By Brahime Koulila
By Brahime Koulila
Kenitra – Man has always behaved foolishly because of ignorance and a spiritual vacuum. People have worshipped cows, serpents, the moon, the sun and so forth because of this.
Others – before the coming of Prophet Mohamed (pbuh) — buried their daughters alive only because of their sex, thinking that a female child was a bad omen or disgrace upon her parents. And who knows what other nations did in the past out of ignorance. Still, what sounds really odd and ridiculous is the way some nations have looked at doomsday. When some people think that they can escape this day or protect themselves against it, one can only chuckle and say, “I’m lucky because I don’t think the way such people do.”
For the last week, I have read many articles, both in print and electronic outlets, about a prophecy in the Mayan calendar with regard to doomsday. According to the prophecy, our life on this earth would end on December 21, 2012. Indeed, I have been rather surprised to see the international press giving such huge importance to such a “prophecy”, which I should call “idiocy,” as man cannot know this information at all — no matter how erudite a scholar or scientist is.
No one, whosoever, can know the date of doomsday. For us Muslims, this is a clear-cut fact, for Allah mentioned this in his holy book, the Quran. He says, “They are asking you about the date of the doomsday, and why are you talking about it? Only Allah knows about it.” [An Nazi’at: 42-44]. Had Allah wanted man to know its exact time, He would have told the prophet (pbuh) immediately when he was asked about it, especially because the question had been asked by “Quraish,” the enemies of Mohamed and Islam. On the other hand, even scientifically, no one can predict when doomsday will happen. Allah says in the Quran, “…doomsday will come (baghtatan) unexpectedly.” [Ala’raf: 187] As such, Allah has spared man the trouble of thinking about this issue. Rather, He urges us to work for the afterlife instead of waiting for the end of the world. Certainly, he did not want us to know for our benefit: if we could know its exact date, doubtless, we would go crazy out of fear and terror.
Clearly, non-Muslims, agnostics or atheists do not heed what is said in the Quran and let themselves be fooled by prophecies like the one in the Mayan calendar. Incidentally, some scholars have said that the Mayan people did not say the world would end on the aforementioned date, but they (the Mayan people) only said that man would witness a new era of our planet on that date, while other people have found other interpretations. Anyway, all these interpretations were able to rattle a lot of people and make them do foolish acts like those we saw on December 21.
For instance, in Bugarach, 809 kilometers (503 miles) from Paris near the Pyrenees, people from far and wide came to watch the end of the world. Some of them, indeed, came to “escape” the terror that the apocalypse would make elsewhere. Also, I read that in several European countries, some people had built houses underground to escape the end of the world. Others decided to spend the rest of their lives in Bugarech or Sirince, Turkey, another place thought to be spared from the apocalypse, and booked one way tickets to these two places according to a Huffington Post article. One way tickets, actually, for Bugarech increased by almost 41 percent.
With such a mentality, one should stop for a while and think deeply about our beliefs and depth of thinking. How can we rely on a prophecy made by the Mayans thousands of years ago? Which apocalypse could this have been that would have spared a whole village or area in France? It is worth mentioning that only the Mayan prophecy could turn the whole place (Bugarech) into a touristic destination for the weeks preceding the presumed apocalypse, knowing that very few people had known anything about it before.
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of people do not care the least about what others say about doomsday, not only because they are genuine believers in God, but also because they have commonsense. A person might as well disregard the Mayan prophecy simply because it does not make sense to him or her. Interestingly, such a rumor has been spread for more than 180 times, and every time nothing happens and life continues normally. Here, I would like to raise this question: have people not understood yet that all these prophecies are just childish calculations? Have not they realized yet that doomsday as such is not a problem, but what we have done in this life is what counts?
What made me laugh and at the same time reconsider man’s behavior or rather weakness is the way these people handled the rumor, prophecy or whatever. Indeed, some people, such as Muslims having strong faith and all believers from monotheist religions, would not heed such hoaxes, for their faith is too strong to be shaken by such rumors. Still, others seem to be really easy to deceive or manipulate: doomsday or the apocalypse means one thing, the end of the world, which means no single spot on earth shall be spared by the damage that our planet will undergo. Also, at least for us Muslims, we all know that before the end of the world, a lot of things or events will happen — none of them had happened before December 21. I will not go into details, for such things are common knowledge.
The bottom line is that it is a shame on those who believe that a person, group, nation, brotherhood or whatever can predict when doomsday will happen. Such knowledge is among the numberless things that God left unknown for the benefit of man. Also, it would really be stupid of us to think for a second that doomsday would concern only some people and spare others.
What happened on December 21 shows one conspicuous fact: knowledge or science alone is not enough to make man behave reasonably. Man also needs to feed his soul and strengthen his faith to know how to deal with some issues. As we all know, there are a lot of people who hold very high degrees in physics, chemistry, mathematics and so forth, yet they deny the existence of God. These people do not need knowledge but faith.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Morocco World News’ editorial policy
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