Fitnah Duhaima: An Age of Utter Confusion

APPROACHING SIGNS OF DOOMSDAY than 5000 pages of information are added to it every 5 minutes. There has been a similar exponential increase in printed books. Through print and electronic media, vast quantities of information have been circulated to all and sundry. Now everyone is living in a jungle of information. In such a situation, differentiating between truth and falsehood has become so difficult that it is almost impossible without the exceptional support of God. A tradition has been recorded in different collections of Hadith about a prediction made by the Prophet to the effect that a time would come when the deception (fitnah) of words, whether written or spoken, would be more dangerous than the sword. (Sunan Abu Dawood, Hadith No. 4265) This age of the deception of words has already set in our times. Today, the abundance of beautiful words is the greatest source of misguidance. How will it be possible to save oneself from this dark deception of words? The answer is to be found in a hadith. The Prophet of Islam observed, “Realisation of God is the shield against this fitnah.” It means that there is only one way to shake off the spell of beautifully deceptive words, and that is for man to be possessed with the realisation of God. Nothing else can save man from this fitnah.