The Stranger Returns

He sallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam was talking about The Hour and about the Days of ALLAH, the coming Days mentioned in The Book ... and he talked about how Islam would raise up his people, the Arabs, beyond what anyone could imagine, and how their success would become disaster and yet a blessing to all the peoples of the world.

Prophecy is given from the perspective of the prophet: looking east, north, south, west, or back or forward in time. Sometimes the prophet saw a place, sometimes he saw a direction and distance, near or far. Looking forward in time, "distance" is relative ~ "next" and "soon" and "then" and "after that" are not necessarily what we usually gather from those terms.

And he talked about the End of Days and the Last Day and all of the things that would happen until then, how Islam would disappear from the world of men and then, later, be sent down again.

Strange things. New things. "... a Day the measure of which is a thousand years as you reckon" (Q32:5) and "... a Day the measure of which is fifty thousand years" (Q70:4).

And how Islam would again ~ at that then-distant time ~ be a "new thing" as The Hour approaches and as the new Day begins with a new Dawn, like a sunrise in the far west where the sun sets ... and he said

"Islam began a stranger and,
then, it will return as it began.
Then bliss to the strangers!"

There are two prefixes that mean "after" in Semitic languages ~ one indicates something that immediately follows, one indicates something that follows after some time has passed. Here the Arabic words rendered "... and, then, it will return ..." are the latter, a return at some time after ~ necessarily ~ a departure.

And people began to ask him about these "Strangers" he had mentioned ...

I was at the Messenger of God's salallahu 'alaihi wa sallam and the sun rose, then he said, "There shall come to God some people on the day of resurrection whose light is like sunlight." Then Abu Bakr said, "Are we the ones, O Messenger of God?" He said, "No, and you have much goodness. But they are the poor and the immigrants who will be gathered from the ends of the earth." Then he said, "Bliss to the strangers. Bliss to the strangers. Bliss to the strangers."
Then it was said, "Who are the strangers, O Messenger of God?" He said, "Good people among many bad people. Those who will disobey them are more than those who will obey them."

Strangers the Prophet salallahu 'alaihi wa sallam called "my brothers" and of whom he said

"They will believe in me without ever having seen me."

And they continued to ask "Who are the strangers?"

"They are those who follow my ways when my ummah is corrupt."
"They are of those who will have moved away from their clans."
"God will bring them together to join Jesus the son of Mary."

The shuyukh ~ the old men of Islam ~ have been coming to America for decades to meet the strangers they expect to find here, and they say "It is plain that ALLAH has chosen America to be the next center of Islam."

It's been happening in America for much longer than a generation. It's happening now. Among a nation of neighborly immigrants of varying faiths and none at all, who are customarily peaceful, respectful, and mannerly, and mostly strangers.

Muslim America has evolved and developed in that social environment like nothing ever did ~ recalling every long-lost religious heritage of the history of humanity to a commonality as diverse and pluralistic as has ever been envisioned. Nowhere in history have there ever been gathered together people of every color, culture, and creed like in America. America is a tapestry of humanity from the ends of the earth, a gathering of all the tribes to live together in peace, a society of amiable strangers.

Prophecy in the Hebrew Scripture looks at and from the Promised Land. From the perspective of someone in the Promised Land, Morocco is "the west" and China is "the east." But God says He is The Lord of the Two Easts and Lord of the Two Wests. So the Arab scholars and their followers in the Arab muslim empire, when pressed for an "explanation" of these "two" easts and wests, speculated that He meant the different places from which the sun rose and to which it set ~ a northerly east and west, and a southerly east and west, depending on the time of year.

But God's creation is bigger than those earlier Arab scholars could imagine. Here in the western hemisphere are "The Other West" and "The Other East" and Islam has returned ~ as long ago foretold, even in the Hebrew Scripture ~ in "the other West." In America.

It is hard to argue that Islam is "present" in the Promised Land, except in the hearts of the humble, where it may save them and their families from a fire whose fuel is men and stones, but no longer bears the fruits of the kingdom of God. Otherwise, it is as we were told would come: a terminally-collapsed millennial muslim world ~ and tyranny rules the Promised Land. The Arabs and their disfranchised, dispossessed followers are still waiting for Islam to be "taken up" and "depart" and then reappear at the hand of an apocalyptic figure among the Arabs, from the tribe of Quraysh, who they imagine will restore to them the lost empire of Islam.

Just as the leaders of Israel have led their people to expect a "Messiah" who they invented to restore to them the kingdom of Solomon and "replace" the Messenger of the Covenant they knew to expect in Madinah, Muhammad sallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam. Pauline Christians expect the Messiah Jesus 'alaihi as-salaam to return, an event that is expected to be confirmed by the "miracle" of the conversion of thousands, if not millions, of Jews to Christianity on their long-planned "recognition" of their own invented "Messiah." And like many muslims, they expect a "New World Order" over which they will reign with "a rod of iron."

So as the "Christian" nations, at the instigation of Israelis, bomb successive muslim populations into oblivion, and call each other to Zion's plan of eliminating Islam like people calling each other to the dinner table, the faithful of the world ~ of all faiths ~ are waiting for The Hour to fall upon them.

Here in America, we're not waiting.

It's pretty obvious, from the Signs, and true to prophecies known since the time of Noah, that the Stranger has returned in America. A lot of people are trying to stop it ~ particularly those who imagine that God has chosen them for everlasting and exclusive authority to rule over "fallen" humanity. So there are some other things masquerading as Islam to confuse and mislead the strangers ...

Click here for boilerplate piety and priestly exclusivism.
Click here for labyrinthine relics of speculative obfuscation.
Click here for juristic support of imperial ambitions.
Click here for Arabic versions of the man-god mystery religions.
Click here for partisan contentions and conspiracy theories.
Click here for the lives and times of the enemies of God.

But God keeps His Promises, and the tyrants and pretenders are meeting a gruesome end.

The strangers are promised something else.

No other people were ever Promised "bliss."