Narrative Reconfigurations of Islamic Eschatological Signs

The Portents of the “Hour” in Grey Literature and on the Internet

Abstract

Current political developments have not only been interpreted by Muslim religious scholars and individual laymen as signs, which inaugurate the end of time (ashrāṭ al-sā ‘a ), but these eschatological interpretations have also been and still are being instrumentalized by various religious and political groups. Among them, for example, the IS (dawn islāmiyya ) in Iraq and Syria, which has inaugurated an eschatological fear that is mirrored in numerous online discussion forums and online publications. Especially in social media and grey literature, motifs and figures that appear at the end of time according to the aḥādīth  and the Qur’an, are often reinterpreted and synthesised with other sources, ideologies, worldview and conspiracy theories. The article explores these narrative reconfigurations, focusing on these central motifs or figures: the Dajjāl and its apocalyptic antagonist, the Mahdī, tribulations and trials (fiat ) and the political victory over a perceived enemy. It reveals that the “end” and the last things identified in these narratives are often reinterpreted as a political turn and change in the here and now through spatial and historical reconfigurations. We argue that the functions of these narratives are manifold: They can provide a simple orientation by means of a clear cut dualistic identification of good and evil, or they can offer meaning to otherwise hardly understandable or bearable events. They can also act as a call for political action in a declared sacral conflict.