When I first read about the Dajjal in 1992 as a teenager from that famous Ibn Kathir booklet with the cover of the earth on fire, I used to wonder…’How in the world would everyone accept a man that was blind in one eye?’ Because it’s not a sightly thing. You won’t see many presidents or even celebrities with one eye. Maybe one or two exceptions. But now I see how it can happen because the look has been made trendy. You got the rapper now with one-eye and he’s got the Calvin Klein deal with his face all over the buses and walls of New York. Every other album cover has someone with only one eye showing, the other eye being covered by their hair or hand or shadow or cut off the pic entirely. So it’s completely normalized now.
And the intelligent person doesn’t sit there like a frog in boiling water until he dies. He takes note of the symptoms and realizes something is up and takes action quickly.
‘Action’ isn’t watching ten hours of The Arrivals then missing Fajr. ‘Action’ isn’t making a list of 100 logos that employ one eye. No. Real action is much harder than that and strikes at the core of our being. ‘Action’ is piety. It’s lowering the gaze because seeing nakedness sucks out the light from your heart (nur al-baseera). You can spend a lifetime working on that. It’s memorizing the first and/or last verses of Sūrat al-Kahf and contemplating the whole chapter because it’s all preparation for End Times. It’s moving away from this poisonous pop-culture and not letting it into your house and family. It’s getting on top of our five prayers again and in the masjid if possible, Fajr in the masjid being the best. This is ‘action.’ This is how we respond. So that if Dajjal comes in our lifetime, we’re ready and not taken by surprise and swept up in it. And if he doesn’t, then we have shown the next generation a live demonstration of how they should prepare. We ask Allah salama and aafiya (peace and protection).
The Signs Before the Day of Judgement by Imam Ibn Kathir
(For more information about the book, please click on the picture below)
