The age-old dream of the human caravan is not to send astronauts in their orbit in outer space.. it is to send its individuals - every single individual in his orbit of self-realization. It is high time that this dream be thus reinterpreted. It is also the sacred duty of every man and woman to help intelligently reorientate human endeavour towards the culmination of this pilgrimage.

Mahmoud Muhammad Taha - Answers to the questions of Mr. John Voll - 17.7.1963

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The Return of Christ

The Prophecy of the Coming of the Messiah in the Koran


Of the coming of the final Messiah, and his personification of the qualities of the Lord at the peak described by Mohamed, “Adopt the qualities of Allah, my Lord is on the straight path,” the Koran says, “Are they not only expecting when Allah comes to them in shadows of clouds, accompanied by the angels when all is done, and to Allah returns all things.” Note the expression, “cloud”, common to the New Testament prophecy and to Koran.
We also have a series of prophecies from the Prophet Mohamed on the coming of the final Messiah, and they all clearly demonstrate that he comes with the Second Message of Islam, and its laws, and not those of the First Message. It is reported, for example, that the Prophet Mohamed said “I swear by him who holds my soul that the son of Miriam is about to descend upon you as a fair ruler, and shall break the cross, kill the pig, abolish the Jiziya (humiliating personal tax on non-Moslems), and money shall be in such abundance that no one will accept it, and a single act of worship shall be better than all of this life, and what it can offer.”
It is also added, in other reports, “And there shall be such peace on earth that the lion grazes with camels, the tiger with cattle, and wolves with sheep, and children shall play with snakes.”
In yet a third report, it is also added, “and he shall fill the earth with fairness and justice.”
Note the spirit of peace in the prophecies of the first Messiah and that of Mohamed, in a way that ends all sorts of enmities and antagonism.
To fill the earth with fairness prepossesses the achievement of total social justice, namely, socialism, democracy and social equality between sexes and creeds, etc. In the phrase, “money shall be in such abundance that no one will accept it,” we find reference to the fruits of socialism, where through increased production and fair distribution, the wealth of the earth shall be shared in a way which will accommodate everybody.
The phrase, “abolish the Jiziya,” means that all compulsion and discrimination on grounds of religious faith, as well as any other feature of guardianship derived from the Medina Koran shall be abolished and replaced by rules of tolerance, freedom and quality derived from the Mecca Koran.
All these are clear indications that the Messiah shall com to apply the Second Message of Islam, as the general and universal law, after it had been of special application to the Prophet Mohamed alone. This is the sense in which Sunna, i.e. the personal example of the Prophet Mohamed as opposed to the Sharia law which was applied to the nation at large, shall be revived on the coming of the final Messiah
This means that the final Messiah shall be the Mohammedan Messiah, in the sense that he shall come with the Second Message which Mohamed lived personally, though it remained dormant in the Koran, appearing only in Mohamed’s personal example, until now, when it shall be implemented by the humanity of the twentieth century. In this connection, the Koran says to Mohamed, “He, who enforces the Koran upon you, is bringing you back on a predetermined date.” (Sura 28, Aiya 85). It is also reported that Ibin Abbas, one of the leading companions of the Prophet Mohamed, once said, “I wonder for those who expect the return of the Messiah and do not expect the return of Mohamed.”
Mohamed is coming back in the sense that humanity shall live up to his own personal example, which is the Second Message of Islam, the meeting point of all religions. The coming Messiah is the personification of the essence of Mohamed, and he shall add the superstructure upon the foundations to which all prophets and messengers heave contributed as much as the circumstances of their times permitted.