The Islamic Antichrist (10 page)

THE SUBORDINATE OF THE MAHDI

At this time, Jesus descends to meet the army of the Mahdi, which will be preparing for battle. It will be just before the time of prayer:

Muslims will still be preparing themselves for the battle drawing up the ranks. Certainly, the time of prayer shall come and then Jesus, son of Mary would descend.
²

Based on the relevant hadith, Islamic scholars seem to be in universal agreement that the Mahdi will ask Jesus to lead the prayers. Jesus will then refuse this request and will defer instead to the Mahdi to lead the prayer:

The Messenger of Allah said: A section of my people will not cease fighting for the truth and will prevail until the day of resurrection. He said: Jesus son of Mary would then descend and their [Muslims’] commander [the Mahdi] would invite him to come and lead them in prayer, but he would say: No, some amongst you are commanders over some.
³

The important element to stress here is that Jesus will then pray behind the Mahdi as a direct statement regarding Jesus’ inferiority of rank to the Mahdi:

Jesus Christ will decline the offer and invitation of Imam Mahdi to come and lead the Muslims in prayer, and say his prayer behind Imam Mahdi.
⁴

Jesus (peace be upon him) will come and will perform the obligatory prayers behind the Mahdi and follow him.
⁵

[Jesus] will be following the Mahdi, the master of the time, and that is why he will be offering his prayers behind him.
⁶

JESUS THE FAITHFUL MUSLIM

After Jesus returns, in keeping with His identity as a faithful Muslim, He will perform the ritual pilgrimage to Mecca called
hajj
:

The Prophet said: Verily Isa ibn Maryam shall descend as an equitable judge and fair ruler. He shall tread his path on the way to
hajj
[pilgrimage] and come to my grave to greet me, and I shall certainly answer him!
⁷

JESUS WILL INSTITUTE ISLAMIC LAW

While the Mahdi, as the caliph (vice regent) and imam (leader) of the Muslims is clearly superior to Jesus in Islam, Jesus remains a leader of the Muslim community. According to the
Islamic traditions, Jesus’ primary purpose will be to oversee the institution and the enforcement of Islamic
shariah
law all over the world:

Ibn Qayyim mentioned in
Manar al-munif
that the leader…is the Mahdi who will request Jesus to lead the Muslims in prayer. Jesus will remain on the earth, not as a prophet, but as one of the community [
ummah
] of Prophet Muhammad. Muslims will follow him as their leader. According to Shalabi, the Mahdi will lead the Muslims in prayer, and Jesus will rule the Muslims according to the divine law [
shariah
].
⁸

Jesus, the son of Mary will descend and will lead them judging amongst them according to the holy Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad.
⁹

JESUS: THE GREATEST MUSLIM EVANGELIST

Islamic tradition teaches that because Jesus will declare Himself to be a Muslim, He will lead many Christians to convert to Islam. Regarding those who do not convert to Islam, the Qur’an states that Jesus will be a witness against them on the Day of Judgment:

There is not one of the People of the Scripture [Christians and Jews] but will believe in him before his death, and on the Day of Resurrection he will be a witness against them. (Sura 4:159)

Commenting on this verse, Mufti Muhammad Shafi and Mufti Mohammad Rafi Usmani in their book,
Signs of the Qiyama
[the final judgment]
and the Arrival of the Maseeh
[the Messiah], explain that the phrase “will believe in him before his death” means that Christians and Jews will:

…confirm that he is alive and has not died and he is not God or the Son of God but [merely] His [Allah’s] slave and Messenger, and Isa [Jesus] will testify against those who had called him son of God, the Christians, and those who had belied him, the Jews.
¹⁰

Sheikh Kabbani, chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, clearly articulates the Islamic perspective regarding Jesus’ evangelistic role when He returns:

Like all prophets, Prophet Jesus came with the divine message of surrender to God Almighty, which is Islam. This verse shows that when Jesus returns he will personally correct the misrepresentations and misinterpretations about himself. He will affirm the true message that he brought in his time as a prophet, and that he never claimed to be the Son of God. Furthermore, he will reaffirm in his second coming what he prophesied in his first coming bearing witness to the seal of the Messenger, Prophet Muhammad. In his second coming many non-Muslims will accept Jesus as a servant of Allah Almighty, as a Muslim and a member of the community of Muhammad.
¹¹

Al-Sadr and Mutahhari likewise articulate this same expectation:

Jesus will descend from heaven and espouse the cause of the Mahdi. The Christians and the Jews will see him and recognize his true status. The Christians will abandon their faith in his godhead [
sic
].
¹²

JESUS WILL ABOLISH CHRISTIANITY

It is crucial to understand that according to Islamic tradition and belief, when Jesus returns, He does not come to convert
most
Christians to Islam but to abolish Christianity entirely. This fact is understood when we analyze a very well-known and oft-quoted tradition that refers to four specific things that Jesus will do when He returns. Jesus is said to:

1. Break crosses.

2. Kill all swine.

3. Abolish the
jizyah
tax (a Muslim tax on non-Muslims).

4. Kill the Muslim antichrist and his followers.

The Prophet said: There is no prophet between me and him, that is, Jesus. He will descent [
sic
] [to the earth]… He will break the cross, kill swine, and abolish
jizyah
. Allah will perish all religions except Islam.
¹³

The three actions of breaking the cross, killing pigs, and abolishing the
jizyah
tax are based on the notion that Jesus will eliminate all other religions on the earth other than Islam. Shafi and Usmani explain that to “break the cross” means to “abolish worship of the cross.” Several Muslim friends that I’ve spoken with have expressed their understanding of this tradition: Jesus will break or remove all crosses from the rooftops and steeples of churches throughout the earth. This action will thus indicate that Jesus will be making a clear statement regarding His disapproval of the false notion that He was ever crucified on a cross. The killing of the swine is so that the “Christian belief of its lawfulness is belied.”
¹⁴
The reason for abolishing the
jizyah
tax (the compulsory poll tax that non-Muslims must pay in order to live in a Muslim land) is based on the idea that when Jesus returns, the
jizyah
tax will no longer be accepted. The only choice that Christians will have is to accept Islam or die. As Sideeque M.A. Veliankode states in
Doomsday Portents and Prophecies
:

Jesus, the son of Mary will soon descend among the Muslims as a just judge…. Jesus will, therefore, judge according to the law of Islam…
all people will be required to embrace Islam and there will be no other alternative
.
¹⁵
(emphasis mine)

Even Harun Yahya likewise affirms this belief in his book,
Jesus Will Return
, when he says, “Jesus will remove all systems of disbelief in that period.”
¹⁶

Muslim jurists also confirm these interpretations: consider, for example, the ruling of Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri (d. 1368) from
The Reliance of the Traveller
, the classic Shafi manual of Islamic jurisprudence:

[T]he time and the place for [the poll tax] is before the final descent of Jesus (upon whom be peace).
After his final coming, nothing but Islam will be accepted from them
, for taking the poll tax is only effective until Jesus’ descent (upon him and our Prophet be peace)…”
¹⁷
(emphasis mine)

JESUS THE SLAYER OF JEWS

Beyond the “accomplishment” of abolishing Christianity on a worldwide scale, another of Jesus’ primary jobs is to kill a figure known as the Dajjal, or the Muslim version of the Antichrist. Jesus will kill not only the Dajjal but also all of the Dajjal’s followers, most of whom will be Jews. Muhammad Ali Ibn Zubair in an article entitled “Who Is the Evil Dajjal?” elaborates:

The Yahudis [Jews] of Isfahaan will be his [the Dajjal’s] main followers. Apart from having mainly Yahudi followers, he will have a great number of women followers as well.
¹⁸

Veliankode explains that one of the main reasons for Jesus’ return is “to refute the Jews over the controversial issue that they killed Jesus…. However Jesus will kill them including their leader, the Antichrist.”
¹⁹
Listing the events of the last days as they occur, Muhammad Ali Ibn Zubair, author of
The Signs of Qiyama
(Judgment Day), begins:

His followers the Yahudis, will number seventy thousand…. [Then] Hadrat Isa [Honorable Jesus] kills the Dajjal at the Gate of Hudd, near an Israeli airport, in the valley of “Ifiq.” The final war between the Yahudis will ensue, and the Muslims will be victorious.
²⁰

We will discuss this “final war” between the Jews and the Muslims in more detail in a later chapter. But for now, it is important to remember that when this final war (or, more accurately, the final slaughter) occurs, according to Islamic tradition, Jesus is the primary instigator.

JESUS: A GOOD MUSLIM FAMILY MAN

One final aspect of the Muslim Jesus’ return must be pointed out. After converting the world to Islam and killing unbelievers, the Dajjal, and his followers, Jesus is said to marry, have children, and eventually die:

The Prophet said: There is no prophet between me and him, that is, Jesus…. He will destroy the Antichrist and will live on the earth for forty years and then he will die. The Muslims will pray over him.
²¹

After his descention [
sic
] on earth, Jesus will marry. He will have children, and he will remain on the earth nineteen years after marriage. He will pass away and Muslims will perform his funeral prayer and bury him next to the Prophet Muhammad.
²²

SUMMARY

Now let’s review the various defining characteristics and actions of the Muslim Jesus upon his return to the earth:

1. Jesus is said to return to the earth in the last days near a mosque in Damascus.

2. He will arrive at a time when the Mahdi and his army will be preparing to pray.

3. The Mahdi will ask Jesus to lead the prayer, but Jesus will decline in direct deference to the Mahdi, whom Jesus declares to be the leader of the Muslims. He will then pray behind the Mahdi as a subordinate.

4. He will be a faithful Muslim.

5. He will make a pilgrimage to Mecca.

6. He will visit Muhammad’s grave and salute Muhammad, whereby Muhammad will return the salute from the grave.

7. He will destroy Christianity.

8. He will repeal the
jizyah
tax, thus leaving Jews and Christians with the only options of conversion to Islam or death.

9. He will establish Islamic
shariah
law throughout the entire earth.

10. He will kill the Antichrist and his followers, made up largely of Jews and women.

11. He will remain on the earth for roughly forty years, during which time He will marry, have children, and then die.

As we have clearly seen, the Muslim Jesus, in both his nature and actions, is
far
different from the biblical Jesus. Rather than coming to reign as king and messiah over all the earth from Jerusalem, Jesus instead comes to convert the world to Islam—or kill those who refuse to do so. Instead of coming to save and deliver faithful Christians and Jews, he comes instead to slaughter them. We will discuss what the Bible has to say about the return of Jesus more in a later chapter.

CHAPTER SEVEN