A Prophet (pbuh) said before ad-Dajjal comes / before this false Messiah comes.
There are years of false messiahs and deceptive tactics.
Years of these things happening, right?
The world changes in a way that it sort of sets the ground.
That's the stage. So people can't distinguish truth from falsehood anymore.
And people seek to create their own paradise on Earth.
If that shallow reality doesn't immediately satisfy me,
And this is how it affects faith, then I deny it.
So that's why you see people deny faith in the name of rationality.
Now, not that Islam is not an intellectual faith.
Use your senses.
Use your brain, five things that we take from the Prophet (pbuh)
of how to protect ourselves from ad-Dajjal.
In every one of the scriptures of the past,
you find this notion of false Messiahs, false messiahs that come and go,
some of them are more advanced than others.
Some of them have certain tools of deception, or the circumstances allow
for their deception to last longer than others.
And sometimes as the tools advance, then the case becomes more convincing
because every one of these false messiahs that has come makes a claim.
And so if you are looking in Judaism,
you have false Messiah after false Messiah, after false Messiah.
And then there is the concept
of the ultimate false Messiah before obviously the ultimate Messiah.
And then, on the other hand, you have messiahs who are like
Mujaddid, people who revive until you have Al Masih, the ultimate Messiah,
who of course, Isa (a.s) Jesus, peace be upon him.
And so in our conception, as we look to this idea of Dajjal
and we talk about ad Dajjal and what the Dajjal looks like,
The Antichrist.
The false Messiah looks like the conditions in which a figure like
that can rise and can take advantage of so many different people.
Now, over the last 200 years or the last 100 years, in specific,
the tools of deception have obviously increased, the quality of those tools
And those mechanics have increased.
And so when the TV first came out, someone said that's the ad dajjal, it's your ipad.
It is your phone.
And then, no, it was Facebook.
And now it's Metaverse.
And these are all dajjals.
And while there are certainly forms of DA- Jala, certainly forms of deception that are
enabled to these tools and those tools as they develop become more frightening.
There is the Dajjal that we hear about from the Prophet (pbuh) in numerous traditions.
And there's a specific twist to this dajjal,
and that is that he is the ultimate deceiver.
He has the ultimate optical illusions,
is able to play with people's eyes and able to deceive them with his claims
in ways that other people before him were not able to.
So he is the culmination, if you will, of all those tactics.
While certainly the conditions prior to him
make his arrival right now, before I go into the conditions
in which Dajjal rises, I think it's very pertinent that we talk
about the things that the Prophet (pbuh) told us to protect ourselves from a Dajjal.
Very briefly. Number one, the Prophet (pbuh) mentioned
Eman / faith and specifically faith before it's too late to have faith,
before it's too late to profess and to have faith.
There's a time when faith comes or there's a time when faith is no longer accepted.
And the Prophet (pbuh) said that there are three things.
Once they come out,
the Prophet (pbuh) said that there is a time that comes once these three things arrive.
At that point, if a person did not profess faith,
they did not benefit from their faith.
They did not benefit from their faith,
meaning it was merely an expression but not actually a heartfelt reality or
something that was acted upon or practiced.
The Prophet (pbuh) mentioned the rising of the sun from the west.
The Prophet (pbuh) mentioned dajjal, and he mentioned the dābba ('animal').
So he mentioned these three things,
the rising of the sun, the beast, and the Antichrist, and that at that point
Eman does not benefit a person if it's sought to be initiated at that point,
it's something that you have to do in advance.
The second thing the Prophet (pbuh) gave us was Ilm/ was knowledge.
And the Prophet (pbuh) told us who this person is and what he looks like.
He said, sallallahu alaihi wasallam, that no Nabi was sent,
No Prophet was sent except that he warned his people about this oneeyed liar.
And he said, he is one eyed and your Lord is not.
And between his two eyes on his forehead is written the word Kafir.
Ok. He is written as a disbeliever.
Now this builds upon the previous one, which is faith.
Why?
Because faith is what inspires that proper knowledge.
And that knowledge is not merely information.
It is knowledge that you ascertain that you affirm with everything that you have.
So there's number one faith before it's too late.
Number two. Knowledge of the dajjal.
Number three, the Prophet (pbuh) taught us to make a dua / supplication,
at the end of every one of our prayers.
Abu Hurairah (Ra) narrates that the Prophet (pbuh) said that
that at the end of every one of your prayers, when you finish; the Tashahhud,
each one of you should seek refuge in Allah from four things:
Again,
Oh Allah! I seek refuge in you from the punishment of Jahannam / Hell,
And from the punishment of the grave,
And from the trials of life and death,
The Prophet (pbuh) said, memorize this and say it
at the end of every prayer before your Taslim.
Now, of course, if you don't pray, then you're not making the dua.
So it all builds on it. Right?
Faith, Knowledge of who Ad-dajjal is,
the faith and knowledge of how to pray
And then the prayer that you do on a daily basis
and the Dua that you make in every single one of these prayers.
You learn this dua, you memorize it and you say it every time.
Number four, the Prophet (pbuh) said
whoever memorizes ten verses from the beginning of Surah Al Kahf (18th chapter),
he said he will be immune from the fitna /
from the trial and tribulation of the false Messiah.
In another narration, the Prophet (pbuh) mentioned the last ten verses of Al-Kahf,
and it's very powerful because if you think about the people of the cave,
the sleepers of the cave, they were people, young people that left
the allure of this world and left the deception of this world.
They sought to flee from Fitna,
to flee from that deception and to protect their faith.
And Allah (swt) caused them a miracle
in which he allowed them to sleep through that fitna for hundreds of years.
Right?
And He (swt) made an example out of them, a positive example out of them.
So the Prophet (pbu) said,
Whoever memorizes keeps these ten verses, the first ten and the last ten of surah kahf,
then they will be protected from ad Dajjal.
Number five, the Prophet (pbuh) taught us to flee from fitna and flee from tribulation.
He said sallallahu alaihi wasallam,
let he who hears of the Dajjal, go far away from him,
for I swear by Allah that
a man will come to him thinking that he is a believer.
He'll challenge him and then he'll leave
confused by the ideas and by the deception of the ad Dajjal.
So the Prophet (pbuh) taught us in general, don't put yourself in bad situations.
Don't put yourself in bad situations.
This is, of course, a general principle of fleeing from fitna..
to avoid places where your faith is likely to be compromised.
Don't put yourself in bad environments.
So the Prophet (pbuh) is saying,
Allah is not tasking you that if you hear about this person that
you go and you confront him, no, rather flee from this person.
Flee from their deception. And of course,
flee from the types of things that would be put out there by ad-dajjal.
So these are five things that we take from the Prophet (pbuh)
of how to protect ourselves from ad dajjal.
We ask Allah (swt) to grant us that protection- Allahuma Ameen.
Ad-dajjal does not arrive in a vacuum.
He does not come at a random time.
There are things that precede him that are not just signs,
but that make the environment for deception
that much more fertile and make the heart and the mind
and the vision more susceptible to being deceived.
And that's where this Hadith where
the Prophet (pbuh) said from Anas ibn Maliq (Ra),
pay attention to the wording and every word you've got to pause and think,
I never thought about the way the Prophet (pbuh) placed it here,
the Prophet (pbuh) said, before the dajjal comes, there are years of deception.
Before this false Messiah comes;
There are years of false messiahs and deceptive tactics.
Years of false deception.
Years of these things happening, right?
The world changes in a way that it sort of sets the ground.
It sets the stage for a ad-Dajjal.
And what happens in those years of deception?
The Prophet (pbuh) said that a Truthful person is called a liar,
and the liar is considered to be Truthful.
Why?
Because the liar is good at deceiving and covering his lie.
Whereas the Truthful and this is something very profound, a person who is Truthful
will not resort to deception to prove their trustworthiness.
And so what's going to happen?
They're just going to have to take it on the chin.
That's how it's going to be,
because a lair will do whatever it takes to portray the truth
Whereas a truthful is comfortable/
A Truthful person is comfortable with just being a Truthful person.
Right? So that's what happens first.
Then the Prophet (pbuh) said that the trustworthy people are discredited.
People of Amana / trust are considered to be discredited,
and those who are treacherous are trusted.
And the Prophet (pbuh) said that at that time the most disgraceful of people speak.
Their voices are projected.
So people can't distinguish truth from falsehood anymore.
They can't distinguish trustworthy people from dishonest people anymore.
And because of that, who's going to take the stage, right?
And the Prophet (pbuh) was asked,
who are they, Subhanallah, the way he described them;
He said, little men,
little men, Subhanallah, little people, little wicked people,
But at the same time, they speak about affairs,
all types of affairs and all types of things they have no business talking about,
and they cause all types of issues for people.
This is what perceives ad-dajjal..
So this is what's important to understand here.
The world prior to him is a world where
realities are distorted and people seek to create their own paradise on earth.
Our sensibilities are lost and our fitrah is compromised /
Our natural goodness and inclination is compromised.
And so people operate in a day and age prior to a ad-Dajjal in vanity,
and they can't see past their immediate surface level vision.
And as people become shallower, the tools to distort shallow realities
become more advanced. So people can't see beyond the movies and the graphics
and the tactics and that stuff right in front of them.
They can't see beyond that.
But at the same time, they trust it more.
And the tools by which you can distort all of that are becoming more advanced.
And so you have this situation
where if that shallow reality doesn't immediately satisfy me...
and this is how it affects faith, then I deny it.
So that's why you see people deny faith in the name of rationality;
Now not that Islam is not an intellectual faith.
Islam is an intellectual faith.
Use your senses, use your brain.
But then people treat their senses as divine,
even though those senses are being constantly compromised.
And if I can't see it immediately in front of me,
then I'm not going to believe in it.
So when people talk about faith;
and they talk about paradise and they talk about hell
and they talk about the hereafter and they talk about the unseen and all that stuff,
I can't see it right in front of me.
And even though I don't even know what I'm seeing anymore,
it doesn't make sense to me because I can't see it right in front of me
and Subhanallah Ironically, those who deny the existence of ad-dajjal
in the name of some enlightenment, those who deny the existence of ad-dajjal
in the name of no visual evidence, they're displaying the very weakness
that makes them more likely to fall for his visual distortions.
I can't see it. I don't believe it.
Where is this Dajjal now? Oh, really Oh Really, Ad-Dajjal, sounds funny, you know.
And so people that start to deny it. Why?
Because I can't find it now.
I don't see it now.
They trust their vision so much
that they're most likely to fall victim to their vision when the actual Dajjal rises,
May Allah protect us from his fitna- Allahhumma ameen.
Dajjal himself / this false Messiah,
He knows he's an imposter and he sees things.
Allah (swt) will cause him to see things that put him in his place.
The Prophet (pbuh) said,
when Dajal comes to Medina, he would see the Angels standing in front
of Al-Medina holding their armor and he would not come anywhere near them.
The Prophet (pubh) when Ad-Dajjal sees Isa (a.s),
the actual Messiah, Jesus peace be upon him.
When he sees Isa (a.s),
he literally starts to dissolve and run, melts and flees away from him because
He knows he's an imposter and he knows that his time has come.
You know, when ad-Dajjal is presenting all
these different things to people, a virtual reality that you can step into that
will completely take you to where you want to go.
Right? He's presenting to you the dead.
He cooperates with the satan
that the shaiteen would take the image,
would take the vision of a person who has passed away
that believes in him, and that affirms him.
And he's creating all of this deception.
There's something very specific that I want to get to.
And that is when the ad-dajjal actually presents his paradise
and says, Enter into my Jannah, go ahead and enter into my paradise.
And there's something of his magics, subhanAllah,
and these tricks and these deceptions
that speaks to a weakness that grows within us as well...
That's not just about the tools,
but also about the search for instant gratification,
an inability that we're developing to see past surface level,
where people in general try to recreate themselves
and their universe to fit their desires.
And they don't think about the long term consequences.
They don't think about ethics.
They don't think about what this is going to mean.
So then what happens when this Daja presents his Jannah
and says, Here you can escape.
You can enter into this and you'll have everything that you want,
and you don't have to wait for anything.
Just go ahead and step in. And think about it....
May Allah protect us.
I mean, the Prophet (pbuh) taught us to seek protection.
I think about people and the mindsets of people as they take that step in.
Right? And what's going through their minds is it
that they're so convinced that he is indeed God?
Is it that what's the worth of this life anyway,
SubanAllah, I remember watching some interviews with those
that are going to Mars at this point where or signing themselves up
and listing themselves, knowing that it's a very risky mission.
But I remember one of them saying,
you know, if I die, then it's better than being in this world anyway.
I thought, wow, he literally listed out
the options like that's how he did the math.
He said, you know, I either make it to Mars or I die or I stay in this world.
And he said, Staying in this world is option number three for me.
So I take option number two anyway,
over option number one, you gotta think about that.
Like what world nurtures that, right?
Where people try to recreate themselves and recreate their perfect world,
And someone that might say, you know what? I don't care.
I'll step in anyway, what's the worst that could possibly happen?
What's the worst that could possibly happen?
And the Prophet (pbuh) said
that he comes with the likeness of paradise, the appearance of a paradise.
And he said that his Jannah is actually fire.
His paradise is actually fire.
And another narration,
the Prophet (pbuh) mentioned that he has these two flowing rivers.
And there's no contradiction between the two narrations here
because the Prophet (pbuh) is presenting what he's saying very specifically
is that he's got these rivers of lava and burning and fire.
Right? And he's saying, this is Hellfire.
And then he's got these Rivers flowing
of Musk and of milk, the image of which he says, this is my Jannah.
You know what the Prophet (pbuh) said?
He said, if one of you sees that
if you get into a situation where you're standing right in front of him
and that's what you have to do.
The Prophet (pbuh) said, Lower your gaze,
close your eyes, put your head down and drink from the boiling water.
And he said, I swear it will be cool water.
His paradise is hell and his hell is paradise.
It's flipped. SubhanAllah like..
Don't be deceived by what's being put out in front of you like that.
And people have to ask themselves
what motivations and weaknesses the Ad-dajjal preys upon that could be within us.
And this is what I want to end with.
The deception of the ad-dajjal cannot happen without the deception of Dunya
and the deception of the devil, it can't,
the allure of Dunya is one of.. adornment of the worldly life, right?
It has appearances, but we can't see past appearances.
People become relegated to the material world.
They can't see past it.
And the promise of the devil is what
that the consequences are not going to be that bad.
If you boil down the deception of satan /
the deception of the devil is what that the consequences of your deeds,
you should not think about because it's not going to be that bad, right?
The pleasure that you're going to enjoy right now
is greater than any possible consequences you might face.
That's a mindset, that's a weakness that's exploited and that grows.
And so then the final piece of that is simply
a presentation of what you want to jump into
and we have to resist
as the world becomes shallower and our senses become more distorted,
falling prey to that type and thinking about the long term consequences
and thinking about purpose when it's so easily diluted
and thinking about why we exist,
when it's so easily diluted and thinking about the hereafter,
when we can't see it, and we don't have 3D graphics or actors or movies.
Thinking about Jannah and Hell,
Thinking about that meeting with Allah,
thinking about that meeting with the Prophet (pbuh),
thinking about that idea of being held accountable
and thinking about that idea of reward and punishment.
You got to see through it all and remind yourself
that I can't turn my senses into something that's divine.
Nor can I put my trust into tools
that are becoming ever more deceptive and deceitful.
May Allah protect us from all of the fitnahs and that we are surrounded by.
May Allah allow us to develop that strong sense of faith and certainty
that we see through deception.
And that allows us to act in that which is pleasing to Him.
And May Allah reward us for the best of our deeds
and forgive us for our shortcomings - Allahuma Ameen.