The Fajr adhan, once a comforting call echoing through sleeping streets, now felt thin, almost lost against the city's restless, discordant hum. I reached for my phone, not for the adhan app, but to silence the jarring blare of the emergency alert system – my new, unwelcome dawn chorus. The screen glowed with stark, terrifying pronouncements:
"NUCLEAR ALERT: GLOBAL POWERS ON HIGH TENSION AFTER BORDER INCURSION"
"MASS RIOTS ERUPT IN 15 MAJOR CITIES FOLLOWING REPEAL OF PUBLIC DECENCY LAWS"
"PANDEMIC PROTOCOLS REINSTATED AMIDST UNIDENTIFIED VIRAL SURGE"
My breath hitched. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the sudden, chilling silence in my apartment. This wasn't just another news cycle, another manufactured crisis. This felt different. Deeper. This felt like the unraveling.
I scrubbed at my hands in Wudu, the water scaldingly cold, as if purifying not just limbs but the filth of the day seeping into my soul. The ritual, usually a source of grounding clarity, felt like tracing familiar lines on a map whose landscape was rapidly changing.
I unrolled my prayer mat, its worn threads a silent witness to years of my devotion, and turned towards the Qibla. But even facing the Ka'aba, the world's chaos pressed in, a suffocating static.
My Fajr prayer felt strained, the verses catching in my throat. The profound peace I usually cherished in the pre-dawn stillness was gone, replaced by a heavy, anxious weight. My mind kept replaying the alerts, the images from yesterday's newsfeeds – the relentless cascade of decay.
Later, forcing myself out for essentials, the city assaulted my senses. The air reeked of synthetic strawberries from vape pens, masking the sour stench of vomit in the alley nearby. Music with violent, nihilistic lyrics pounded from passing vehicles, the bass vibrating unpleasantly in my chest. A colossal digital billboard loomed overhead, its neon glow garish against the grey sky, flashing an ad for a new virtual reality experience: "Escape Reality: Build Your Own Heaven!" Below it, another proclaimed "Global Unity Month: All Beliefs Are Equal Paths!"
I turned the corner towards Masjid Al-Noor, my heart sinking. The mosque, once a vibrant hub, stood desolate. Crude graffiti – mocking symbols and hateful slogans – scarred its elegant doors, which were now crudely boarded up.
"GOD IS DEAD," one spray-painted message screamed. "RELIGION = POISON," declared another. Near the entrance, a discarded, torn copy of the Qur'an lay in the gutter, stained with mud and refuse. I watched, frozen, as a group of teenagers swaggered past. One deliberately kicked the sacred text, sending it skittering further into the filth. He spat towards the mosque doors. "Ancient fairy tales for weak minds," he sneered, eliciting laughter from his companions.
My fists clenched, a hot surge of anger and grief rising within me. I wanted to shout, to confront them, but a chilling sense of futility held me back. What good would it do? They wouldn't listen. They wouldn't care. I forced myself to walk on, the image burned into my mind, the Prophet's warning echoing like a tolling bell: "People will abandon the prayer…" (Ibn Majah). I remembered another: "There will come a time upon the people when patience amongst them in adhering to their religion will be like holding onto a hot coal." (Tirmidhi). I felt its searing heat now, the daily struggle to simply exist as a Muslim in a world aggressively hostile to faith.
At my workplace, a soulless office complex where productivity metrics mattered more than human connection – the breakroom TV offered no respite. It blared a continuous stream of disaster and division:
"Record earthquakes devastate regions in Turkey and Syria… again."
"'Climate Refugees' overwhelm borders; tensions flare."
"Headline: Parents win lawsuit to 'deprogram' hijabi daughter. The chyron beneath read: 'Religious Freedom vs. Child Welfare.'"
"Global Trust Index Plummets as AI Deepfakes Undermine Reality Itself."
"Ticker: Crisis Summit Convenes in Riyadh Amidst Calls for 'Unprecedented Global Unity Pact'..."
A co-worker, noticing me watching, smirked. "See, Ahmad? Chaos everywhere. Proof your sky-daddy doesn't exist, or he just doesn't care. Look at this mess!" The man gestured dismissively at the screen before turning back to his phone game.
My throat tightened. I didn't reply, retreating into silence. Minor signs, my mind whispered. All of them. Time was collapsing.
A year like a month. A day like an hour. Just as the Prophet (ﷺ) warned. The normalization of sin was everywhere .
It was narrated from Abu Malik Ash'ari that the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said: "People among my nation will drink wine, calling it by another name, and musical instruments will be played for them and singing girls (will sing for them)."
marketed now as wellness tonics and social lubricants. Knowledge was distorted, ignorance celebrated. The pursuit of wealth and status had become the new religion – "The Hour will not be established... until the barefoot, naked, destitute shepherds compete in constructing lofty buildings." (Sahih Muslim). The signs weren't just appearing; they were converging, accelerating.
That evening, the solitude of my apartment offered little comfort. I scrolled through my feed, each video clip a fresh stab to my heart:
A renowned televangelist, tears streaming down his face, announcing his church was replacing the cross with an "interfaith symbol of universal love." A young child sobbing uncontrollably as she recounted her parents' bitter divorce – the tenth such split among her classmates just this year, the family unit crumbling under societal pressures and selfishness. A viral clip, horrifyingly popular, showing a group laughing hysterically as they tossed prayer rugs onto a bonfire at a music festival. "Burn the past! Embrace the now!" the caption read, garnering millions of likes.
My hands trembled, not just with anger, but with a deep, soul-shaking fear. The world wasn't just changing or decaying; it felt like it was actively tearing itself apart at the seams, shredding the very fabric of faith, family, and reality.
Sleep was impossible. Long after midnight, when the city finally fell into a semblance of quiet, I rose. The darkness outside felt absolute, mirroring the void growing within me. Even my elderly mother, usually steadfast in her night prayers, had succumbed to exhaustion and despair, her prayer mat remaining rolled in the corner. My father's last words: 'The Hour will come like a thief, but your faith must be a fortress.",I was truly alone.
I performed Wudu again, the water tracing cold paths on my skin. I spread my mat in the center of the small living room, the silence amplifying the frantic beating of my own heart. I stood for Tahajjud, the voluntary prayer offered in the depths of the night, a time for intimate communion with the Creator.
But tonight, the words felt inadequate. As I moved through the familiar motions – standing, bowing, prostrating – the carefully constructed walls around my fear crumbled. When I knelt, forehead pressed to the worn fibers of the mat – its familiar scratchiness a fleeting pain, grounding me against the spiraling dread – a single hot tear escaped, then another, then a torrent. They soaked the rug beneath me, silent testament to my anguish.
I raised my hands in dua, my shoulders shaking with choked sobs. The verses, the pleas, they fractured in my throat. I wasn't just praying; I was weeping before my Lord, pouring out the accumulated terror, the confusion, the grief for a world racing towards its own destruction. The headlines, the boarded-up mosque, the desecrated Qur'an, the mocking laughter, the chillingly accurate warnings of the Prophet (ﷺ) – they swirled into an overwhelming vortex of dread.
"Ya Allah…" The whisper was barely audible, raw with emotion. "Ya Rabb… Merciful One… the signs… they are no longer distant whispers. They are here. They are loud. The world is breaking… Is this it? Is this… is this how it truly begins?"
Outside, the sudden, piercing wail of a distant siren sliced through the night. Somewhere, not far away, a building was burning. As the sound faded, another verse, unbidden, stabbed into my memory, cold and sharp:
"And when the word befalls them, We will bring forth for them a creature from the earth speaking to them, [saying] that the people were, of Our verses, not certain [in faith]." (surah An-Naml 27:82)
The first chapter of the end had been written, not in ink, but in fire and my tears.