Principles, precisely because of their all-inclusive nature, are few, but need effort and time to be adequately comprehended. This then is how to approach the subject: first one should familiarize oneself with the details, meditate on them at length, while applying the knowledge to the surrounding phenomena and events, then strive to extract and grasp the patterns, after which one may move on to deduce the principles, which are the all-inclusive cosmic laws involved. This is why the Prophet-may God’s blessings and peace be upon him-warned of this worst kind of danger, saying: ‘Seditions will occur, when a man shall awaken in the morning a believer, becoming a disbeliever by nightfall, save he whom God has given life to by means of knowledge.’ Next to disbelief comes moral confusion leading to corruption of such magnitude as to lead, even in the presence of faith, to punishment in Hell. When as Muslims we speak of dangers, it must be understood that the gravest of all as far as we are concerned is disbelief, not physical danger. Only those will be able to find their way that have armed themselves with the knowledge of how to understand these times and guard themselves against their dangers. “The main characteristic of the approaches of the Hour is escalating disorder and confusion and that there shall be such turbulence affecting both the world of ideas and that of events that, as other hadiths say, even stable intelligent people will be in danger of losing their bearings. Whole cities - even countries - had been deserted as mankind huddled together for History's closing act.” For five hundred years the birthrate had been held at a level that would reduce the human population to a few millions when the end finally came. In that last century the Earth was haunted with ghosts - not of the dead, but of those who now could never be born. the mighty central span of the Gibraltar Bridge, melting even as it slumped downward through the burning air. the continent of Antarctica emerging briefly after its long burial, as the kilometres of ancient ice were burned away. the Moon rising above the flaming forests of Brazil and now itself shining almost as brilliantly as had the Sun, on its last setting, only minutes before. the floor of the Atlantic, baked rock-hard in seconds, before it was submerged again, by the lava gushing from the volcanoes of the Mid-ocean Rift. the Great Pyramid, glowing dully red before it slumped into a puddle of molten stone. That, too, he had watched through the lenses of cameras that had survived a few minutes longer than the devoted men who had sacrificed the last moments of their lives to set them up. But these were empty, meaningless spectacles compared with the tragedy of Earth. With his own eyes, he had seen the volcanoes of Mars erupt for the first time in a billion years Venus briefly naked as her atmosphere was blasted into space before she herself was consumed the gas giants exploding into incandescent fireballs. “(.)Through the ship's telescopes, he had watched the death of the solar system.
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