Feb 22, 2019
Muhammad’s Ten False Prophecies
“The Hour will not come until….”
One of the best techniques for cult leaders to control people is to keep them in fear of a doomsday. The doomsday technique is a tried-and-true technique to keep people under your control.
There are a lot of prophecies about things that will happen before the day of judgement, some of these are from authentic hadith, and many are passed around with no references.
The prophecies of Muhammad show no insight to hidden knowledge or divine foresight. They reek of short-sighted thinking and many of them were only believable in the time and era he lived in. With critical thinking we can see through these false prophecies.
A prophecy is not useful unless it is specific, clear, time bound, and can only refer to a specific incident.
Look at these statements:
“A time will come when there will be much corruption on Earth and the trust will be taken from people”
“The hour will not arrive until the hot will encompass the cold”
“The day of judgement will not arrive until the people will take women as leaders”
“When the sky is full of rain and hearts are dark, then the brightest lights will shine again.”
If you notice, the statements above are not time bound. They may be true at one point and false at another point in history. Statements like this are not true prophecies because they are unfalsifiable.
Another important fallacy to understand is called the ‘texas sharpshooter fallacy’.
You can think of a person who shoots a barn and then goes and paints the bullseye on it and claims “Look — I hit the bullseye!” Beware of this. Many false prophecies are “predicted” after the fact.
Here are some specific prophecies that Muhammad got wrong.
1) Shepherds will build tall buildings
‘..and when you see barefoot, naked, destitute shepherds competing in constructing tall buildings.’ (Famous hadith Jibreel)
The Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world since 2008. However does this one example match what Muhammad said?
Building tall buildings? ✅ (One)
Barefoot? ❌
Naked? ❌
Destitute? ❌
Shepherds? ❌
Who built this tower? It was built by an American team that specialized in tall buildings. So technically it was built by disbelievers not by the ones Muhammad is alleged to have described.
2) Rain will destroy all homes except tents
“The hour will not come until there has been rain which will destroy all dwellings except tents.” (Musnad Ahmad)
Almost nobody lives in tents nowadays. So this one shows Muhammad’s lack of foresight. And it also didn’t happen. Will it happen? Probably not. If homes are ruined, tents will be ruined too.
3) Slave woman gives birth to her mistress
‘When the slave woman gives birth to her mistress’ (Waki’ said: This means when non-Arabs will give birth to Arabs”) (Ibn Majah)
Slave woman gives birth to mistress? Non-Arabs giving birth to Arabs? Not sure what this means but people have interpreted it in a multiple of ways including that children are disobedient to their parents. Hardly a prophecy! 😅
4) Women will increase 50-fold versus men
“Women will increase in number and men will decrease in number so much so that fifty women will be looked after by one man.” (Bukhari)
This is not even close to being true. There is slightly more men than women in the world today.
5) If people don’t pay zakat (poor dues), rain will stop falling
“ If people should withhold Zakat, you should realise that this has never happened without the rain being stopped from falling; and were it not for the animals’ sake, it would never rain again” (Ibn Majah)
This is a non sequitur. It does not follow. Rain continues to fall regardless of whether Muslims paying zakah or not.
6) Time will pass quickly
The Hour will not come until time passes so quickly that a year will be like a month, a month like a week, a week like a day, a day like an hour, and an hour like the time it takes for a palm-leaf to burn’.” (Attributed to Ahmad, No reference found)
This is vague and has no meaning. Time does feel like it’s passing quickly when you’re busy or having fun. Otherwise if you are bored or doing something monotonous it can be slow and painful.
7) Wealth will increase and nobody will want charity
“The Hour will not come until wealth increases so much that a wealthy man will be worried lest no-one accept his Sadaqah” (Ahmad.)
People are still quite happy to get charity. Poverty still exists but slowly we are conquering it.
8) Women of some ancient tribe will go around an ancient idol
The Hour will not come until the buttocks of the women of Daws move whilst going around Dhu l-Khalasah [an idol].” (Bukhari)
Lack of foresight here again — Muhammad didn’t realize that humans will not be worshipping idols for much longer, and this specific idol will be irrelevant and unknown to most of humanity. This is similar to the Quran mentioning dead religions like Sabeans that nobody knows about or claiming that “Jews worship Ezra”
9) The sun will rise from the place of sunset
Doesn’t it sound like Muhammad thought the sun was going around the Earth here? To a seventh-century Arab, whether the sun came up from one side or the other made little difference. But in our modern world we know this would require the Earth to rotate in a completely different direction. This makes no sense.
10) “Lots of killing” will happen
“.. afflictions will appear, and there will be much Harj. The people asked, O Messenger of Allah, what is Harj? He said, Killing, killing!” (Bukhari)
Firstly, “lots of killing will happen” is so vague anyone can guess that.
Secondly, this is also precisely wrong. Despite all the bad news, the number of deaths from war is declining and continues to decline! Many places in the world have less than 10 deaths per 100,000 people now.
In conclusion, the prophecies of Muhammad show no insight to hidden knowledge or divine foresight. They reek of short-sighted thinking and many of them only being believable in the time and era he lived in. With critical thinking we can see through these false prophecies.
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