) (2007) The Book of Hadith: Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad from the Mishkat Al Masabih, Watsonville CA: The Book Foundation.
Quran.com.
Rippin, A. (ed.) (2006) The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’an, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Rosenthal, F. (2014) ‘Reflections on Love in Paradise’ in Man Versus Society in Medieval Islam, Leiden: Brill.
Zamzam.com (31 July 2021) ‘7 Levels of Heaven in Islam, Surahs of Jannah in the Quran’.