Q. A Muslim brother told me that since Allah is not restricted to time and space, as far as Allah is concerned, future events including the Day of Judgment has already happened. Is this view correct?

A. His understanding of the concept is erroneous to the max, and absolutely contrary. In fact, his interpretation shows a limitation, for if Allah is not restricted, what it means is that Allah has no time appointed for His end. Therefore, the future is forever. His misunderstanding comes from the liberal importation of Greek thought and philosophy. As far as the Qur'an is concerned, for each of us there is a time appointed. Allah speaks of the eschatological events in the future tense.

To assume that these events have already happened comes with several nonsensical, kafiristic conclusions:

1 - We are all living an illusion, since the matters have already happened.

2 - Allah's command to us to do good and forbid evil is meaningless, since all of us are already in hell or heaven.

3 - Allah is unjust, since the inhabitants of heaven and hell are already known.

4 - The inhabitants of heaven are mixing and living among the inhabitants of hell, meaning that hell and heaven are inseparable entities. And the list goes on and on -- ad absurdum, ad infinitum.

The Qur'an is quite simple in this regard; the future is what we are concerned with, towards which we work -- a teleology. It does not get into these pseudo-philosophical discussions, for they are based on nonsense. The Muslim kalamists, when they started trying to show how smart they were, and that only they knew the secrets of the Qur'an and creation, were in many cases made to reveal their own stupidity, the result of which is seen in the beliefs of innocent yet misguided people. For these innocents feel that those so-called scholars were correct. It is noteworthy that several scholars looked upon the study of kalam as wrong and totally worthless, except to understand the terminology used, which could then be used in polemic against non-Islamic philosophy.

Posted March 26, 1999