Thinking about the Hadith, I wonder about the state of Muslims and Islam at that time and try to imagine how weak they must have become to allow such a horrible thing to happen. The attacker will spread death and destruction in a manner and on a scale never seen before. Once his soldiers have seized control of the area, he will climb onto the Holy Kaaba and begin destroying it brick by brick. Driven by arrogance, hatred and a desire for vengeance, he will destroy the first House of God, built by the Prophet Ibrahim (peace be upon him), which throughout human history has been revered by all including even pagans and unbelievers.

How can anyone imagine that the Muslim nation — the community of those who follow the teachings of Islam — would be so weak as to allow such a despicable thing to happen? No one knows what the nation will be like in those days or how the believers will live. What will be the state of the nation’s leaders, ulema and scholars? What will be the state of ordinary Muslims themselves? What kind of sick minds will accept such a deep humiliation?

Seeing the state of Islam today, one shouldn’t be surprised if Muslims ended up as described by the Prophet. He told us that a time would come when Muslims would be an easy target for other nations. It will not be because their numbers are small but because their large numbers have no more substance than a bubble which bursts at the slightest touch and which only serves to fuel differences and feuds.

We now live in a state of humiliation the likes of which we thought we would never experience, but what the future holds may be even worse. We are now only at the beginning. In the past we merely read about what would happen at the end of the world and we treated those tales with astonishment and incredulity. Now, however, we can see the signs before us. This is not a call for people to despair and lose hope. There will always be in the nation sincere and honest people to defend right and justice and they will continue to do so until the Day of Judgment.

* * *

Once again Muhammad Al-Douri, Iraq’s ambassador to the UN, is on Al-Arabiya satellite channel. He is there to enlighten us and give our intellectuals a lesson in the fine points of rhetoric and choosing the right word to use, even in the most difficult circumstances. Of course, all this comes with a sense of patriotism that is free from any impurities.

One of the questions Al-Douri was asked was “Could there have been a way to avoid the war and if so, how?” He reminded the interviewer that US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had said that the US would invade Iraq whether Saddam Hussein stepped down or not — for no other reason than finding weapons of mass destruction. “The only thing that could have prevented this war was an honest unified Arab stance.”

Al-Douri refused to elaborate. But one might ask: What could the Arabs have done? No one could have stopped the United States from invading Iraq. There is no doubt that Al-Douri was referring specifically to Qatar and Kuwait who allowed US forces to launch attacks on Iraq from their soil. If neighboring Arab countries had had a unified stance and agreed that attacks could not be launched from their countries, Washington would have been left with the options of Turkey or Iran!

There is no doubt that both Qatar and Kuwait had their own scores to settle, whether justified or not. Whatever the case, what the Americans asked for was acceptable to those countries. Had they not agreed to provide assistance, things might have changed.

An ancient Roman thinker once said, “A mature person must look in a mirror. If what he sees is beautiful, then he should not do anything to make himself look ugly; but if what he sees is already ugly, he must do nothing to make it uglier.”

* * *