Eskander
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To the Mod who deleted my earlier thread, here's the reference which l did have. If you are blind, it's not my fault
The following is taken from one of Muhammad Asad’s masterpiece ‘The Road to Mecca’ (p.292–295).
Every word below is directly quoted from the book, including the remarks without quotation marks. You better get a real job instead of being a moderator on defense.pk, but l don't think you are capable. Back to my topic
“…Hast thou ever heard of our Holy Prophet’s prediction that in later times most of the world’s people would follow the Dajjal, believing him to be God?”
And as he looks at me with a question in his eyes, I recount, to the visible approval of Shaykh Ibn Bulayhid, the prophecy about the appearance of that apocalyptic being, the Dajjal, who would be blind in one eye but endowed with mysterious powers conferred upon him by God. He would hear with his ears what is spoken in the farthest corners of the earth, and would see with his one eye things that are happening in infinite distances; he would fly around the earth in days, would make treasures of gold and silver suddenly appear from under ground, would cause rain to fall and plants to grow at his command, would kill and bring to life again : so that all whose faith is weak would believe him to be God Himself and would prostrate themselves before him in adoration. But those whose faith is strong would read what is written in the letters of flame on his forehead : Denier of God — and thus they would know that he is but a deception to test man’s faith . . .
And while my beduin friend looks at me with wide-open eyes and murmurs, ‘I take refuge with God,’ I turn to Ibn Bulayhid :
‘Is not this parable, O Shaykh, a fitting description of modern technical civilization? It is “one-eyed” : that is, it looks upon only one side of life — material progress — and is unaware of its spiritual side. With the help of its mechanical marvels it enables man to see and hear far beyond his natural ability, and to cover endless distances at an inconceivable speed. Its scientific knowledge causes “rain to fall and plants to grow” and uncovers unsuspected treasures from beneath the ground. Its medicine brings life to those who seem to have been doomed to death, while its wars and scientific horrors destroy life. And its material advancement is so powerful and so glittering that the weak in faith are coming to believe that it is a godhead in its own right; but those who have remained conscious of their Creator clearly recognize that to worship the Dajjal means to deny God . . .’
‘Thou are right, O Muhammad, thou art right!’ cries out Ibn Bulayhid, excitedly striking my knee. ‘It has never occurred to me to look upon the Dajjal prophecy in this light ; but thou art right! Instead of realizing that man’s advancement and the progress of science is a bounty from our Lord, more and more people in their folly are beginning to think that it is an end in itself and fit to be worshipped.’
YES, I THINK TO MYSELF, Western man has truly given himself up to the worship of the Dajjal. He has long ago lost all innocence, all inner integration with nature. Life has become a puzzle to him. He is skeptical, and therefore isolated from his brother and lonely within himself. In order not to perish in this loneliness, he must endeavour to dominate life by outward means. The fact of being alive can, by itself, no longer give him inner security : he must always wrestle for it, with pain, from moment to new moment. Because he has lost all metaphysical orientation, and has decided to do without it, he must continuously invent for himself mechanical allies : and thus the furious, desperate drive of his technique. He invents every day new machines and give each of them something of his soul to make them fight for his existence. That they do indeed: but at the same time they create for him ever new needs, new dangers, new fears — and an unquenchable thirst for newer, yet artificial allies. His soul loses itself in the ever bolder, ever more fantastic, ever more powerful wheelwork of the creative machine : and the machine loses its true purpose — to be a protector and enricher of human life — and evlovles into a deity in its own right, a devouring Moloch of steel. The priests and preachers of this insatiable deity do not seem to be aware that the rapidity of modern technological progress is a result not only of a positive growth of knowledge but also of spiritual despair, and that the grand material achievements in the light of which Western man proclaims his will to attain to mastery over nature are, in their innermost, of a defensive character : behind their shining facades lurks the fear of the Unknown.
Western civilization has not been able to strike a harmonious balance between man’s bodily and social needs and his spiritual cravings; it has abandoned its erstwhile religious ethics without being able to produce out of itself any other moral system, however theoretical, that would commend itself to reason. Despite all its advances in education, it has not been able to overcome man’s stupid readiness to fall a prey to any slogan, however absurd, which clever demagogues think fit to invent. It has raised the technique of ‘organization’ to a fine art — and nevertheless the nations of the West daily demonstrate their utter inability to control the forces which their scientists have brought into being, and have now reached a stage where apparently unbounded scientific possibilities go hand in hand with world-wide chaos. Lacking all truly religious orientation, the Westerner cannot morally benefit by the light of knowledge which his — undoubtedly great — science is shedding. To him might be applied the words of the Koran :
Their parable is the parable of people who lit a fire : but when it had shed its light around them, God took away their light and left them in darkness in which they cannot see — deaf, dumb, blind : and yet they do not turn back.
And yet, in the arrogance of their blindness, the people of the West are convinced that it is their civilization that will bring light and happiness to the world . . . In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they thought of spreading the gospel of Christianity all over the world ; but now that their religious ardour has cooled so much that they consider religion no more than soothing back-ground music — allowed to accompany, but not to influence ‘real’ life — they have begun to spread instead the materialistic gospel of the ‘Western way of life’ : the belief that all human problems can be solved in factories, laboratories and on the desks of statisticians.
And thus the Dajjal has come into his own . . .
