How it all ends

[JimG]

Muslim and Christian versions of the end times:

How it all ends.

 

[drac16]

It’s a decent attempt at covering Islamic eschatology. I noticed a few peculiar things.

1. The Mahdi is not the equivalent of a Pope. Imam Mahdi will be fallible and he’ll primarily be a political leader, whereas catholics believe that the Pope is infallible and that he is primarily a spiritual teacher.
2. There’s no evidence that Jesus Christ [peace be upon him] will kill christians who don’t convert to Islam. What the author is attempting to interpret is a hadith which says that Jesus will “break the cross, abolish the Jizya and kill the pigs”. There’s no way to say for sure that those “pigs” are christians who refuse to convert. Personally, I think those “pigs” will be the Dajjal’s followers-- not christians. We’re not told who exactly those pigs are, so to take a stab at it by saying it’s christians is a shot in the dark and misleading

I’m disappointed with the final paragraph where he basically says that dialoguing [with muslims] is useless. That’s the classic example of someone who’s not really interested in hearing us out; they just want to accuse and refuse to be taught. That’s called a monologue-- not a dialogue. I’m disappointed with such incendiary rhetoric.

 

[arthra]

How it all ends in the Baha’i view is that it is a beginning of a new age rather than an end of the world…or maybe understood as the end of an old world order and the beginning of a new one.

The Mahdi is understood as One Who will bring justice and peace…

Again according to the hadiths,

*the Mahdi will bring justice to the whole world, but not one single drop of blood will be shed. The Mahdi will be opposed to terror and violence. War and conflict will come to an end. Yet the Mahdi will follow a very peaceful path as he does all this. This attribute of the Mahdi is set out as follows in the hadith:

In the same way that bees gather round the queen, so people will gather round the Mahdi. He will fill the world, once filled with oppression, with justice instead. Such will be his justice that the sleeping man will not be awakened and no blood will be shed. The world will return to the Age of Happiness.
*
~ al-Qawl al-Mukhtasar, pp. 29 and 48

 

[Hatikvah]

I’m disappointed with the final paragraph where he basically says that dialoguing [with muslims] is useless. That’s the classic example of someone who’s not really interested in hearing us out; they just want to accuse and refuse to be taught. That’s called a monologue-- not a dialogue. I’m disappointed with such incendiary rhetoric.

Willful ignorance on the part of the author. I don’t think that we can do anything for him, but at least we talk to people of different faiths on here.