After some rainfall this year in Saudi Arabia, we are watching non-stop propaganda by Islamic Preachers that the prophetic prediction has become true, and the Arabian Land in turning green. 

Sahih Muslim, 157c:

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (way peace be upon him) as saying: The Last Hour will not come before wealth becomes abundant and overflowing, so much so that a man takes Zakat out of his property and cannot find anyone to accept it from him and till the land of Arabia becomes meadows and rivers.

Answer: 

Any person with sound mind will immediately come to this conclusion that this prediction is not correct, and Muhammad was only fooling those people by making such predictions, which made them happy. 

It was exactly the same as when Muhammad fooled those people by making them promises of 72 beautiful Houris in the paradise, which made those people very happy. 

The water and the greenery, both were rare in Arabia. And the Arabs really value them. Therefore, Muhammad took advantage of this, and lured them in the name of prediction. It was exactly the same thing that the religious figures before Muhammad also did (and perhaps Muhammad copied it from them). 

Reason 1: Muhammad may have copied it from the Bible

For example, the Bible also lure the people for same thing. Since the religious figures of the Bible didn't belong to Arabic-speaking Mecca and Medina, but to other deserts of non-Arabic lands, thus the Bible predicted the becoming of those other deserts green. 

Isaiah 35

"Even the wilderness and desert will rejoice in those days; the desert will blossom with flowers. Yes, there will be an abundance of flowers and singing and joy! The deserts will become as green as the Lebanon mountains, as lovely as Mount Carmel’s pastures and Sharon’s meadows; for the Lord will display his glory there, the excellency of our God."

"The lame man will leap up like a deer, and those who could not speak will shout and sing! Springs will burst forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert. The parched ground will become a pool, with springs of water in the thirsty land. Where desert jackals lived, there will be reeds and rushes!"

Isaiah 41:18-20

"I will make rivers flow on barren heights,

and springs within the valleys.

I will turn the desert into pools of water,

and the parched ground into springs."

Isaiah 43:19

"Behold, I will do a new thing;

now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it?

I will even make a way in the wilderness,

and rivers in the desert."

Psalm 107:35

"He turned the desert into pools of water

and the parched ground into flowing springs;"

Reason 2: The SEQUENCE of the incidents is in the OPPOSITE Order

Anyone with a sound mind will immediately come to this conclusion that the 1st part of the prophecy is also false. 

The world's population is increasing, and as well as the poverty. There are millions of poor Muslim in Islamic states. They need Zakat to survive.  

Nevertheless, Islamic preachers present the following tradition, and claim that wealth will become abundant when Jesus will come:

Bukhari, 2476:

Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "The Hour will not be established until the son of Mary (i.e. Jesus) descends amongst you as a just ruler, he will break the cross, kill the pigs, and abolish the Jizya tax. Money will be in abundance so that nobody will accept it (as charitable gifts).

But the coming of any Jesus is not a FACT, but only an Islamic BELIEF. You cannot present your personal BELIEFS as a proof for being any prediction to be true. So, let Jesus come first, and make such a claim. 

Secondly, the SEQUENCE of incidents in this Hadith is again refuting Islamic preachers. This Hadith is presenting the following sequence of incidents:

  • Firstly, Jesus will come, and he will break the cross, and kill pigs (/Jews?), and wealth will become abundant.
  • Only after that, the land of Arabia becomes meadows and rivers.

So, the abundance of wealth has to happen first, and the turning of land of Arabia into meadows will become later. 

Nevertheless, Islamic preachers are claiming the OPPOSITE sequence, and thus refuting their own prophet. They are claiming that land of Arabia in turning meadows now, but there are no signs of coming of any Jesus. 

Reason 3: In a case of World war, planet Earth will exist no more

And Muslims are extremely weak today. They don't dare to wage war upon any non-Muslim country today in the name of Jihad. 

Moreover, human intellect also guides us that the coming of Dajjal and Jesus are only fairy tales. It is due to the reason, if any World War starts today, then atomic bombs are in a position to destroy the whole planet earth many times. There will be no Christians or Jews or Muslims left on the earth. Thus, it is only a stupidity to still believe in the fantasy stories of Jesus and Dajjal, after knowing the power of destruction of atomic bombs. 

 


PS: Tehrif in Translation of this Hadith by Sunnah.Com

In short, sunnah.com changed the word "land of Arabia becomes meadows and rivers."  to "land of Arabia reverts to meadows and rivers". By that, they want to prove that Muhammad knew that once Arabia had already been a land of meadows and rivers in the past, which makes it a miracle of Muhammad. 

Nevertheless, sunnah.com is caught red-handed for making this distortion (Tehrif), as the older version of their translation are still present on the "way back machine" website.

Another ex-Muslim provided this detailed reply (link):

Literally everyone knows about sunnah.com. It's our go-to website for looking up hadith. But did you know they make subtle changes to their translations to reinforce Islamic miracle claims?

I recently finished reading an Islamic propaganda book that I got from a dawah stall. It's called the Forbidden Prophecies and it's marketed by IERA. One of the prophecies it talks about is that the land of Arabia will turn into meadows and rivers. Now this prophecy is something I have been hearing since I was a little kid, so it's not a big deal for me because its an obvious prediction anyone can make. But this book goes further. It says the Arabic word used in the hadith means "return", so Muhammad was actually talking about a return to previous state of greenery, rather than a new state of greenery. So their claim is that Muhammad somehow knew that the middle east was once filled with forests and rivers (which has been confirmed by geology) and therefore its a miracle.

Anyone who makes this idiotic claim most probably has not read classical arabic dictionaries, because it is basic knowledge that the meanings of words change over time and the original meaning of words can be lost. For example the word 'gay' used to mean joyful/carefree, but now it mostly means homosexual although the original meaning still exists. Pretty much all arabic speakers know the root word عود means to return in modern arabic. But Islamic texts are 7th century utterings, hence we have to be translate them based on 7th century Arabic.

If you check the most popular english language dictionary of classical arabic (Lanes Lexicon), you see that the many forms of عود had a range of meanings, including 'return', but also 'to become'.

Lanes Lexicon says this:

He, or it, came to such a thing or state or condition; syn. صَارَ إِليْهِ; (Mgh,* Mṣb;) at first, or for the first time, or originally; and also, a second time, or again

Hans-wehr says this:

to return, come back (ل or إلى); to flow back, to go back,

[.......]

to become, grow (into), turn into;

So both dictionaries clearly say that return isn't the only meaning, and it can mean to become for the first time as well.

So now we know that in classical arabic the word also meant to become for the first time. But which meaning is the correct one? I'm not an Arabic expert, so obviously I can't just choose which definition suits my narrative. The solution is simple, we look at whether the major scholars of classical times interpreted it to mean 'return' instead of 'become'. The major scholars I found didn't interpret it as 'return' at all. For example, imam nawawi in his sharh of sahih muslim says this:

معناه والله أعلم أنهم يتركونها ويعرضون عنها فتبقى مهملة لا تزرع ولا تسقى من مياهها وذلك لقلة الرجال وكثرة الحروب وتراكم الفتن وقرب الساعة وقلة الآمال وعدم الفراغ لذلك والاهتمام به

He's saying the hadith means that people will abandon the land, it will be forgotten, not watered or fit for farming, due to the amount of wars and all the bullshit chaos going on in the world which will cause a shortage of men. None of them will care about the land so it implies Arabia will 'become' like this.

So we've got a giant of classical scholarship not even mentioning anything about returning to a previous state.

Let's see what qurtubi has to say about it:

تنصرف دواعي العرب عن مقتضى عاداتهم من انتجاع الغيث، والارتحال في المواطن للحروب والغارات، ومن نخوة النفوس العربية الكريمة الأبية إلى أن يتقاعدوا عن ذلك، فينشغلوا بغراسة الأرض، وعمارتها، وإجراء مياهها، كما شوهد في كثير من بلادهم وأحوالهم

He's saying the Arabs will stop fighting and start planting the fuck out of their lands. This will cause plants to grow and make way for rivers to flow.

Like nawawi, this giant of scholarship also didn't mention anything about a 'return' to previous state. If some of the most accomplished Arabic experts didn't interpret anything close to 'return', then why do dawah people try to convince us their interpretations are correct?

So... where does sunnah.com come in all this? Well, the translation sunnah.com uses is that of Abdul Hamid Siddiqui, a 20th century professor. They mention it in their 'about' section: https://sunnah.com/muslim/about

In fact, whenever you read an english translation of a hadith from sahih muslim on the internet, chances are you're reading Abdul Hamid's translation. His whole work is actually available online on theonlyquran.com. So let's go there and check the translation of the hadith in question:

http://www.theonlyquran.com/hadith/Sahih-Muslim/?volume=5&chapter=17

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (way peace be upon him) as saying: The Last Hour will not come before wealth becomes abundant and overflowing, so much so that a man takes Zakat out of his property and cannot find anyone to accept it from him and till the land of Arabia becomes meadows and rivers.

It says arabia will become meadows and rivers. Since sunnah.com claims to use the same translation, they should have the exact same words on their website, right? Let's see:

https://sunnah.com/muslim:157c

Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (way peace be upon him) as saying: The Last Hour will not come before wealth becomes abundant and overflowing, so much so that a man takes Zakat out of his property and cannot find anyone to accept it from him and till the land of Arabia reverts to meadows and rivers.

Wtf? Seems like they changed 'become' to 'revert' from the original translation to make the miracle sound impressive.

Now here's where it gets interesting. There is an internet tool called The Wayback Machine which you can use to check a website's older content. If you plug in sunnah.com's sahih muslim in the search, it will show you all the snapshots that have been saved from 2012 to 2020. If you check any of the older snapshots, every single one of them will be using the original translation ('become' instead of 'revert'). The last snapshot where they use the 'become' translation is in April 2020. The book Forbidden Prophecies was released in mid-2019, and it gained popularity in 2020. According to the snapshots, this is the very year that sunnah.com changed their translation from 'become' to 'revert', because they knew that people will be trying to fact-check this translation after reading the book!

That's pretty much it. Thought I'd share because it's fun to expose these dawah people. Thanks for reading if you made it this far :)


 

In general, please also remember this basic issue:

  1. The biggest problem with prophecies in Islam are they are general, nondetailed, vague and short such that even if it came to be somehow true, one cannot rule out the possibility that they might be coincidence or it would have been impossible for Muhammed to have predicted such a thing. In the prophecy of turning green; there's no date, time frame, there's no information about any details like how this greening would happen, from where it will start etc

  2. even if they are details, Muslims generally dismissed them as "metaphors".