Since in another treatise I have written in some detail about Gog and Magog and the Barrier, which are among the signs of the end of the world, I refer readers to those, and here only say this: there are narrations stating that the tribes known as the Manchurians and Mongols, who threw human society into chaos and were the cause of the building of the Great Wall of China, will again overturn human civilization close to Doomsday with an idea like anarchy.

Some atheists say: "Where are the tribes that perform these extraordinary acts and that will perform them?"

The Answer: A calamity like locusts appears in one season in enormous numbers, then on the change of the seasons, those numerous tribes which disrupt the country consign their reality to a few limited individuals. Then, when the time comes, at the Divine command, great numbers appear from those limited individuals and embark on the same corruption. As though the reality of their national identity is fined down, but not destroyed, and when the time arrives, it reemerges. In just the same way, those same tribes which overturned the world at one time will when the time comes again overturn human civilization with Divine permission. But what impels them will be in a different form. None knows the Unseen save God.

NINTH PRINCIPLE: The results of some of the questions of belief look to this restricted and narrow world, while others look to the world of the hereafter, which is broad and absolute. In order to give the appropriate effect of either encouraging or restraining, some Hadiths about the merits and rewards of actions are in an eloquent style, and some unthinking people have supposed them to be exaggerated. However, since they are all pure truth and reality, there is no exaggeration or overstatement in them.

For instance, there is this Hadith which has worried the heads of the unfair more than any. Its meaning is: "If the world had as much value as a fly's wing for Almighty God, the unbelievers would not have had so much as a mouthful of water from it."¹³ The reality of it is this: the phrase for Almighty God refers to the eternal ,realm. Yes, since a light from the eternal realm to the extent of a fly's wing is everlasting, it is greater than a temporary light that fills the face of the earth. That means it is not to say that the huge world is equal to a fly's wing, but that everyone's private world which is situated within their short lives, is not equal to an everlasting Divine effulgence and bounty to the extent of a fly's wing from the eternal realm.

Furthermore, the world has two faces, indeed, three faces. One is the mirror to Almighty God's Names, another looks to the hereafter and is its arable field, and the third looks to transience and non-existence. This is the world of the people of misguidance which is not in accordance with the things that please God that we know. That is to say, it infers not that the vast world which is the mirror to the Most Beautiful Names, and consists of missives of the Eternally Besought One, and is the tillage of the hereafter, but that the world of those who worship the world, which is opposed to the hereafter and is the source of all wrongs and spring of calamities, is not worth one everlasting particle which will be given to the believers in the hereafter. Thus, how can the way it is understood by the unfair atheists be compared with this most true and serious truth? What has the meaning which those atheists supposed to be the most exaggerated and overstated to do with this?

-----------------------------------
13. Tirmidhi, Zuhd, 13; Ihn Maja, Zuhd. 3; al-Hakim, al-Mustadrak, iv, 306.