Matthew Wright listened to a ‘positive’ interpretation of the end of the world.
‘The final hour could be today. This is inevitable’.
On a damp, dank Friday in November, the East London Mosque in Whitechapel was full to capacity – all 3500 seats were filled.
East London’s Muslims were flocking to an event billed as ‘The Final Hour’, featuring Shaykh Zahir Mahmood, an English-born Islamic scholar and expert on ‘end times’.
Mahmood began with a disclaimer – an admission that there are limits to his expertise. Nonetheless he has sought to decipher the messages about ‘end times’ to be found in both the Quran and the Hadiths (a collection of sayings and tales of the Prophet).
His congregation was enthralled. I could see this in the faces of the men. I could not see the women’s facial expressions because they were segregated from us by a rickety wooden partition. But the hush across the hall suggested that everyone – on both sides of the partition – was equally captivated.
Mahmood is undoubtedly charismatic. He was unfalteringly eloquent. He made deft use of Hadiths concerning ‘end times’ to signal the imminence of the ‘final hour’.
For example, the Prophet’s declaration that ‘the dunya (world) will end when Man is at his most arrogant’, was taken to refer to technology, industrialisation and our ‘arrogance’ towards the environment. Mahmood went back to the saying that ‘Allah shall destroy the cities with noise’, and brought it forward in reference to the European Space Agency and the weapons programmes of the USA. Thus he managed to combine ancient and modern into a powerful brand of rhetoric.
For Mahmood, there is no alternative to ‘the final days’ – they are all but upon us. But we can choose how we respond to the ‘end times’. He insisted that ‘believers are meant to be positive, believers do not moan or cry. We thank Allah for everything he has given us.’
Instead of inviting despair, Mahmood called upon young Muslims to take themselves seriously, and act accordingly:
‘Young people – get serious in life. You must achieve. They will try to ghettoize you. They will give you an inferiority complex unless you begin to achieve.’
It seemed that Mahmood was inviting the congregation to live life to the full by preparing for the world to end. Conversely, the people best prepared for ‘end times’ would also live the best lives in the time remaining.
Though I remained an unbeliever, at least I could now see why others are attracted to Mahmood’s beliefs.
