Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam
Ziad Cassim
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 2
Ziad Cassim
Left cover photo: Arabesque art work, Alhambra palace, Spain (Photo source: Wikimedia Commons,
Photo credit: Yves Remedios)
Right cover photo: Jesus Minaret, Ummayad mosque, Syria (Photo source: Wikimedia Commons,
Photo credit: Bernard Gagnon)
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Ziad Cassim
This public document file (pdf) was created by Ziad Cassim on 15 February
2022.
Changes from the first edition to this 3rd revision can be found at the end.
The text of the book Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam
begins on the next page.
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 7
Ziad Cassim
&
___________________
Ziad Cassim
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 8
Ziad Cassim
Ziad Cassim is the author of this book written in the English language.
You may also quote from this book, whether short or lengthy, on condition that
the texts (including drawings and illustrations) are not altered in any way and
that full recognition is given to the author Ziad Cassim.
(Author)
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 10
Ziad Cassim
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 11
Ziad Cassim
Contents:
References 297
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Part I
Non-Random Nature
phenomenon into 4 categories. Examples are given that greatly underscore the
realism of this phenomenon.
***
I am fascinated by coincidences and I study them and try to find meaning in
them either by association to other events; the timing and date of the
coincidences; or by numeric analysis. Since 2006 I have noticed numeric
patterns in my personal life and in historical events. There are patterns in every
aspect of nature, and these patterns are scalable and they include both tangible
and intangible aspects of nature. Even the choices that one makes or the
innermost thoughts that one entertains is governed by these numbers. The
patterns are not difficult to grasp. You can grasp them from right where you are
now.
I won’t be asking you to put on your boots and go on an excursion into the
field to study trees, rocks and insects. Nor will I be asking anyone to reach into
the desk drawers and dust off their scientific calculators. I am neither scientist
nor mathematician and so I won’t be introducing formulas but I am going to
train your eye to spot those patterns that are constantly whizzing all around you.
I want to show people a new way of looking at life and a new way of
understanding nature. You are part of nature. Your mobile phone is part of
nature and your high rise apartment is part of the same nature found in the park
below. Right now and literally right under your nose is a world of numbers and
equations, constantly fluctuating, balancing and substituting.
Consider this: When you turned over the front cover of this book two things
happened, one apparent to the eye the other is hidden from the eye. The
apparent event is that the book opened. The hidden event is that a new equation
opened with an array of numbers and variables. One of my aims in writing this
book is to make that which is hidden from your eye apparent.
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Chapter 1
Awareness of Phenomena
figure in the Muslim world and an outspoken scholar of the Bible. Ahmed
Deedat was born in the year 1918 and gave his first public lecture in the early
1940s. Over the following decades he tirelessly championed the cause of Islam,
holding numerous debates and delivering lectures to thousands of people
throughout the world. Ahmed Deedat was the founder of an international
organization called the Islamic Propagation Centre International (IPCI), which
is an Islamic organization propagating the message of prophet Muhammad and
inviting people to the religion of Islam. In addition to his lectures and debates
Deedat also wrote numerous books on the Bible, the Quran and prophets Jesus
and Muhammad . All of his books, debates and lectures are royalty and
copyright free. He requested that if anyone made a reproduction of any of his
books, a copy should be sent to the offices of the IPCI for record keeping
purposes.
To this request, in May of 2004, I anonymously submitted a compact disc
containing my copy of Is the bible God's word? to the IPCI’s offices and after a
few weeks it was added to the IPCI's website. I was unemployed at the time and
very pleased to see my work on the Internet. For the remainder of 2004 I
continued converting three more books from the IPCI’s free literature collection
and on the 31st of January 2005 I anonymously submitted those three e-books to
the IPCI. These too were added to the IPCI website. Then in April of 2005 I
introduced myself to the staff of the IPCI and they welcomed my efforts. For
the remainder of that year I volunteered to convert more of Ahmed Deedat's
books and a few others, presumably written by others since they did not name
an author, which were also being published by the IPCI.
A beautiful and unexpected event happened early in April that year. On
Tuesday afternoon, 5th of April 2005 I was at a shopping mall in Westville, a
suburb which is a few kilometers west of the city of Durban in South Africa. As
I stepped off the elevator inside the mall my eyes fell on a young girl in her
school uniform, walking beside an older man whom I presume to be her father. I
strolled ahead and went about my day’s errands. It was mid afternoon and after
about 15 minutes I entered a bookstore where I saw the same schoolgirl again.
She stood at the front left corner of the store, just behind the display window
with a shelf of glossy magazine and journals behind her. In front of her was the
circular wood and granite pay counter. I walked around the pay counter and
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stood on her left, reading a tabloid magazine article about Britney Spears. I was
looking at Britney’s photo wondering what the red string on Britney’s wrist was
for when the schoolgirl’s dad stepped out of the store. Then I walked over to her
and complimented her but I was too shy to say anything else or to ask her name.
So I just stood beside her pretending to be reading the magazine and after a few
minutes her dad returned and shortly thereafter they left the bookstore.
Two weeks later, on Tuesday, the 19th of April 2005 I was again at the same
shopping mall to buy a toaster for my parents during the mid afternoon. I got off
the same elevator and strolled past a range of retail stores before turning the
right corner into the wide corridor leading up to the entertainment area. Ahead
of me on the left side was the same bookstore I visited two weeks earlier. As I
looked up toward the bookstore my eyes fell on the same schoolgirl, in her
school uniform, in the corridor passing by the bookstore’s display window. It
was the second time that I saw her at almost the same spot. Again her dad was
on her side. We passed each other about halfway down the corridor and I looked
straight past her. A few seconds later I swung my head around to glance at her
in her school uniform and just as they were about to turn the left corner she
turned her head searching. Our eyes met and she smiled at me.
After buying the toaster I left the mall and drove into the city, to the offices
of the IPCI, on Queen Street, in the city of Durban. On the 4th floor of the IPCI
building I met the liaison officer and presented him a compact disc containing 2
additional e-books that I had digitalized from the original print edition bringing
the total number of e-books submitted to the IPCI to six. For the remainder of
April 2005, the whole of May and up until the 18th of June 2005 I digitalized
another 5 books bringing the total number of books digitalized to eleven.
However all was not well. While feeling accomplished within myself I was
equally frustrated without because none of the seven new e-books, including
those submitted on Tuesday afternoon, the 19th of April 2005, had been added to
the IPCI website.
As fate would have it a dream about the schoolgirl whom I had seen on two
Tuesdays in April set off a chain reaction that changed my life forever. On
Tuesday night, 21 June 2005, I laid in my bed peaceful and contented. As I
waited for sleep to overcome my senses I remember saying to God that I did not
desire any dream for the night. Just Tahajjud and Fajr, the late night and early
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morning prayers respectively, would be fine. But in the early hours of June 22,
2005, I experienced a dream. I keep a dream diary and whenever I dream of
something important I write it down, along with the date of the dream and the
time it occurred. I recorded this dream in these words:
I mostly forgot about the schoolgirl and now suddenly after more than two
months since I last saw her I dreamt of searching for her on the very night that I
asked God not to show me any dream. Why would that happen? Why would I
unexpectedly dream of this schoolgirl? Does God give messages to people
through dreams? I wanted answers and so I decided to follow in the steps of the
dream – to find the school and then drive by to see if it looked anything like
what I had seen in my dream. But then what? I did not have any plans to
approach her again. All I could think of was the excitement of following the
dream and experiencing something extraordinary.
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Four days later on Sunday night, 26 June 2005, I conducted an Internet search
for schools in and around Durban to find the school that I had dreamed of. The
search was a success. A local government website posted a list of schools and
from it I navigated to the school’s website. I saw clearly that the color of the
dress and the hat matched the description of the schoolgirls in the bookstore and
in the dream. From the website I also learned that that the school was a
combined primary and secondary school that educates learners from grade 1 to
grade 12. That bit of news excited me because it was proof that my dream had
some truth to it. In my dream I saw only primary school girls, whereas the girl I
met at the bookstore in April appeared to be in high school.
At the time these thoughts about the dream percolated in my mind I was also
contemplating ending the logjam at the IPCI. I was very eager to see that the
seven new e-books would be added on the IPCI website without any more
delays. I truly believed that there was good in my work and that if the books
were published I would be blessed for my efforts. I live approximately 20
kilometers in the south and to save car fuel I plan my trips to the city to
accomplish as many errands as I can in a single day. There wasn’t any urgency
to go to the IPCI but since Sunday I was excited about driving by the school,
which was situated on a ridge overlooking the city and it was this excitement
that set things into motion. An opportunity presented itself on Tuesday the 28th
of June 2005. In the morning I faxed a letter to the director of the IPCI notifying
him of the new e-books that were not being added to the IPCI website. I planned
to go first to the IPCI’s offices to ask permission to deliver the compact disc to
the web hosting company so that the new e-books could be uploaded to the IPCI
website. Thereafter I would drive past the girl’s school to see if it looked any bit
like my dream.
However, I got delayed during midday and with only about a 15-25 minute
time window to witness the melee of school children exiting the through the
school gates at home time, there was no time to go the IPCI offices first. So I
switched my tasks around and I went to the school first. Unfortunately when I
arrived I was greeted by locked gates. I had only to realize that the school was
closed for the winter holidays. So there was no chance of realizing the scene in
my dream let alone of spotting anyone at the school entrances. Not too
disappointed I proceeded with my next task of the day and that was to go to the
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IPCI Offices and ask their permission to deliver the compact disc with the
additional seven e-books to the web hosting company. This I did accomplish
and by the next day, 29 June 2005, the additional seven e-books were on the
IPCI’s website. A selection of those e-books can be read at
http://www.ipci.co.za/e-books/.
To my great surprise 40 days after the 29th of June 2005 when the seven new e-
books were added to the IPCI website, Ahmed Deedat, the founder of the IPCI,
passed away. The day was Monday, 8 August 2005. Another 40 days later on
Saturday, 17 September 2005 I was back at the same bookstore in the shopping
mall in Westville and while browsing the children’s book shelf with my son I
saw a middle aged lady sitting on the floor paging through a religious book
about God. Her daughter was beside her. While my son browsed through a few
picture books I sat down on the floor beside her and leaned over to take a closer
look at the book she was paging through. She sensed my interest in the subject
and we began a conversation about God and our personal experiences with
religion. She was on a path of spiritual discovery and I, being more settled in
my religion, began to explain Islam as a way of inviting her to Islam. We talked
for another 10 to 15 minutes before saying good byes but before we parted I
wrote down the IPCI website address on a piece of paper and explained how she
could navigate the website to read Ahmed Deedat’s books. In return she gave
me her e-mail address.
Afterwards, with the memory of Ahmed Deedat and the schoolgirl fresh in my
mind, I began counting the days from all the related events. The number 40 has
deep religious connotations to Muslims, Jews and Christians and to discover
that I was active in inviting toward Islam 41 days before Ahmed Deedat died
and again 40 days after his death made me feel special but I also knew that the
memory would not have been so cherished had it not been for a schoolgirl from
a conservative Christian school. If it was not for the dream I had of searching
for her and my excitement to follow after my dream the additional seven e-
books would not have been added to the IPCI’s website 40 days before Ahmed
Deedat’s death. The books, the schoolgirl, Ahmed Deedat, the 40 day thing – it
all just fascinated me – the way that everything just came together. It could not
be ignored.
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This isn’t the end of the story. The next significant connected event occurred on
the 11th of September 2006, which was 359 days – 10 consecutive periods of 40
days minus one day– after the death of Ahmed Deedat in August of the previous
year. On the next day, 12th September 2006, at about midday I answered a call
on my mobile phone and was introduced to an inspector from the CR Swart
police station asking me to come to the station to answer some very important
questions. On the desk in front of him was a police docket. A case of bomb
threat and intimidation had been opened up and to my shock and dismay I was
the accused.
The chain of events that lead to this unfortunate phone call began with a
choice I made the previous morning, the 11th of September 2006, which was the
5th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States of America. I
had an appointment that morning to deliver my dad’s car at a panel beater’s
workshop, to repair the front bumper. I left home at about 7 o’ clock but before
going to the panel beater I stopped and parked the vehicle on West Street, on the
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right hand side. I had with me a gold Kruger Rand coin weighing 1 ounce,
which I had received as a gift in March that year. I now wanted to sell it to a
gold dealer to pay for my son’s school fees.
Public parking is not free on any of the main streets in the city of Durban. It
is metered. A driver parks in a vacant bay and then pays money into a machine
which issues a receipt displaying expiry time, day, month and fee paid. The
bottom left side of the receipt reads ‘DISPLAY THIS TICKET IN THE
WINDSCREEN SO IT IS VISIBLE’.
On the 11th of September 2006 the advertised parking tariff was R3.50 per
hour. At 8:01 am I got out of the car paid R5 for a public parking bay and
displayed the parking receipt on the dashboard. The expiry time printed on the
parking receipt was 9:01 am. I had 1 hour to conduct my business in the city. I
got back to the car at about 8:25 am and saw a parking fine for R100 placed
under the windscreen wiper. The explanation written on the fine read that the
parking ticket was not clearly displayed. I was sure that when I walked away
from the car the ticket was clearly displayed. I also had about 35 minutes of
paid parking to enjoy but instead I was looking at a fine. I was upset.
When I reached in for the parking receipt I saw that it had already slid down
far enough for the expiry time not to be visible. When did it slide down? Earlier,
before the fine issuer approached the vehicle or was it properly displayed when
the fine issuer issued the fine? It could have been my bad luck that the receipt
slipped lower down on the dashboard before the fine issuer wrote the fine but it
could also have been that he or she wasn’t looking hard enough. Maybe the
receipt slid down even more just as the air from outside rushed in when I
opened the door. I simply didn’t know. I realize now that I was reaching for a
way out.
I also thought the new system was inefficient. The older system was efficient.
It was paperless and electricity independent and far more objective. All of these
thoughts made me want to have the fine legally cancelled because under the old
system this would not have happened. Besides the inefficiencies the thing really
maddened me was that in addition to the fine, I, along with thousands of
motorists in the city of Durban, was being ripped off by the Durban city council.
Only a few months ago the city had installed the new electronic parking meters
that took only coins, communicated in at least 3 different languages to
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motorists, and issued a parking receipt. The machine did not give back change.
So when I dropped a R5 coin into the machine slot I expected a receipt allowing
me to park for 78 minutes, but instead I was issued a receipt for only 60 minutes
from 8:01 am to 9:01 am. This effectively amounted to theft of R1.20 by the
city council. If it’s not intentional theft then it is incompetence of a high degree.
If well paid, educated city councilors can be incompetent enough to fraudulently
rake in millions of Rands of the public’s money, why shouldn’t their employees,
like the fine issuers, be deemed as flawed as they are?
Upset as I was, I got into my dad’s car and started to drive and on the way to
the panel beater’s workshop I changed course and headed for the offices of the
Durban Metro police department. I entered the metro police building at approx:
8:44 am. I walked in and spoke to a nearby cashier. I said that I had a fine that I
wanted to have cancelled. I was told to proceed to the end of the corridor. I
walked down the corridor and I waited at the end of the corridor for about 30
seconds. Then I spoke to another cashier, in the last pay booth and I was then
told to query the fine in the office behind the tinted glass sliding door.
I opened the sliding door and stepped into an office occupied by two female
clerks. Beginning At 8:46 am I demanded that the fine be cancelled out in ten
minutes. The younger of the two clerks responded by telling me that only the
prosecutor could cancel the fine. Then she said she would take me to the office
of the public relations (PR) officer. So I followed her back down the narrow
corridor toward the entrance of the building. At the corner I entered upon two
men in the PR office – a tall armed policeman in his blue uniform and the PR
officer sitting behind a desk with his back to the window. I explained to them I
had placed the receipt on the dashboard and the expiry time had not been
reached and then I demanded again that the fine be cancelled within ten
minutes. I handed over the parking receipt and the parking fine to the PR
Officer and waited for a response. After receiving my parking ticket in his hand
the PR Officer began making telephone calls to resolve the matter as quickly as
possible. Instead of the prosecutor the PR officer appeared to be calling out,
telephonically or via police radio, to a supervising field officer, in an attempt to
bring into the office the fine issuer who issued the ticket. Maybe he wanted
his/her side of the story before contacting the prosecutor.
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documentary about the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the USA on the table. I told them
– the PR officer and the armed policeman – they could watch the documentary
on a DVD player. I then walked out of the PR office, out the front door, crossed
the street and got inside my dad’s vehicle and drove off. The time was 9:00 am.
I still had a minute of paid parking outstanding.
In the evening, just after sunset, my father answered a phone call from a
policeman calling from the Durban Metro police station and after speaking
briefly to the policeman he handed the telephone to me, since I was the one who
had used his vehicle in the morning. The policeman identified himself with the
last name Maharaj and he enquired if I was the driver of the vehicle who had
gone to the Durban Metro police building on Old Fort Place in connection with
a parking ticket issued earlier in the day. I replied in the affirmative. He then
asked me if I knew the contents of the two compact discs that I had given to the
two men in the PR office. Again I replied in the affirmative and I also expressed
my desire to have the 9/11 documentary shown on national television. He didn’t
seem too happy about my enthusiasm. He got angry and threatened to embarrass
me in front of my parents but he never once told me that a criminal charge was
brought against me or that the police were investigating me.
The next day, 12 September 2006, I was telephoned on my mobile phone by a
police inspector. The police inspector informed me that a case had been opened
wherein the complainant alleged that I intimidated him and made a bomb threat
the previous morning. I was asked to come into the police station and give a
statement. Recalling the threat given by policeman Maharaj the previous
evening, that he would embarrass me in front of my parents, I decided not to go
to the police station, fearing it to be a setup. After all the 9/11 documentary was
not inflammatory, not provocative and not seditious to the American
government or the general public. In fact it enlightens the viewer and calls for a
re-examination of the evidence related to the terrorist events that unfolded on 11
September 2001 in the USA.
Throughout the remainder of September the investigating officer in my case
telephoned me several times and each time she insisted that I make a statement
but she did not offer to make available to me the complainant’s affidavit so that
I could respond to his affidavit. I knew my rights. It was senseless to go over to
the police station and make a blind statement but over the telephone I repeatedly
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pleaded my innocence and denied the charges that were brought against me by
the state. In their investigation the police called several Muslim organisations,
two persons from which in turn called me about the alleged bomb threat and
then too I repeatedly said that I had never once made a bomb threat to anyone.
By the end of September the police had stopped calling and I just moved on
with my life.
What struck me as bizarre was that the charge was of the most serious nature
– terrorism – and now the South African police, in a post 9/11 world, were only
asking me to come and make a statement. They knew my name, where I lived,
my mobile telephone number, the residential landline phone number and the
registration number of my father’s vehicle. Why didn’t they send a team to pick
me up the same day they opened the case? Another bizarre and worrying aspect
of this entire debacle was that the tall uniformed policeman in the PR office
carried a police issued pistol. If had a made a bomb threat why didn’t this armed
policeman apprehend me immediately while standing in the PR office?
In the following year, more than seven months after the incident in the PR
office, on Friday morning, the 20th of April 2007, a local newspaper called The
Mercury reported on the fraudulent parking meters. The headline on the front
page read: Parking Meter ‘rip-off’ halted. The article stated that a lawyer from
the Legal Resource Centre averred that the city’s no change policy had
effectively amounted to “theft”.1 I cut out the article and kept it in a file. One
week later the investigating officer and two other police officers from the CR
Swart police station arrested me at my home. I was arrested on a public holiday,
Freedom Day (27 April 2007), on a Friday that marked the beginning of a long
weekend. I was in the shower cleansing myself for the Friday congregational
prayers (known to Muslims as Jumma Salah) when the police arrived. My father
showed them in and then tapped on the bathroom door and asked me to hurry up
and get changed because the police were waiting in the living room. I darted out
of the bathroom in my towel and spoke directly to the police officers in the
living room. I was not shown or given a copy of the complainant’s affidavit to
make a responding statement. After I changed into dry clothes I was hand
cuffed and driven to CR Swart police station where I was placed in a holding
cell with other detainees. I spent Friday night in jail. The next morning,
Saturday, the 28th of April 2007, my legal representatives made an application
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for bail to the magistrate court. The application failed. Later that day, at 7 o’
clock in the evening, a second bail application in the high court succeeded and I
was released from police custody shortly after 8 pm. In all I spent over 30 hours
behind bars.
Two days later, on Monday, 30th April 2007 I appeared in the magistrate
court. My attorney asked for an extension and we were granted 30 days to
prepare our case. Just over three weeks later on Tuesday, the 22nd of May 2007
an agreement was reached with the senior public prosecutor and all charges
were subsequently dropped on the 30th of May 2007.
After all the commotion had died down I began to reflect on my unfortunate
arrest. I scanned through the files of my dream diary folder looking for anything
significant. I discovered that over a year before getting arrested I had two
dreams that metaphorically forewarned me of the arrest. The dreams are unique
in my experience because they stem from one unconscious image divided into
two dreams. What I mean to say is that the second dream, which occurred some
months after the first dream, was a continuation of the first dream.
The first dream occurred on Saturday morning, the 15th of October 2005,
more than 18 months before getting arrested on the 27th of April 2007. In the
dream I was in a dimly lit building. While in the building my mind was able to
teleport to a commercial passenger airplane in the sky. Before me flashed
scenes of a raging fire inside airplane as it began to fall uncontrollably from the
sky. I teleported several times from the building to the airplane and back again
until finally a tall angel with very long arms grabbed me forcefully. He said
something, which I don’t recall anymore, but it made me feel regretful. Then he
picked me off the ground and threw me into a deep pit leading into hell. As I
began to fall into hell I became very fearful. I could do nothing in the dream but
I was conscious that I was dreaming so before I reached the bottom I broke out
of the dream and awoke. That is to say, I consciously terminated the dream.
The second dream occurred 119 = (3 x 40) – 1 days later on Saturday
morning, the 11th of February 2006. It began from the place where I broke out
of the dream in October of the previous year. I now reached the bottom of the
pit and found myself in the confines of hell. On the landing platform I was
greeted by one of the guards of hell. I tried to appease him and he favored me.
To my left in the far corner there was an oversized image of Yoda. Yoda is the
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fictional Jedi master in George Lucas’ film Star Wars. Below me were stairs
leading to the lower level. I proceeded to the lower level and saw rows of long
tables, with chairs arranged on either side as if the place was an eating hall. I sat
down at one of the tables and was served a boiled meal with bread. Shortly
thereafter I awoke. I counted the days between the second dream and the day I
got arrested and it was 440, which is 11 consecutive periods of 40 days.
Hell is incarceration and that is what I experienced when I got arrested on the
27th of April 2007. Hell in the dream symbolized the detention facility at the CR
Swart Police station. The long arms of the tall angel symbolize the long arm of
the law. The long arm of the law2 is an English proverb which means ‘the far-
reaching power of the authorities’, such as the police. The angel with long arms
symbolized the police. The guards in hell were the detention guards at the police
station. The rows of tables in the dream turned out to be the temporary holding
area where new detainees are finger printed and photographed. It’s a small open
enclosure, with a few tables along one wall and on the opposite side are the
washbasins. On Saturday night, while my high court bail application was
underway I was moved from my detention cell to this temporary holding area. I
sat down and had supper at one of the tables and while eating a new detainee
was brought in. He was accompanied by his minor son, no older than 6 years.
He sat next to me on my left. I inquired of his arrest and he told me that he was
arrested under suspicion of selling pirated copyright films under the DVD
format. That encounter reminded me of the first part of the second dream where
the oversized image of Yoda appeared to my left.
To my great surprise the same PR officer who filed charges against me was
arrested for corruption on Thursday, the 5th of July 2007. His was under
investigation by a team from the Metro Police and the Internal Complaints
Directorate (ICD). His arrest came after a taxi driver came forward alleging
bribery and corruption. I became aware of the arrest after reading of it in The
Mercury newspaper the following week. I followed up with a search on the
Internet and found more articles concerning the PR officer’s arrest. As I read
through these online reports I stumbled onto a very peculiar coincidence. An
article written in the City News Service on the 18th of July 2007 stated that the
PR officer was essentially an administrative assistant and that he was appointed
on the 14th of December 2005 as the acting project manager in respect of the
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city’s parking meter system.3 I referred back to the 20 April 2007 article
published in The Mercury titled Parking meter ‘rip off’ halted and noticed that
the names matched.
After reading the articles my mind flashed back to the 11th of September
2006. On that fateful morning in the PR office I had not verbally argued against
the fraudulent parking meters but within me it was the motivating factor for my
demands in the PR office. I only demanded to have the fine legally cancelled in
ten minutes and I was completely unaware that I was actually ranting to the very
person who simultaneously was the acting project manager in respect of the
fraudulent parking meters. The issuance of the parking fine and the fraudulent
parking meters were completely separate matters but they became connected in
the person of the PR officer.
The next incident in this story occurred 15 days after the PR officer was
arrested. At about 4 o’ clock in the morning on Friday, the 20th of July 2007 a
fire broke out in the fines department of the Durban Metro police building.
After the initial investigation city officials went on record stating that the fire
was caused by an electrical surge. The city manager went on record to say that
an extension cable caught alight in the fines department galley. The head of the
ICD, was initially suspicious of the fire calling it too much of a coincidence that
the fire had started in the fines department.4
I learnt of the fire the following afternoon. I was at a public pool opposite the
Moses Mabida soccer stadium and my dad called to report that he had gotten
news of the fire in the Metro police building. After hearing of the fire I
remembered the events of the night before. At about 7 o’clock, Friday night, on
the 20th of July 2007, I was in my bedroom and while sitting on the bed I smelt
something burning. The month of July is in the middle of winter and it’s
common for residents in the neighborhood to burn dry wood and leaves that had
fallen off from trees. I looked out the window and could not see a fire or any
smoke. The windows were also closed. The burning smell was coming from the
electrical plug-in socket, next to my worktable. Plugged into it was a power
surge protector (also known as a lightening protector) and I had an extended
electrical panel with 5, 3 pin sockets, each with their own rocker switch plugged
into the opposite face of the surge protector. Plugged into the panel was my
notebook computer, a clock, the oil heater and the ADSL modem. I switched it
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off and pulled off the surge protector to find that the plastic casing of the surge
protector was melting under intense heat. The area around the one of the pins
had blackened. If I not spotted the electrical malfunction a fire might have
started.
It dawned on me that these two events, the fire in the fines department and
the electrical malfunction of my power surge protector, formed a connected
pair. I counted the similarities. Firstly, I was arrested in April and the PR officer
was arrested in July. Secondly, if arson is to be ruled out, an electrical
malfunction occurred in the PR officer’s workplace at about 4 o’clock in the
morning and an electrical malfunction in my bedroom, which serves as my
workspace, on the same day approximately 15 hours later. These events were an
odd coincidence and it reinforced the hypothesis of connected paired events that
I was developing and researching at the time.
Earlier reports in the media concerning the fire in the fines department of the
Durban Metro police building said that a microwave exploded. These reports
were greeted with suspicion by people following the corruption case against the
PR officer. As one local politician was quoted saying "It is highly unlikely that
somebody would be utilizing a microwave at 4am in the morning. I am deeply
suspicious."5 I too reacted to these earlier reports and my haunting thought was
the allegations that were leveled against me in September of the previous year
and my arrest on the 27th of April 2007. I remembered that the investigating
officer and the other police handlers repeatedly made verbal references to an
allegation that I had threatened to blow up a government building and to attack
the FIFA Soccer World Cup, which was to be hosted by South Africa in the
year 2010. Since the fire broke out in a government building I decided to take
some precautionary pre-emptive steps ahead of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World
Cup tournament. I contacted both the city manager and the ICD investigating
officer in charge of the PR officer’s corruption case and individually presented
my case to both of them. Further, on the 9th of October 2007 I wrote to FIFA’s
head office in Switzerland requesting names and contacts details of FIFA
representatives within South Africa to whom I could present my case. FIFA
responded on the 15th of October 2007 and in the email they gave me the
contact details of the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) in respect of the 2010
FIFA Soccer World Cup. For the next few weeks I liaised with several people at
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the LOC’s offices and finally got an appointment with the local FIFA World
Cup coordinator for the city of Durban on Monday, the 12th of November 2007.
However, on Monday morning, her assistant called and asked for a
postponement due to more urgent matters. No new appointment was made.
Then on the next day, Tuesday, the 13th of November 2007 an investigator
from the Crime Intelligence Division (CID) of the South African police showed
up at the business premises of my father’s younger brother. He arrived there
with a retired policeman who had friendly ties with some of the local
businessmen. He was there to investigate a bomb threat email that was allegedly
sent by me to a government office. It was midday and my uncle telephoned and
explained the situation over the phone to my father. I was in the bathroom at the
time performing a ritual ablution ahead of the midday prayer. My father handed
me the telephone and I spoke to my uncle about the new allegation. After drying
up I then drove to my uncle’s business premises and confronted the CID
investigator. His rank was captain. I denied sending any threatening email or
making any kind of threat to anyone and I also asked for proof of the alleged
email. After hearing my side and collecting information the CID captain drove
off from the premises. No warning or threat was issued.
Afterwards I reflected on the day’s events and I realized that the 40 day
phenomenon and the phenomenon of connected paired events were both at play.
That day, the 13th of November 2007 was 200 = 5 x 40 days after the 27th of
April 2007 – the date of my arrest. On both days a false allegation of bomb
threat were leveled against me by the police and on both days I was in the
bathroom when the news of the police investigator reached me and each time it
was my father who notified me that the police had come.
Later that day, the retired policeman who brought the police investigator, told
me that he was contacted late at night the previous day, the 12th of November
2007. On that night I did send one email at about 7 pm to a researcher and
though it was about coincidences on the timing of terrorist events it was not
threatening in the least. It was a short research paper on terrorism. Some of this
research will be presented in part three of this book. The only other explanation
I could think of for this second false allegation from the South African police
was a meeting that was being setup between myself and city’s local coordinator
for the FIFA World Cup. Maybe someone panicked and misinterpreted my
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phone calls and letters to FIFA and the LOC or maybe someone did not like that
I was complaining to FIFA about my arrest and the fire that broke out in the
government building and they wanted to scare me off.
In the weeks following this incident I presented a file full of documents to the
FIFA LOC and to two specialized police units that were mandated to investigate
organized crime, terrorism and corruption in government. I waited for any
further developments from the police but nothing new happened and again I just
moved on with my life. I did however, continue to follow the case of the PR
officer in the newspapers and I can report that an internal hearing conducted in
July 2008 found him guilty and dismissed him from his position6 but then
matters began to turn in his favor and later on that year the criminal charges
against the PR officer were subsequently withdrawn from the magistrate court.
It appears that there were irregularities with the charge sheet. In August of 2009
the PR officer challenged his dismissal. He entered into arbitration. He won the
case and was reinstated back to work with 8th months of back pay. The
arbitrator in the case found that his dismissal was unfair. The response from
police headquarters was that the decision would not be challenged.7
Finally, to end on a happy note there is one further meaningful connection to
mention. Remember the schoolgirl I went searching for at her school 41 days
before the death of Ahmed Deedat, on the 28 of June 2005? Believe it or not but
1280 = 32 x 40 days after searching for her, on the 29th of December 2008,
during the summer holiday, she was at her school to obtain her academic results
after graduating from senior high school. The only way I had learned of her visit
was because her photograph was taken and on the following morning, the 30th
of December 2008, she featured in a local newspaper. The caption below her
photo stated her name and the number of As she had achieved. The caption also
stated the name of the school she graduated from, which matched with the
school that I had searched out in June of 2005. So I did see her at her school
after all – not in person but in a photo. The following flow diagram summarizes
all the connected events from April 2005 to December 2008:
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Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 35
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Chapter 2
Jung’s Synchronicity
"A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which
she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream, I sat with
my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a
gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the
window-pane from the outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in
the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab one finds in
our latitudes, a scarabaeud beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata),
which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt the urge to get into a dark
room at this particular moment. I must admit that nothing like it ever happened
to me before or since."2
‘an acquaintance of mine saw and experienced in a dream the sudden death of a
friend, with all the characteristic details. The dreamer was in Europe at the time
and the friend in America. The death was confirmed next morning by telegram,
and ten days later a letter confirmed the details. Comparison of European time
with American time showed that the death occurred at least an hour before the
dream. The dreamer had gone to bed late and had not slept until about one
o’clock. The dream occurred at approximately two in the morning.’3
In this second example Jung hypothesizes that ‘the almost simultaneous dream
of the violent death of the friend arose from an already existing unconscious
knowledge of it.’ This is the second form of a synchronistic experience in Jung’s
model. The timing of the psychic event and the external event is more or less
simultaneous but at a distance. The dreamer was Europe and the friend died in
America. He further elaborates that
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The third form in Jung’s model mirrors the second form with the difference that
‘the (external) event perceived takes place in the future.’5
An excellent example of this 3rd type of synchronistic event is the two hell
dreams that occurred 119 days apart. Both stem from one and the same
unconscious image and the external event occured in the distant future, 440
days after the second hell dream. There is an undeniable and mysterious, in
Jung’s view, acausal connection between the internal image (the 2 hells
dreams) and the external event of being incarcerated in the CR Swart detention
facility, for there is no identifiable causal link between the events.
Jung did not go beyond establishing acausality. He did not conclusively
reduce acausality via reductionism, to something more concrete. He merely says
that if events hold meaning independent of space and time then they are acausal.
Thus being independent of space and time, and being other than causal is the
only premise of acausality. Jung also linked his hypothesis of synchronicity to
his psychological concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious. All
this put together gave the hypothesis of synchronicity a very complex and
abstract outlook, which didn’t fit too well with the scientific method and its
definitive language of mathematics. In Jung’s mind Synchronicity was a real
phenomenon but to the greater scientific community it was greeted with doubt.
Skeptics pointed out that it did not pass the rigorous testing of the scientific
method and that it could not be experimented with in an objective manner under
laboratory conditions. Skeptics argued that the hypothesis derived from
observing meaningful coincidences were subjective because the interpretation
of the observed coincidence usually involved preconception and intuition.
Concrete, objective proofs of synchronicity were very elusive. Some dismissed
the phenomena as selective perception or the law of averages balancing itself
out.
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Chapter 3
In chapter 1 of this book I discussed the young schoolgirl I had seen on two
Tuesday afternoons near the display window of a bookstore and I also discussed
the electrical surges that occurred in the work place of the PR officer and later
that same night in my bedroom beside my work table. These grouped events are
examples of another phenomenon that I discovered and they are identified by an
exact or near repetition of a set of aspects, which occurs between two events.
Numerically, this phenomenon revolves around the number 2.
While reading through page 21 of Jung’s book on Synchronicity1 an example
of a meaningful coincidence between two external events caught my eye and
after further research of the events I found it to be analogous to the phenomenon
of complimenting paired events that I experienced in my life. A person by the
name of Emile Deschamps1 who on a first occasion as a boy at a boarding
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school in Orleans, in the year 1805, was introduced to plum pudding by a man
named Monsieur De Fortgibu. Deschamps was sitting at the same table and he
was asked by Monsieur De Fortgibu to sample a bit of the plum pudding which
at that time was ‘a dish almost unknown at that time in France.’2 Ten years later
Deschamps passed by a restaurant in the city of Paris and saw plum pudding in
the window. He entered and asked for a slice but he was told by the restaurant
cashier that the whole plum pudding was ordered by Monsieur De Fortgibu.
Seeing Deschamps looking disappointed the cashier went over to Monsieur de
Fortgibu and asked “Would you have the goodness to share your plum pudding
with this gentleman?” Fortgibu agreed and gave some of his plum pudding to
Deschamps at the same restaurant. Some years later Deschamps was invited to a
dinner and was told in advance that plum pudding would be served. Deschamps
accepted and then, recalling the two previous servings of plum pudding, he
joked with the lady of the house that, since he had only eaten plum pudding
twice in his life and that both times it was in the presence of Monsieur De
Fortgibu, that Monsieur de Fortgibu would be joining the party. Finally the day
came and when the pudding was being served at the table the 9 others around
him seated at the table were about to have their laugh at the joke of Deschamps
when suddenly the door opened and there appeared an old man. It was Monsieur
de Fortgibu. Deschamps immediately thought that a prank was being played on
him but later on it was revealed that Monsieur de Fortgibu was also invited by a
friend to that very house for a dinner but somehow he had mistaken the door of
the apartment and erroneously entered in on the wrong party.
Jung calls this an example of triple coincidence and on the face of it I must
agree to this observation. Jung was quoting from the work of Camille
Flammarion, a 19th century French astronomer. In his original work Flammarion
quotes Deschamps as saying “Three times in my life I have eaten plum-pudding,
and three times I have seen M. De Fortgibu...”.3 The synchronistic connection
reveals itself on the third occasion of plum pudding when the collective internal
event (Deschamps’ and the others dwelling on his previous two coincidental
encounters with Monsieur De Fortgibu) fortuitously coincided with Monsieur
De Fortgibu coming into their presence at that moment.
The case of Deschamps’ plum pudding is a meaningful coincidence. There
appears to be a similarity of some sort between the 3 occasions of plum
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pudding. It raises the possibility that events have a cyclic. Between the three
occasions of plum pudding, taking into consideration only Deschamps and
Monsieur de Fortgibu and leaving out the others at the dinner party, no less than
5 servings of plum pudding were in fact served. The last occasion is the odd one
because Flammarion does not mention that Monsieur de Fortgibu had eaten
some pudding at the third occasion. So I assume that only Deschamps was
served plum pudding, but it could have been that Monsieur de Fortgibu may
have sat down and been served some plum pudding too.
On the first occasion in Orleans both Deschamps and Monsieur De Fortgibu
ate from the same plum pudding. This is the first two servings of plum pudding.
Two makes a pair. On a larger framework these two servings of plum pudding
form the first combined unit from a larger pair. To complete the pair another
occasion must be present itself where both Deschamps and Monsieur De
Fortgibu eat from the same plum pudding. On the second occasion precisely
that happens and now the larger pair is complete. Besides eating from the same
plum pudding another aspect invariant between the two occasions is that on
each occasion Monsieur De Fortgibu has the upper hand to either introduce to
or permit Deschamps to share in the plum pudding. There are also noticeable
differences between these first two occasions of plum pudding. Firstly, the
boarding school is different from the restaurant and secondly the city Orleans is
different from the city of Paris. These are aspects that are different from each
occasion and if I discard these unmatched aspects we then left with a few
complimenting or equivalent aspects which I call the paired aspects. The first
paired aspect is that on both occasions they both were at the same venue eating
from the same plum pudding. The second paired aspect is that on each occasion
Monsieur de Fortgibu had the upper hand. That is to say that on both occasions
Deschamps received his serving via Monsieur de Fortgibu. In the second
occasion it is clear that Monsieur de Fortgibu owned the whole plum pudding
but in the first occasion Flammarion only states ‘he (Deschamps) chanced to
find himself on a certain day at table with a M. de Fortgibu, an émigré recently
returned from England, who made him taste a plum-pudding, a dish almost
unknown at that time in France’.4 This second aspect distinguishes the third
occasion from the first two because on the third occasion Deschamps does not
take his serving from the hand of Monsieur de Fortgibu. What I am trying to
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show from this example is that some aspects from the first 2 occasions of plum
pudding can be viewed not just as separate events in a triple coincidence but as
a connected pair of subsidiary events.
Paired aspects separated in time are not always discernable. More than often
the phenomenon of temporally separated paired aspects is so subtle that it will
escape the untrained eye because the perception of a coincidence is not
experienced. However, even when there is no striking coincidence that can be
observed, meaning is still to be found from the individual aspects. The general
trend is that smaller localized events repeat themselves with surprising
similarity. They are often ordinary occurrences a home or at work within the
same day. You may find that when the doorbell rang a gust of wind blew in
through a window throwing off a wall frame that fell to the floor cracking the
glass screen. When you opened the door there was man from a courier company
waiting to deliver a sealed box to you. A few hours later the doorbell rings again
and again a strong gust of wind blew through the same window knocking off an
ornate glass vase from the dining room table, which shattered when it fell on the
wooden floor. When you opened the door you see your neighbor standing with a
closed box in his hands, which he then gives to you. The frame and glass vase
are unmatched aspects and the courier man is different from your neighbor but
the sequence of events between the two events carries many noticeable
repetitions – the ringing doorbell, the sudden gust, the breaking of glass and
receiving a closed box are all paired aspects.
In the case of the schoolgirl the paired aspects are that I saw her on 2 Tuesday
afternoons on either side of the same bookstore’s display window and both
times she was accompanied by her father. In the case of the PR officer and me
the two electrical surges, first in the PR officer’s work place and second, near
my work table in my bedroom form a paired aspect as is the fact that we were
both arrested and subsequently both our cases were withdrawn by the state.
In recent years I have experienced and witnessed hundreds of meaningfully
coincidental events that are characteristic of paired aspects. To illustrate my
point further the following are 9 descriptive examples of paired aspects.
1. Lady on an Escalator:
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In the year 2003 or 2004, on a busy Saturday afternoon, I was at The Pavilion
shopping mall in Westville and there I saw a friend from university on a
crowded and noisy escalator. She is a tall slender lady with long dark curly hair
and in appearance is strikingly similar to the late Empress of Austria, Elizabeth
Wittelsbach or Sisi as she was nicknamed. I was going down the escalator from
the lower shopping level (level 1) to the entertainment level (level 0) when I
spotted her going up the adjacent escalator. As I saw her I called out her name
looking at her in vain. After the second calling I raised my voice and still she
did not turn her head in my direction. Beside her was a young man. Some weeks
later I phoned her and asked about that Saturday and she told me that she did
not see me and that the young man accompanying her was her brother. It must
have been all the noise on the escalator that dulled out my calling. Apart from
that day I only saw her once more at the same shopping mall and again it was
on a Saturday afternoon. The date was the 12th of May 2007. The next day,
Sunday, was Mother’s Day and I was at a department store buying a gift. I was
on level 1 of the department store standing within 5 meters of the escalator that
ascends to level 2. I was browsing over some items and suddenly as I turned my
head in the direction of the escalator the same young lady from my days at
university stepped onto the escalator going up to level 2 and beside her was a
young man, but it was not her brother. I haven’t phoned her since, so I don’t
know if she saw me before she stepped onto the escalator, but while she was on
the escalator her back was turned toward me. Prior to this second occasion at
the shopping mall I had seen her at other venues but the two occasions at the
shopping mall are relatively unique in that I have never seen her at that venue
other than on an escalator and on a Saturday afternoon and with a young man
accompanying her.
The paired aspects are the venue, The Pavilion shopping mall, the day of the
week, Saturday, the period of the day, the afternoon, the escalator going up and
being accompanied by a young man. The unpaired aspects are the different
escalators and the fact that in the second occasion I was not going down the
adjacent escalator, nor did I call her name. Also her brother is different from the
second young man who may have been a boyfriend.
phoning the Ballito branch to learn that only 1 item was left in stock and the
frantic rush to beat off other customers. The unmatched aspects are the different
notebook brands and the distance I drove.
picked it up near the door that opens into the central passage way in the house.
Then I went out the front door, I unwrapped the tissue paper, and placed it on
the side of the road, beyond the black iron gate.
Within 2 weeks I found another small elongated creature and after a careful
examination I found that it was of the same species as the other elongated
creature I had found on the kitchen tiles a few days ago. It was the same size,
same color, and similarly difficult to pick up because of its rapid movements.
As with the first creature it was on the tiled kitchen floor. Again I almost
stepped on it thinking it to be a strand of black cotton. I picked it up with tissue
paper from near the doorway that opens to a side entrance of the house. Then I
went out the front door, I unwrapped the tissue paper and placed it on the side
of the road beyond the black iron gate.
The paired aspects is the combination of the similarity between the two
creatures that were both found on the kitchen tiles near an entrance, almost
stepping on it each time, and then wrapping them in tissue paper and depositing
them beyond the property gates. The unpaired aspects include the fact that the
first event occurred on a rainy night and the second during a sunlit day; the
different days of the week on which they were found; and the different
entrances on opposite sides of the kitchen where they were first spotted.
signs formed a pattern and could all be interconnected. In the background I also
had a version of Microsoft’s Encarta Encyclopedia running and I turned to it to
search for more information about the Black Death. Somehow, I don’t
remember exactly how, I came across Encarta’s article on the 9/11 terrorist
attacks and I was drawn to the slide show and audio recording of the terrorist
attack that Encarta’s article featured. As I watched and heard the screams of the
victims of that horrifying event I had this terrible feeling that something bad
happened or was going to happen. I don’t know exactly what it was. It was just
a feeling.
The sun had just set and I was still looking for more information related to
the Black Death. I logged on to the Internet and navigated to the home page of
MSNBC.com. I wanted to read the day’s news headlines before starting an
internet search about the Black Death. As the home page came up on the
monitor I saw that the featured article with its headline in bold print was about
the remembrance of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States of America
and the commemoration of the New York City fire fighters. It was the second
time that day that the horrors of 9/11 came before my eyes when I had just
begun searches for the Black Death. Then I had that terrible feeling again. I felt
a bit cold. Again I was scared.
The paired aspects in this case is the imagery of the 9/11 terrorist event
displayed on my computer monitor; that both times the 9/11 content was viewed
when beginning new searches about the Black Death plague; and the trepidation
I felt afterwards. The unpaired aspects are the different sources for the 9/11
content – first Encarta and then MSNBC. Though they are separate you should
also know that Encarta encyclopedia is owned and published by Microsoft and
that MSNBC began as a joint venture between Microsoft and National
Broadcasting Corporation (NBC). Thus, Microsoft is yet another paired aspect
in this example.
While eating desert one of my cousin’s told of how the Imam in the mosque
looked at me with suspicion as if I was not a Muslim. It’s something about the
dress code of Tablighis: the long white kurtah, a short rounded brimless cap or
turban covering the head, short hair and a fist long beard, that made me stick out
in the eyes of the Imam. I don’t own or wear kurtah, my beard is trimmed under
half an inch, my hair was long and I wore a beanie on my head instead of
mosque cap. I knew nothing of the Imam’s suspicions. I was informed that one
of my older cousins stepped in saying “He is a Madari boy”, referring to me by
my family’s ancestral name.
In this case the paired aspects are that I was looked upon suspiciously by a
senior mosque official of a Tablighi orientated mosque and that both incidents
happened on weddings days, before the wedding, where a cousin from the
youngest sibling of my father and mother respectively were getting married.
Both wedding ceremonies were conducted on a Sunday, in a mosque, after the
early afternoon prayer and thereafter lunch was served to the guests thereafter.
The unmatched aspect is that in the case of my father’s brother his second son
was getting married and in the case of my late mother’s brother the eldest and
only daughter was getting married.
the scenes in the film because they are referenced in this book (wait for it in
Chapter 5) in connection to a synchronistic experience I had dating back to the
year 2006. He insisted on getting Penguins of Madagascar but in the end I
persuaded him to get 2012. At night I made mash potatoes with sausages for
supper but I put too much salt in the mash potatoes and Hasan refused to eat it.
A few days later Hasan’s mother called me and asked if I would take Hasan
for the coming weekend because she wanted to help out in her father’s retail
business during their annual sale. I said yes. More time with Hasan is
welcomed. I had an arrangement with his mother to meet her at the dentist’s
consulting room on Friday afternoon, the 2nd of March 2012, oversee his
checkup, and then take him back to my place to stay over till Sunday afternoon.
After the dental appointment we drove to the same shopping mall in Westville
and reenacted the same routine. First we went to video rental store. I bought
Hasan a Slush Puppie and then I went to do the grocery shopping while he
picked 3 DVDs to rent. When I returned Hasan had once more picked Penguins
of Madagascar and two other animated films. I did not want to hire 3 animated
films. I wanted to rent at least one acting film with real people. I also thought
Penguins of Madagascar was a waste of time and once again wanted to drop the
title in favor of 10 000 BC. I had been suggesting this title to Hasan for over a
year because I wanted to use the film to teach him a lesson about slavery;
inequality in society, and most importantly its economic implications in wealth
creation, but every time he refused to watch it. Again, as the week before,
Hasan complained and insisted on getting Penguins of Madagascar. Again I
refused his request and in the end I got my way. Then we went home and had
pizza for supper but the following day, Saturday, I again made mash potatoes
and sausages for supper but this time the salt in the mash potato was just right
and Hasan ate it.
In this case it was only afterwards that I realized that I had rented 2 titles
from Roland Emmerich, who had produced and directed both 2012 and 10 000
BC and that both times I dropped Penguins of Madagascar, to get these titles.
Roland Emmerich made 2012 in 2009 and in 2008 he made 10 000 BC. Another
paired aspect that I only realized afterwards was that both film titles are a year.
2012 is a year and 10 000 BC is a year. The other paired aspect is the mash
potato meal I made for supper. Some of the unmatched aspects are that we
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rented from the video rental store on different days of the week, first a Saturday
and then a Friday, the differences in content in the Roland Emmerich films and
the amount of salt I added to the mash potato meal.
8. 9/11 Revisited:
Since my mother passed away in January of 2009 my father has been taking
meals at his sister’s home. My aunt lives nearby and on most days my father
goes to her home for lunch and supper. On Friday night, the 27th August 2010
my father, having just eaten supper got into his silver Mercedes Benz and began
reversing out of the driveway. Unfortunately he did not accurately judge the
distance between the front bumper and the wall of an adjacent building and as
the car turned counter-clockwise he grazed the left side of front bumper that left
a rough mark, 10 centimeters wide, on the bumper’s smooth plastic. When he
returned back home I saw him bending down over the front bumper looking at
the scratch. The instant he explained what had happened I remembered the day
in 2006 when I had also dented the front bumper of his previous silver
Mercedes Benz. That happened on a Monday afternoon, the 28th of August 2006
and now on the eve of the 4 year anniversary of that accident, another accident
occurred involving the front bumper and the silver Mercedes Benz owned by
my father. Now you will recall from chapter 1 that I was on my way to the panel
beater’s workshop on the 11th of September 2006 when I diverted to the Metro
Police offices to have a parking fine legally cancelled. The repairs to my dad’s
silver Mercedes Benz was to the front bumper that was damaged in the accident
of 28 August 2006 as mentioned above in this paragraph. Four years later, on
the 27th of August of 2010, after inspecting the damage to the newer silver
Mercedes Benz I knew that this second accident formed a pair with the first
accident and I began to think about the other aspects that could materialize. Was
I or my father going to have a disagreement with a policeman as I had
demanded my parking ticket be cancelled on the 11th of September 2006? Will
there be an arrest and detention in a police cell? I wasn’t paranoid, at least not
until what happened 2 weeks later on the Saturday afternoon, the 11th of
September 2010.
As usual I had just picked up my son from his grandparent’s home and I
drove to a video rental store in the south coast town of Amanzimtoti. We picked
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3 films to rent and I walked over to the counter to pay for the rentals. The
attendant called up my account on her computer screen and informed me that I
had an unpaid fine for R240. I was shocked. There was no way that the fine was
legitimate. I asked what the fine was for and the attendant said that fines had
accumulated for late returns that went unnoticed for several months. I never
kept rented DVDs for months on end. Something was greatly amiss here. As I
stood there defending my position on the fine leveled against me I was also
thinking about the paired aspects. The accident on the eve of the 28th of August;
same make of vehicle: Mercedes Benz; same color: silver and now again, as on
11th of September 2006, another fine on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist
attacks. The more I thought about it the more paranoid I became. I was shocked.
I panicked. Was this a setup? Was someone trying to get me back in jail? There
was no point in standing there and arguing with the store attendant in front of all
the other customers. I asked for the matter to be deferred until I spoke to
Natasha, the branch manager. In the interim I was allowed to rent 3 DVDs for
the weekend.
Further enquiries into the matter revealed that I had rented out 5 DVDs in
May of 2010 and 4 out of 5 were duly returned within the rental period. The 5th
DVD: Postman Pat remained outstanding for several months. I admitted hiring 5
DVDs but Postman Pat was not one of them. I complained to Natasha that my
son was 11 years old and he was too old for Postman Pat. Natasha accepted my
pleadings and the fine was removed. What happened was that another DVD was
rented out in May but the store attendant erroneously keyed in Postman Pat on
the computer’s inventory program. I returned all 5 films but only 4 DVDs were
ticked off against my account. Postman Pat remained checked out and as the
days turned into weeks and months the fine for late returns grew bigger and
bigger until finally the DVD was drawn back into the computer inventory
program, even though it never left the store in the first place. The previous
manager was to blame for the misunderstanding because he/she was not
promptly chasing up late returns during his/her tenure. I should have been
notified within 3 days of the expiry date of my rental period but I wasn’t. When
Natasha took over, she wanted to set the books straight and reign in on all later
returners. Here in this case the damage to the front bumper and the fine aspect
are paired off on near and exact matching dates repectively but with far less
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legal consequences. The unmatched aspects are that I paid the parking fine in
2006 and had the rental fine cancelled in 2010.
Footnote a: Muharram is the name of the first month of the Muslim lunar calendar. The
calendar has 12 months. A lunar month can be either 29 or 30 days and each new month
begins after the sighting of the new moon. The lunar year is approximately 354.5 days. If a
lunar years starts on, say, 1 January it would likely end after 354 days on 20 December and
the following lunar year begins 21 December. Depending on the sighting of the new moon
the 10th of Muharram in a succeeding year shifts by as much as 10 to 12 days along the
Gregorian solar calendar.
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Muharram 1429 (19 January 2008). I just knew that this call was the remainder
of an equation balancing itself off. Now the paired aspect is receiving a call
from Husayn while in bathroom and on both occasions our discussion revolved
around software and computers. Although one of the events occured on the 10th
of Muharram 1429 this set of paired aspects does not belong to the previous set
of paired aspects revolving around the two 10th of Muharram dates but it does
have a link to the second 10th of Muharram date of 19 Januray 2008.
On the 6th of July 2009, which was eighty nine days after Husayn’s second
phone call that I received in the bathroom (8 April 2009), I noticed another
event that, like Husayn’s second call that I received in the bathroom, also
connected to the second 10th of Muharram 1429 (19 January 2008). On the 19th
of January 2008, earlier on in the afternoon (before getting the first call from
Husayn), I paid a visit to Haroon, a former employer who owned a retail
clothing store in my home town of Isipingo. I worked for him for about 3 weeks
from the end of August 2007 to about mid September 2007. Here too it was
Husayn’s references that secured this job for me. During my visit to his store we
chatted for a few minutes and then I returned home. Over a year and five
months later on Monday morning the 6th of July 2009, I went out into Isipingo’s
business district to buy white paint and to amend a pair of jeans at a local tailor.
After the last errand I strolled over to visit Haroon at his store. This was the
second time that I visited him since I left his employ in September 2007.
Remember that the first visit was on the 19th of January 2008. Again, we chatted
a bit and then I returned back home again.
As the day progressed I reflected on this second visit to Haroon’s store and
thought of the time Husayn had called in January the previous year and I
wondered if I would again be offered employment before sunset that day. To
my great surprise something very similar happened. Later that afternoon my
sister and her husband paid me a visit at home. I met them in the kitchen while
they were having a serious discussion with my father. One of the matters that
came up was my state of not being in paid employment. During the discussion
my brother-in-law offered his assistance in setting up a small internet cafe and
copy centre for me. Again I was enthusiastic at first but by the end of the week I
backed away from the idea. The startup up costs was too overwhelming.
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In this segment of this example the paired aspects are found in the two visits
to Haroon at his retail clothing store and the employment related offers I
received on the same day after both visits – first on the 19th of January 2008
from Husayn and then on the 6th of July 2009 from my brother in law. The
unmatched aspects are the persons assisting me to find employment – first was
Husayn and second was my brother in law.
Group events can be broken down into smaller subsidiary events and in some
of these subsidiary events there will be paired aspects that dualistically connect
to each other and that open and close off at varying times, while retaining
identity with the larger outer event. The difficulty in observing dualistic
connectivity arises because the aspects that pair off in the subsidiary events
don’t always close off in the same chronological order as that of the first
instances of the paired aspects. That is to say, the closing off of paired aspects,
in most instances, occurs in a fragmented form. The fragmented characteristic
of paired aspects is what makes this phenomenon difficult for some people to
spot. It takes a while before the eye is trained to notice the subsidiary events and
their associated paired aspects. Take for example the paired aspects of the 10th
of Muharram example – the 9th example above. The first visit to Haroon and the
job offer I received on the same day afterwards and the first computer software
related phone call in the bathroom from Husayn are the first aspect instances in
two separate subsidiary events that all occurred on a single Saturday afternoon.
The first two aspects (visiting haroon and getting a job offer) belong to the first
subsidiary event and the third aspect (receiving a software related call in the
bathroom) belongs to a second subsidiary event. These three aspect instances
were then paired off on different dates in the future and not in the same
chronological order of the first instances of the aspects. The second computer
software related call from Husayn while in the bathroom occurred first, on the
8th of April 2009, and this closed off the paired aspect of the second subsidiary
event. As it stands now the larger event is incomplete, with the set of paired
aspects from the first subsidiary event awaiting closure. To close off the larger
group event the remaining two aspects of the first subsidiary event must
materialise. On the 6th of July 2009 I paid a second visit to Haroon’s store and
then later that afternoon I was offered a business opportunity by my brother in
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law. This then closed off the set of paired aspects from the first subsidiary event
and with it the larger event closes off.
On the opposite end of this thought spectrum is the issue of convergence of
paired aspects. The phone call from Husayn on the 10th of Muharram 1429 (19th
of January 2008) closed off the paired aspect of being assisted toward
employment on the 10th of Muharram and at the same time this phone call was
the opening instance of the paired aspect of receiving a computer software
related phone call while in the bathroom. The question that now arises is what
other, more mysterious, force of nature, decides which aspects pair off in
matching sequence, which aspects pair off in a fragmented form, and which
aspects will pair off in a convergence? Or perhaps the question should be
rephrased to ask who the deciding agent is and by what hand does this hidden
agent operate? This latter question brings to mind the thought of an intelligent
designer who has implemented a mathematical architecture from which arises
all the laws of nature.
The foregoing 9 examples feature meaningfully coincidental events that are
sometimes dismissed as chance or can be vaguely analogous to synchronicity.
Strictly speaking none of these examples are truly synchronistic because they
don’t involve an external event that resides in the sphere of an internal psychic
event of the mind. Paired aspects arise from a dualistic connecting principle. I
have in my research borrowed from the phraseology of Jung. Where he
described synchronicity as an acausal connecting principle, I have described
connected paired aspects as arising from a dualistic connecting principle. The
two are not so far apart. Jung was not unmindful of meaningful connectivity
between two external events. That is to say two events that do not involve an
internal event of the mind. In a footnote Jung did submit to the possibility that
the phenomenon of synchronicity may exist outside of man. He stated:
in the same house and in each instance you walking in the hallway. Aren’t those
paired aspects too? Aren’t these two events also governed by a dualistic
connecting principle?
There’s nothing extraordinary or distinguished about walking from the
bedroom to the kitchen and back again that should warrant an investigation of a
new and differentiable phenomenon. It is commonplace, trivial and
unimportant. We do it morning and evening, everyday that we at home yet I am
asking you to look at my examples in this book as a distinguishable dualistic
phenomenon. Let’s take another look at the example of the plum pudding. It is
true to say that Deschamps ate plum pudding on three occasions in the presence
of Monsieur Fortgibu. Is it not then true to say that the aspect of the three
servings of plum pudding to Deschamps arises from a tripartite connecting
principle?
Are there no objective criteria to distinguish the dualistic events that I have
storied in this chapter from events that are singular or from numeric
connectivity of a higher order? For these reasons the dualistic connecting
principle is not provable science – at least not yet. Provable science must pass
the rigorous testing of the scientific method and the scientific method requires
any phenomenon to be observed repeatedly by multiple observers and it
requires the phenomenon to be testable and falsifiable under measured
conditions.
***
Enter symmetry. Symmetry brings to mind beautiful butterflies and pretty
flower arrangements but here I want to explain symmetry by focusing on its
truest and defining characteristic that renders it applicable to everything in the
known universe from galaxies all the ways down to the pairing of matter and
anti-matter at the sub atomic scale. The defining characteristic of symmetry is
invariance, which means unchangeable and unchangeable relates to
equivalence. A drawing will help better understand. Below is a circle.
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How much do I have to turn it to remain the same? Any rotation will keep the
image of the circle unchanged. Thus a circle has rotational symmetry. How
much rotational symmetry does it have? That depends on how many turns we
can make leaving it invariant. You could easily say 360 turns because a circle is
360 degrees but a better answer is continuous. I could theoretically turn it half a
degree or maybe even half of half a degree, which is a quarter degree. It doesn’t
really matter which number you pick because the symmetry is never lost. In
other words a circle has continuous rotational symmetry. A circle’s continuous
rotational symmetry is never lost unless you break the circle as shown in the
diagram below.
The cross has a wheel in the middle, with which the cross can be rotated. How
much would I have to turn it for it to remain invariant? Exactly 90 degrees to
the left or to the right. If I turned it 180 degrees, which is two consecutive 90
degree turns, it is still invariant. Thus a cross has rotational symmetry of the 4 th
order and it only works if the cross is turned at exactly 90 degrees – a very
discrete number. The cross has discrete rotational symmetry, which is less than
the circle’s continuous rotational symmetry.
two hands, two legs, two eyes, two ears and one nose but with two nostrils. The
following two objects show the distinction between symmetry and asymmetry:
The left image has perfect bilateral symmetry because the two halves around the
axis of symmetry (the line in the middle) are identical. The right image is not
bilaterally symmetrical. The symmetry is broken but if you look closely nearly
all the segments are still there. I changed the position of three parts (c, d and e),
removed two other parts ( a and f) and left the remaining part b unchanged. That
is to say, the left right pairing is partial and that is what paired aspects, which I
introduced from the beginning of this chapter, are – partial and broken
symmetries.
In the real world macroscopic paired aspects are observations of broken
symmetries. Grouped events can be broken down into hundreds and thousands
of subsidiary events which re-group in the future in different permutations.
Common grouped events at home and at work repeat themselves in
permutations that form patterns much like symmetrical objects. As time
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from the first particle.7 Somehow the information passes from the first particle
to the second particle to say: ‘my property is measured to be this and so your
property must accordingly correlate.’ This happens at any distance and this is
problematic for scientists because the information appears to travel between the
two particles faster than the speed of light but according to Einstein’s special
theory of relativity the speed of light is the universe’s ultimate speed barrier.
Nothing is supposed to go faster than the speed of light. Einstein referred to this
anomaly as "spukhafte Fernwirkung", translated into English to mean spooky
action at a distance.8 Scientists commonly call this unsolved phenomenon
quantum entanglement, which in my view in some ways is not unlike a
hypothetical situation I thought might be possible about group events on the
macroscopic scale of everyday life. In macroscopic group events paired aspects
can be formed in any conceivable way. Hypothetically paired aspects could
create aspect and group interdependency and connectivity, because the pairing
and the balancing must materialize. It cannot be broken. The world would be
connected in almost infinite ways and will result in what I call the Tina-cloud
quandary, which goes like this: It's an overcast day and little Tina looks out the
window, waiting for the clouds to pour down rain, or for them to pass over so
that she can go out and play in the park. Aspect connectivity tells Tina that she
should also consider that the clouds are waiting (to see?) if she's coming out to
play and if she does they will pass over and if she decides to stay indoors it will
rain. The cloud is not really sentient but aspect connectivity gives it the
appearance of sentience.
Macroscopic paired aspects from grouped events that I hypothesize, quantum
entanglement that is measured by scientists and symmetrical physical pairs such
as atoms and antimatter are an arrangement that arises from a hidden set of laws
that transcend the known universe and that may have been operable at the big
bang event. A universal law of duality may be part of that set of undiscovered
laws.
I have already stated that symmetry breaking leads to asymmetry but besides
asymmetry symmetry breaking does not destroy the symmetry altogether but
instead transforms the symmetry from a higher order to a lower order – or from
continuous symmetry to discrete symmetry as the case may be. When this
happens some of the symmetry appears to be lost but it does not vanish
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altogether. Fragments of symmetry fly off but eventually they will turn up
somewhere. In my experience of paired aspects I have repeatedly seen that
aspects turn up at some future time. It means that the fragmented parts will add
up to the whole and that there is a kind of conservation of symmetry. A
mathematical balance is maintained. Symmetry only appears lost – or that
events appear random – because the system is big and there are successively
larger systems enveloping smaller ones. The house you live in is a system
enveloped in the system of the town you live in, which is enveloped in the
system of the state that you live in, which in turn is enveloped in the system of
the continent you live in. What all this means is that paired aspects is a way of
predicting future events because the pairing will always occur. Paired aspects
are dualistically deterministic. The easier prediction is the inevitability of the
second instance of the paired aspects. The harder prediction to make is the
timing of the second instance.
If making money is your objective you won’t pursue it with thumb sucking
on paired aspects. At the very least, a structured approach involving the
mathematics of symmetry, which is group theory, is a must if want to test or put
serious money in this phenomenon. Paired aspects are a good starting place to
train the physical eye but on Wall Street you need Galois eyes and fingers faster
than Ernest Duchateletb. Otherwise you'll be ditched in a New York
nanosecond.
That said, there is still a great deal of predictability in macroscopic paired
aspects and I believe that charting paired aspects in macroscopic systems can
yield trends which can be documented and used to forecast the uncharted future.
In my own life I can attest to benefiting from the knowledge of paired aspects.
From my personal research I have come to believe that the solar year running
from 1 January to 31 December is a system. Over a series of 6 years between
2006 and 2012 I have observed trends between years. Several events in the year
2007 are revisited in some aspects in year 2009. Again the same trend appears
between events in the year 2006 which repeat themselves in some aspects in the
year 2008. So I know, sometimes months in advance, that certain types of
events from the past will be revisited in an odd or even year respectively. Other
Footnote b: The cosmologist Tony Rothman theorises that Deschatelet9 is the most likely
person to have been the opposing dueller but it hasn't been proven.
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macroscopic systems are larger. I can attest to seeing trends over 7 and 16 years
and this has brought new meaning to my life and influenced my decision
making. I am better equipped to chart a course for the future. There is great
value in studying paired aspects and to grasp its operation. People all over the
world can use this knowledge to bring new meaning and order to their lives.
Symmetry has been studied for centuries. At first it was form and beauty and
then it became a mathematical abstraction with group theory and has since
invaded almost all the scientific disciplines. However, I have not come across
any thesis positing symmetry breaking in the form of paired aspects as I have
shown them thus far. What motivated me to write this book is to show how
blind we are to this phenomenon and how vast and powerful its underlying
principles are in shaping up our lives. There is great value in the knowledge of
paired aspects. What you will read in the next chapter is more examples of how
paired aspects have written the pages of history.
I won’t accept credit for being the first to posit paired aspects because I have
already seen evidence of the knowledge of paired aspects in others. In Part 2, I
will show that that a religious book, written over 1400 years ago exhibits paired
aspects but the text is not a lengthy explanation of paired aspects. Instead paired
aspects have been embedded into the structure of book like you would bury
Easter eggs in the garden for children to find and this has fascinated me because
the book is read by millions of people and thus far I have not seen any religious
scholars come forward to say that the book is mathematically structured to
encode paired aspects and symmetry breaking. This religious book is not
singular in exhibiting ancient knowledge about the pheonomenon which I call
paired aspects. I know for certain that in present time other people are using this
knowledge and I suspect their knowledge of this phenomenon is far more
advanced than what I know and was passed on from earlier highbrows going
back centuries. It also appears that the knowledge was transmitted, retained and
applied surreptitiously. If people want to keep this knowledge a secret there
must be a reason for doing that. Would you believe that millions of people – no
exaggeration – have already seen paired aspects in a world famous Hollywood
film trilogy that raked in over 1.6 billion dollars10, without realizing that its
paired aspects? Even the title of the films cleverly hints paired aspects but still,
hardly anyone sees the true meaning of the title. Several books have been
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written of this film and yet nothing of paired aspects, at least as far as I have
come across. I can assure you that when you read chapter 8 in Part 3, which
discusses these Hollywood films, it will be very clear that the paired aspects are
not my subjective perspective but they are intentionally scripted and the script
writers and producers may have advanced knowledge of the phenomenon and
are calling it by a different name. Regardless of the names we give it I want this
knowledge to spread around the world and to grow. I want to get more people
motivated to investigate this phenomenon more thoroughly and I welcome a
critical response.
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Chapter 4:
examples concerns the Americas and 3 empires that shaped its destiny. The 5th
example is an account of the paired aspects of two European heads of state.
Titles:
1. Going to America
2. A Lesson from Space
3. Queens of Empire
4. New World – New Empire
1. Going to America:
Transportations disasters have far reaching after effects and they are
remembered long after the event. They are remembered for the human tragedies
they ignite. Sometimes they are remembered for the symbolism they carry or for
some sort of fame or distinction surrounding the victims of the disaster, the
location of the disaster or the carrier of the disaster as the case may be. Going
anywhere can be dangerous. Unforeseen transportation disasters of land, sea and
air have occurred frequently enough to send chilling reminders to travelers of
the limitations of human innovation and of natures might. Pushing the
boundaries of speed and size has opened new dimensions of luxury and fast
living, more so, since the early years of the twentieth century when
transportation was revolutionized by the Wright brothers.
hotel.1 The accident on the 25th of July 2000 was the first fatal accident in
respect of the Concorde fleet.
Air France’s Concorde was a perfectly normal flight worthy aircraft.
However, fate had placed a twisted stray metal strip on the runway. The strip is
believed to have fallen off from the engine mounting of a DC-10 aircraft which
had taken off from the same runway (runway 26) just five minutes earlier.2 Take
off commenced at 14:42:31 UT (Universal Time). As Concorde taxied down the
runway the right front tyre on the left main landing gear ran over the stray metal
strip causing it to rupture. As the tyre burst, large pieces of rubber were flung
against the lower side of the left wing, damaging a fuel tank. The damaged fuel
tank began to leak jet fuel. To make things worse an electrical cable feeding
power to the retractable wheel base is believed to have snapped after being
struck by debris and the exposed ends of the cable generated electrical sparks.
With just a little spark the jet fuel caught on fire, giving the Concorde a fiery
and fatal lift-off.
At 14:43:13 the airport controller notified the pilot of the flames in
Concorde’s rear. Then the flight engineer announced a failure in engine number
2. The fire alarm sounded and the flight engineer shut down engine number 2.
The fire alarm then stopped. A few seconds later at 14:43:30 the pilot called for
retraction of the landing gear. Twelve seconds later the fire alarm sounded
again. The situation was getting worse with every advancing second. Fourteen
more precious seconds passed by before the co-pilot announced that the landing
gear failed to retract. At 14:43:59 the GPWS (ground proximity warning
system) alarm sounded. Concorde then lost power on engine 1 and a few
seconds after it crashed into the hotel.3
Nine hundred and twenty one days later on the 1st of February 2003 another
supersonic aircraft would suffer a similar fate and like the Concorde it was
destined for the New World – for the state of Texas in the United States of
America. On the 1st of February 2003, NASA’s space shuttle Columbia, in the
final stages of mission STS 107, began its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere,
returning from the international space station.4 At about 8:44 am EST (Eastern
Standard Time) Columbia entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the Pacific
Ocean. Approximately 14 minutes later at 8:58 am Columbia entered Texas
airspace at Mach 19.5 at an altitude of 209,800 feet (64 km). Just seconds
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“The physical cause of the Columbia accident was insulation foam debris from
the External Tank left bipod ramp striking the underside of the leading edge of
the left wing, creating a breach that allowed superheated air to enter and
destroy the wing structure during entry.”6
Large chunks of foam knocked off a few tiles from the underside of Columbia’s
left wing during takeoff. The shuttle then made its journey safely to the
international space station but the chain reaction for its eventual doom had
already begun. Upon re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere on the 1st of February
2003 Columbia’s exposed underside melted away resulting in the deadly fireball
that witnesses photographed from the ground.
Concorde and Columbia are flag ship aircraft in our modern supersonic age.
Speed is the pride of the nations who built and operated these aircrafts. The
paired aspects are that both were flagship aircrafts and the fastest in their
classification. Concorde is the fastest passenger airliner and NASA's space
shuttle is the fastest reusable space aircraft. In each disaster all onboard died.
The most peculiar paired aspect is that both disasters are rooted in the minutest
miscalculation. Both aircrafts were accidentally struck from underneath and
their ensuing disasters were the outcome of a series of unfortunate events that
are very extraordinary. Both Concorde and Columbia were damaged by debris.
Further, in both disasters, the piercing debris damaged the left side of both
respective aircrafts on takeoff. Another paired aspect is that both aircraft were
traveling to the New World. Concorde was flying west to New York and
Columbia was flying east to Texas.
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The 3rd of May 1937 trip from Frankfurt, Germany to Lakehurst, New Jersey
was the first Trans-Atlantic trip for the year 1937.15 The journey over the vast
expanse of the Atlantic Ocean was complete but owing to bad weather earlier in
the day Hindenburg could not land at the in New Jersey air station. To pass the
time the Hindenburg’s captain, commander Max Pruss treated his passengers to
an aerial tour of the city of New York. Then shortly after 6 pm, he was given
the go ahead to proceed to Lakehurst for a 7:25 pm landing.16 At 7:25 pm, local
time, Hindenburg hovered just 90 meters above the air station ground, in the
very final stages of landing, with its two mooring lines already dropped. 17 Then
suddenly a spark, flames, a fuel leak, or something happened that made the rear
end catch on fire. Thirteen seconds later almost the entire airship was engulfed
in flames, as it crashed to the ground. Several news cameramen were at the
naval station to witness the landing and when the disaster struck the entire
episode was filmed on camera. Footage from the historical Hindenburg
newsreel shows that it took approximately 30 seconds to kill 36 people,
including one ground crew person. 62 people survived the disaster.18 The
airship, however, goes on record as never having safely completed its 18 th trip
to the New World.
It was the end of an era. The Hindenburg crash brought an end to commercial
airship travel. The end had to come. The world was about to change. The start
of World War II was 30 months ahead19 and a new age was beckoning. The
nuclear age, the jet age, the supersonic age and the space age all began in
succession from 1945 onwards toward the end of World War 2.
The paired aspects common to Titanic and Hindenburg is the pride that both
carriers boasted – of being the largest commercial transports of their time.
Titanic and Hindenburg were flagship carriers in an era when opulence, style
and innovation took on gigantic proportions. Another paired aspect is that both
the Hindenburg and the Titanic were destroyed by opposite extremes – that of
fire and ice respectively. A third paired aspect is that, like the Concorde and
Columbia disasters mentioned above, both Titanic and Hindenburg were
travelling to the new world and they both failed to deliver all their passengers
safely to the new world. Titanic and Hindenburg differ from Concorde and
Columbia in that some of their passengers did survive the disasters.
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Challenger’s ascent into space. The mission duration exceeded over12 days and
17 hours and Barbara spent more than 300 hours in space.25
The paired aspects are that Columbia and Challenger are the first two shuttles
to be put into service and the only two be destroyed in flight and that both the
Challenger and Columbia disasters each in turn prevented or at least delayed
NASA from sending a teacher into space via its shuttle fleet. Both Christa
McAuliffe and Barbara Morgan are a connected pair unto each other.
Before moving onto the next example I want to point out that between this
example and the previous one the characteristic of convergence of paired
aspects presents itself. In the Columbia disaster aspects from different pairs
have converged. In the case of the Concorde and Columbia the paired aspects
were the unlucky impacts that set of the catastrophic chain reactions and in the
case of Challenger and Columbia the paired aspect is that both these disasters in
turn prevented two school teachers of the NASA Teacher in Space program
from reaching outer space.
3. Queens of Empire:
Both Spain and England are intimately connected to the history of the New
World. Their first adventures into colonial expansion began with westerly
voyages to the New World. Remarkably both these nations had their imperial
foundations laid down by a pair of female rulers, Queen Isabella I of Castile,
Spain and Queen Elizabeth I of England. Each of their respective reigns is
remembered by their subjects as a golden era.
Princess Isabella was 18 years old when she married Ferdinand, prince of the
neighboring Christian Kingdom of Aragon. Five years later, in 1474, at age 23,
Isabella ascended the throne following the death of her older half-brother King
Henry IV.26 Another 5 years would pass before her husband, Ferdinand of
Aragon also ascended the throne, becoming king of Aragon, following the death
of his father King John II of Aragon.27 Now both Queen and King respectively,
of two neighboring Christian kingdoms, their personal union paved the way for
Spanish Christian unity in the Iberian Peninsula. The only remaining obstacle to
Spanish unity was the tiny vassal Muslim State of Granada in the south.
The high point of Isabella’s reign was the year 1492. On the 2nd of January
1492 the last Muslim ruler of the Kingdom of Granada, Abu Abdullah, also
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known as Boabdil, and nicknamed El Chico, surrendered and turned over the
keys of the Alhambra to the Christian Monarchs, thus bringing 800 years of
Muslim rule in Spain to an end.28 The year 1492 was also the climax of the
Spanish inquisition, which had formally begun in 1478 CE.29 Isabella issued the
edict of expulsion ordering all Jews to leave Spain.30 Now having purged Spain
of both Jews and Muslims Isabella could direct her attention to other matters.
An eager and adventurous explorer, Christopher Columbus, believing the world
to be round and not flat, sought an audience with Iasbella to obtain her support
for a new voyage in the Atlantic. He succeeded and on the 3rd of August 1492
he set sail to find India, via a westerly route, not knowing what lay in the distant
uncharted waters of the Atlantic Ocean. As anyone who has ever seen a world
map knows Columbus failed to reach India and instead he discovered the
Americas and established the first European settlement there, in Hispaniola.
Further, to the delight of the Spanish crown, vast quantities of gold were
discovered in the Americas. 31 After all the wars with the Muslims and the
disastrous chapter of the inquisition the discovery of new land and strategic
resources across the Atlantic gleamed with promising prospects.
For most of the 16th century, Spain, with the exception of Portugal, remained
unrivalled by any other European nation in its American conquests. Spain’s
conquests in the New World gave Spain its first footing in its rise to become a
colonial empire, which in time extended from the Philippines in the east to the
western coasts of California and Mexico in North America. A new Christian age
was unfolding in the west and Isabella’s reign laid the foundation of a new age
of empire for Spain.
Six years after Queen Isabella's death, her daughter Catherine of Aragon,
married the English King Henry VIII. Catherine bore Henry six children but
only the fifth child survived. That child was a girl named Mary, born in the year
1516.32 Henry desired to have a son, and was becoming increasingly impatient
with his wife’s unfruitfulness. In 1525 he met and fell in love with Anne
Boleyn.33 He desired to marry Anne but first he had to divorce Catherine.
Henry’s plan was to annul his marriage with Catherine because Catherine was
previously married to Henry’s older brother Arthur. Arthur’s marriage to
Catherine ended within 6 months, due to Arthur’s premature death at the age of
15.34 The annulment went through in England but it was disputed in Rome
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because Henry proceeded with the annulment without the consent of Pope
Clement VII. Henry then secretly married Anne Boleyn on the 25th of January
1533. On the 7th of September of the same year Anne gave birth to their only
child, a girl named Elizabeth.35 The Pope, on the other hand still regarded the
first marriage to Catherine as valid. This meant that Elizabeth was illegitimate.
Henry, in the mean time, through a series of acts passed through parliament,
abrogated the supremacy of the Pope and declared Elizabeth to be his legitimate
heir replacing her older sister Mary (born from Catherine). 36 Religiously
England was now formally divorced from Catholic Rome and no longer sought
papal dispensation for religious matters. This was the start of the English
reformation. Looking back at these developments reveals the irony that the seed
of the English reformation came from Spanish flowering – from the very child
of Isabella and Ferdinand who for their achievements to Spain and to Catholic
Rome are remembered as the Catholic Monarchs.37
Things don’t always turn out the way you want them to and in 1553
Elizabeth’s half sister, Mary, the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, become
queen. A staunch Catholic, she spent the greater part of her reign attempting to
steer the nation back to Catholicism. In the wake of a rebellion lead by Thomas
Wyatt, Elizabeth was arrested and imprisoned for almost a year on grounds of
supporting the rebels. Elizabeth was subsequently freed and returned to Mary's
side at court in 1555 CE. In 1558 Mary died and the English throne passed to
her Protestant Christian half sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth was 25 years old at her
ascension.38
Elizabeth ascended the English throne in the same year that England lost the
town of Calais to France. Calais was the last of England's territorial possessions
in mainland Europe that was captured during the Hundred Years’ War against
France.39 Economically England was one the poorest countries in Europe and
religiously England's newly adopted protestant stance against Rome fermented
religious and political opposition from within and risked war from without.
There was no empire. England was starting anew and many uncertainties lay
ahead. Fortunately for England Elizabeth was a very capable, strong-willed and
an extremely lucky ruler. In the years to come Elizabeth would quell uprisings
and rebellions in England and in Ireland, which was one her kingdoms, and
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executed both a cousin, Mary Queen of Scots in 1587, and a friend, the Earl of
Essex in 1601.40
On the religious front Elizabeth supported the Protestant movement and
paved the way for the establishment of the Church of England. It was in her
reign that the first English settlement in the New World was established by Sir
Walter Raleigh on the island of Roanoke, off the east coast of North Carolina.
Her greatest military achievement was the defeat of the Spanish Armada in
1588 off the coast of Calais rekindling the English torch of freedom and
independence. 41 With this victory England was now safe from external religious
threats and within England Protestantism solidified with the common folk.
Elizabeth's long reign of 44 years brought stability to England and laid the
foundations of a global empire.
The paired aspects in this case are that each of these queens ascended the
throne in their twenties – Isabella at 23 and Elizabeth at 25. Both were popular
and cherished by their subjects and both ushered in a new age of prosperity.
Each of these Queens gave their respective country's international status and a
succeeding reach toward a new age of empire. During both their respective
reigns their loyal subjects began establishing their first settlements in the
Americas. The Spanish first settled in Hispaniola in the Caribbean seas half way
between South and North America and the English first settled in Roanoke
Island off North America. Today Spanish is the lingua franca of South America
and English is the lingua franca of North America. In the political sphere, both
Isabella and Elizabeth successfully suppressed political rivalry from within their
borders and from without, either through diplomacy or war. In both their reigns
religious upheaval dominated the political landscape and though their
circumstances were different from each other, the one a staunch Catholic and
the other a reformist Protestant, they both succeeded in bringing religious
stability to their respective countries.
the Spanish colonies in the Americas to revolt against the crown.42 By 1825
Spain’s mainland territories, including Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Columbia and
Venezuela, had broken off from the Spanish crown.43 By the 1890's, Spain’s
colonial era was in its twilight years. Spain's overseas possessions were now
reduced to Cuba and Puerto Rico in the west, the Philippines in the east and
parts of Morocco, Mauritania and Equatorial Guinea in Africa.44 The deathblow
to its international imperial status was inflicted by the United States military in
the 1898 Spanish-American war.45
Today, the Spanish-American War is one of America's older and largely
forgotten conflicts but at that time it was as significant for America as it was for
Spain. The Spanish-American war has its roots in the Cuban revolution of 1895,
which was fought between Cuba and Spain. The Cubans were being brutalized
and there was extensive loss of property to the extent that it directly affected
trade between the United States and Cuba. In the United States of America the
conflict came into the glare of the public eye through reports published in the
New York Journal and New York World.46 In January of 1898, the American
battleship, the USS Maine was dispatched to the Cuban port city of Havana to
protect American interests in Cuba.47 On the night of the 15th of February 1898
more than 260 crewmen aboard the Maine died when an explosion caused the
Maine to sink in Havana’s harbor. When the Maine sank it was not only the
Americans that expressed shock and dismay at the sudden loss of life, the
Spanish too were equally shocked. The Spanish authorities investigated and
they moved quickly to call the horrific sinking an accident. The US navy also
investigated the cause of the sinking and their inquiry concluded that a
submarine mine blew up the hull of the USS Maine.48
In Washington the reaction from the United States President William
McKinley was one of bereavement and concern. He carefully weighed the
situation and he was not inclined to aggression. War with Spain was to be
avoided. However, a group of influential and powerful Americans, who had
strong ties in the print media, and who at that time were seeking an opportunity
to pursue their expansionist and imperialistic ambitions, kept a watchful eye on
the developments in Cuba. They desired an aggressive reaction to the sinking of
the Maine and to the loss of life.49 As early as the 17th of February 1898 (2 days
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“The terrible disaster…will send a thrill of horror and pity through this
country...Sympathy with the American Government...will be world-wide...It is
peculiarly unfortunate that an incident of the kind should have occurred in a
Cuban harbour at a moment when the relations between the United States and
Spain have but lately begun to improve after a period of prolonged
tension...Our New York Correspondent...affirms that the event must deeply
affect American feelings in reference to Spain, and speaks very gravely of the
possible consequences….Unquestionably there is a party in the United States—
though, as we trust, a small and obscure party—which would not scruple to
make use of the misfortune that has befallen the nation for the promotion of
their private and interested ends.”50
As the days passed into weeks that ‘small and obscure party’ of men with
private ambitions began making spurious claims about Spanish aggression. One
of these partisans, William Randolph Hearst, owner of the New York Journal
newspaper dispatched journalists and an illustrator, Frederick Remington, to
cover the Spanish-American conflict in Cuba. When Remington reported to
Hearst that no real war was being fought between the United States and Spain
Hearst actually said, and I quote: "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the
war."51 It was an attempt to start up America’s war machine and he succeeded.
Climbing onto the war bandwagon was one Theodore Roosevelt, assistant
secretary of the navy (the future president of the United States of America and
also an associate of illustrator Frederick Remington) and Senator Redfield
Proctor. Published slogans like "Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain"
incensed the American public who by mid March of 1898 were calling on their
president to declare war on Spain.
In the end President McKinley, now isolated, acquiesced and on the 11th of
April 1898 he asked congress for a resolution allowing for military intervention
to end Spanish control over Cuba.52 Joint resolutions were passed by the US
Congress on the 19th of April 1898 calling for Cuban independence and
allowing for US Military intervention to advance Cuban independence. A few
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days later, on the 23rd of April 1898, in response to the United States resolution
and their ultimatum to the Spanish government to relinquish control over Cuba,
Spain broke off diplomatic ties with the United States and declared war on the
United States. On the next day, the 25th of April 1898, the United States
Congress announced that a state of war existed between the United States and
Spain.53 The war was largely a one sided affair and the Americans easily
subdued Spanish forces in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. On the 12 th of
August 1898 a ceasefire came into effect and 120 days later on the 10th of
December 1898 a peace treaty was signed in Paris, the terms of which ceded
sovereignty of Guam and Puerto Rico to the United States and the Philippines
was bought for 20 million dollars.54 Cuba was administered by the United States
military until it formally gained independence in 1902.55
The Spanish-American War of 1898 was the beginning of American
imperialism. The war marked America's entry onto the world stage. The old
republican values of separation from colonial Europe and isolation from
international affairs were discarded and in its place was installed an ambitious
foreign policy bent on achieving military and economic hegemony throughout
the world.
For the next 4 decades America's involvement in world affairs intensified
until another opportunity presented itself 16000 days after the sinking of the
Maine. This day was the 7th of December 1941. At 7:48 am on this quiet Sunday
morning Japanese strike aircraft began attacking United States military assets
anchored at Pearl Harbor on the island of Hawaii.56
This triggering event brought the United States into World War II, much to
the satisfaction of the British who up until now were struggling to fend off the
advancing German Nazi army. The United States was Europe’s rescuer. If Pearl
Harbor was not attacked the United States may have remained neutral and all of
Western Europe may have fallen into Nazi hands. However, this was not to be
and after 3 years of intense fighting in Europe the Americans succeeded in
turning the tide against the Nazis. In May of 1945, after Hitler committed
suicide, the Nazi's unconditionally surrendered. In August of 1945, after the war
in Europe ended, the United States dropped 2 atomic bombs over the Japanese
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively. Less than a week later the
Empire of Japan surrendered.57
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The paired aspects is that in each event American naval vessels were sunk
while resting peacefully at an Island Harbor (The islands of Cuba and Hawaii
respectively), costing hundreds of American lives, and following these
catastrophes America went to war. In the aftermath of both these wars, a pair of
European colonial powers, Spain and Britain, whose very first adventures in
empire building began in the Americas, spearheaded by a pair of courageous
queens, Isabella I of Castile and Elizabeth I of England, saw their respective
empires drastically downsized, and a New World country, the United States of
America, advanced to become a world superpower, strengthening its
imperialistic status among the nations of the world.
French lives were lost. Under these dismal conditions they eventually
capitulated to the British.67
Back in mainland Europe, Napoleon, after seizing control of the volatile
French Republic, now prepared for war in Europe. His ambitions for hegemonic
control over Europe kept its armies in a constant state of war during the first
decade of the 19th century. Most of Western Europe, including Spain, Portugal,
Austria, Germany and Italy were at one time or another conquered by
Napoleon’s Grande Armee, as it was called then. Britain, however, remained
defiant.68 Napoleon’s appetite for conquest was not satisfied and on the 22nd of
June 1812 Napoleon’s Grande Armee commenced its march toward Russia. At
that time Napoleon’s Grande Armee of more than 650 000 soldiers was the
largest European army ever to be assembled and it was commandeered by
Napoleon himself. With such a large force away from the homeland the greatest
challenge Napoleon faced was logistics and in this he failed. The further they
marched on the deeper the Russians retreated into the east of their country,
using scorched earth tactics to starve off the advancing French army.69
Eventually the Russians did give battle on the 7th of September at the battle of
Borodino. Napoleon was victorious but at great cost. As many as 30 000 French
soldiers died in the battle.70 Even before the battle began, in the weeks leading
up to it, thousands had already perished from disease and starvation. 71
Napoleon’s next objective was to capture Moscow. This he accomplished
easily. The Russians, anticipating the fall of the city, ordered their countrymen
to abandon the city. When the French marched into the city in September of
1812, there was no one to surrender the city.72 The French soldiers began
looting the city from the first day they entered it and amidst this chaos fires
broke out in the city, which lasted for several days, destroying between two
thirds and three quarters of the city. 73 This disaster deprived the French army of
shelter, as winter was approaching. A few weeks later a very disheartened
Napoleon ordered a retreat out of Russia. 74 From the 650 000 soldiers that
initially went into Russia approximately 40 000 limped back to Western
Europe.75
Napoleon’s dreams of ruling over all of Europe were now shattered. He could
no longer match the military strength of his opponents and in 1813 his soldiers
were outnumbered by the 6th coalition army from the countries of Russia,
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Prussia, Austria and Sweden. The coalition won a great victory against
Napoleon’s forces at the battle of Leipzig in October of 1813, after which they
marched on to Paris and forced Napoleon to abdicate.76
More than a century later in August of 1940, during World War 2, Italian
forces, allied to the Nazi Germans, attempted to invade Egypt from their bases
in Libya, to seize control of the Suez Canal.77 Initially they made advances into
Egypt but then delayed further advancement. The British forces already
stationed inside Egypt, took advantage of the Italian General’s delays and
started a counter attack chasing them back to Libya. The Italians fought
hopelessly in the western deserts of North Africa and after 2 months
surrendered to the British in Libya. Over 100 000 thousand Italian soldiers
became prisoners of war.78 Subsequent to these disappointing defeats in North
Africa, in February of 194179, Hitler dispatched Field Marshal Erwin Rommel,
nick-named the Desert Fox, to invade North Africa to keep the British in check.
Rommel immediately launched an offensive and by 11 April 1941 he succeeded
in recapturing the territory lost by the Italians, except for Tobruk, which was
garrisoned by Australian forces.80 He siege on Tobruk, which lasted 240 days,
was unsuccessful.81 The Allied forces again counterattacked and drove Rommel
further west. In January of 1942 he emerged from his retreat and pushed the
front lines of the war further east.82 Later that year, in the month of June, he
attempted another offensive and again pushed the front lines east well into
Egyptian territory. The British 8th army was forced to retreat to El Alamein
approximately 100 km west of the Egyptian city of Alexandria.83 Two battles
were fought at El ‘Alamein between July and November of 1942. The Allied
forces held their ground and succeeded in turning the tide against Rommel, thus
bringing Germany’s Egyptian offensive to an end. Rommel was then chased
back to the Libyan deserts.84 Rommel had to retreat all the way to Tunisia where
he linked up with the German 5th Panzer army under the command of Hans-
Jürgen von Arnim. He made his final exit from North Africa in March of 1943
when Hitler called him back to Europe. In the following year, in May of 1943,
over 250 000 German and Italian soldiers surrendered to allied forces.85
While Rommel fought the British in North Africa, Hitler began a new
offensive in the east. On the 22nd of June 1941, 129 years after Napoleon began
his fateful march into Russia, Hitler's Nazi army of more 3 million invaded the
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USSR (Now Russia). The invasion force was split into 3 divisions: north south
and centre. Hitler wanted to capture Leningrad in the North, Moscow in the
center and seize control of vital resources in the Caucasus, in the south. 86
Like Napoleon, Hitler planned for a quick victory in Russia. His generals
made quick advances deep into Russian territory. Close to a million Soviet
soldiers were captured by the advancing Nazis in the first 4 months of the
offensive.87 After a change in strategy troops from the center were diverted
elsewhere and this stalled the march toward Moscow for several weeks. When
the campaign to take Moscow resumed rain began to fall. Eventually like
Napoleon’s Grande Armee in the century before logistical problems bogged
down the Nazis in Russia. The temperature began to drop as winter approached.
The incursion dragged on for the rest of 1941 into the freeze of the Russian
winter preventing the Germans from capturing Moscow that year.88 Early in
December 1941, The Soviets, under the leadership of Joseph Stalin,
counterattacked. Soviet forces repelled the Germans well into the following
year of 1942. In the summer of 1942 (July 1942) Hitler again took up the
offensive in Russia and set his ambition toward capturing Stalingrad,
approximately 900 km south of Moscow. Here again the Germans got bogged
down in a long protracted duel with the Russians, which lasted well into the
winter months.89
A major German defeat came at the battle of Stalingrad, where the German
th
6 army, 250 000 troops strong, was cut off from its vital supply line. Then the
Russians closed in on them on all sides and pounded them into surrendering on
the 31st of January 1943. The battle was a decisive victory for the Russians. The
losses at Stalingrad were staggering. Ninety thousand soldiers were marched off
behind the Russian lines as prisoners of war.90 The defeat at Stalingrad was a
major setback for Hitler's Russian offensive. Following this stunning defeat the
Germans then retreated westward. Hitler and his Nazis soldiers were now on the
defensive.91 The Russians responded by advancing their troops forward and in a
matter of months a bulge of Russian troops, or salient, formed around the city of
Kursk, approximately 450 km south of Moscow, penetrating as far as 100 miles
into the Germans lines. It proven too tempting for Hitler to pass up and on the
5th of July 1943 another summer offensive was launched against the Russians.
The battle of Kursk was the largest tank battle in history but after only a week
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of fierce fighting the Germans began to pull out. The Soviets then launched a
massive counter attack destroying over 2900 German tanks and killing or
wounding 70 000 German troops.92 Kursk marked the high tide of Germany’s
eastern offensive. From here on the Germans were kept in check by the
Russians for the remainder of the war.
The first paired aspect in this example is that both Napoleon and Hitler
advanced first into North Africa, before invading Russia and in each offensive
their armies were defeated in battle by the British. The result for both Napoleon
and Hitler is that their respective North African campaigns were failures. The
second paired aspect is a second set of failures for both of them that came in
more or less the same fashion when they each invaded Russia, with the largest
European land armies of their times. Logistics bogged down both their
respective armies and the unforgiving Russian winter froze their materialistic
ambitions. Russia was the biggest mistake for both these invaders. An
associated paired aspect is that in both these wars the Russians never wanted to
interfere in their western European conquests. Had they both left Russia in
peace it would have been far easier to consolidate their power in Western
Europe and concentrate their forces into subduing the last remaining colonial
power in Western Europe, namely Britain. But it was not meant to be so. Britain
was always lucky because of the blunders of its enemies.
Coincidently, or perhaps deliberately with the knowledge of paired aspects,
Hitler’s march to USSR/Russia began on 22nd of June 1941, which is 129 years
after Napoleon’s march to Russia on the same day – 22nd of June in the year
1812 . Further, the invasion of the USSR was code-named operation
Barbarossa, named after the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa93 who
was drowned in the 12th century while attempting to ford the river Calycadnus
in Asia Minor, at the start of the disastrous third Crusade which failed to
recapture Jerusalem from Saladin.94 Timing the start of Germany’s Russian
offensive to coincide with the start of Napoleon’s failed Russian campaign and
then to name the operation after Barbarossa who died before seeing the holy
land may have served as bad karma. To this end it must be noted that some of
Hitler’s closest associates were members of a secret and racist fraternity called
Thule Society.95 Perhaps the timing of the Russian invasion was intentionally
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Chapter 5
hours, it will be stated as 41 days. Here it is true to say that the second event
occurred on the 41st day, but that 41 days have not been fully completed. Also
bear in mind that not all events occur at a specific hour, minute and second. A
storm is an event and its duration usually spans several hours and sometimes it
may exceed 2 full days.
This chapter aims to categorize 40 day events based on criteria, which are set
out below, and then I will to present more examples of events that involve
temporal connectivity in multiples of 40 days that meet the criteria. Most of the
40 day phenomenon events discussed in this book can be sub divided into 4
different categories of unplanned events:
anomalous date by a multiple of 40 days. For example: Where the subject is the
history of a city: a hurricane that caused widespread damage, an political
assassination, a plague, an aviation disaster that claimed many lives, and a
hijacking event, all occurred on dates such as 24 February, 4 April, 24, 14 May,
23 June, and 2 August, which are all negative/loss events linked to the date 11
September by a multiple of 40 days.
events by the number 40 or multiples of the number 40. Certainly all are not
meaningfully associated to one’s own personal experiences on the present day.
You could say that your parent’s went on vacation to the Bahamas 40 days after
the opening of Parliament in the United Kingdom or that you got a promotion in
your job 80 = 2 x 40 days before a whale beached on the coast of Australia.
These things can happen to anyone anywhere in the world. What would they
mean to you and the greater world? The truth is that just about anything can be
tied to the number 40. Nevertheless, it is my belief that this phenomenon is real
and significant to the way we understand the physical world and that it cannot
be overlooked as meaningless or the outcome of chance. In this book I aim to
show that a term of 40 days enables temporal connectivity between related
events but I do not know why the time unit is a day and I do not know what
makes it significant to apply the number 40 to the time unit of a day. Why not
50 or 100 days? A day is 24 hours, a single rotation of the earth on its own axis.
Forty is a composite number, not a prime number. Its prime factors are 2, 2, 2
and 5. What are the mathematical equations of time, from which importance is
attached to intervals of 40 days? To this question I simply don’t have the
answers and in this my knowledge of the phenomenon surrounding the number
40 is limited and deficient. As little as I know it is important to present this
categorization here, because the information is useful to prove the realness of
this phenomenon. This phenomenon is probably a composite numeric
phenomenon that could be broken down into a group of interrelated sub-
phenomena. It is not a basic and fundamental phenomenon. At least I don’t
think so.
Synchronistic Events:
1. The Two Hell Dreams:
Synchronicity by itself is a striking phenomenon. Showing that some
synchronistic events are punctuated by intervals of 40 days prominences this
phenomenon with greater physicality. The two hell dreams, presented in chapter
1, that I had experienced were 119 days part and they emanated from the same
unconscious image and then 439 days after the second dream the dream events
played out in the external world. These dreams show that the number 40
operates not only in the temporal ordering of external events but also in the
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Footnote a: Rajab is the 7th month in the Islamic lunar calendar, followed by Shabaan, the 8th
month and Ramadan the 9th month.
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That entry was only a partial recording of the dream. I did not journalize
everything I saw in that dream, but the memory of the vision has not faded
away. The following parts are taken from memory and are stated here in the
order I saw them. I remember seeing huge tsunamis towering over the
mountains and at one particular spot a bearded American surfer was attempting
to ride the tsunami. The thought I had while seeing this man was of amazement.
What a wacko? What a fool? I thought to myself. He was sure to die. Then I
was inside the shelter, in a closed room, dimly lit, and there was a stage nearby
with two white female singers dressed in maroon uniforms. They too were
American. In a later scene I was outside with a group of people and I saw the
Chinese guards watching over us and then we were ordered to go back inside
the shelter.
Over the next two years I would recall this vision thinking about the fate that
awaited the world. I believed in my dreams. I also believe in premonition.
Occasionally I would have these fleeting thoughts that the planet was doomed
and that millions of people would drown in the rising seas. When I analyzed the
dream more carefully I realized that some parts were very complex. Why was I
seeing Americans and Chinese? I couldn’t make any sense of it.
After all the analyzing and the fright that I generated inside my mind it finally
whittled down to an insignificant whimper. On the 15th of December 2009, I
drove to the Pavilion shopping mall to buy two movie tickets for myself and my
son to watch a film called 2012 on the following day. 2012 is a disaster film
directed and produced by Roland Emmerich, and was premiered in the United
States of America on the 11th of November 2009.
The science fiction that drove the 2012 disaster film were tiny sub atomic
particles called neutrinos, which spewed out from the sun during solar flares
and began having a physical effect on the earth’s core. As the core heated up its
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Realizing that the dream was true premonition was one thing. What I wanted
to do next was to start up my notebook computer to search for the file in which I
recorded the date of the dream and then calculate the number of days from the
dream to the film viewing date – the 16th of December 2009. As it turned out the
16th of December 2009 was 839 = (21 x 40) – 1 days after the dream date of 30
August 2007. I started to research the making of the film and discovered from
Wikipedia’s article on the film that a spec script was only tabled in February of
20081 and that filming only began in August of the same year, which is nearly a
year after my dream. In my dream I envisioned scenes about the film months
before any Hollywood studio had ever dreamed of getting their hands on the
script. It’s very unusual to see the acts in a film months before the script was
tabled. Such a vision cannot be ignored and neither can the timing of the events
around the interval of 40 days. Who, if anyone, is the upper creator of these
films?
This case serves as a cautionary for anyone wanting to interpret dreams.
When I had my dream I was certain that something catastrophic would happen
to the earth and the thing that most propelled this feeling of certitude was all the
research that I was doing at the time about dreams; prophet Muhummad’s
prophetic signs of judgment day; the phenomenon of paired aspects; and the 40
day phenomenon. All the built up expectations were for something fictional.
This is significant for the way I would interpret dreams and other phenomenon
in the future. True, the number 40 has deep religious connotations for many
people, including myself and one easily falls into the trap that when
experiencing the connectivity of the 40 day phenomenon that you are special
and distinguished from others around you. This is not true.
In general synchronicity proves that there are undiscovered aspects of nature.
There is a larger governing dynamic that surrounds and runs through
synchronistic experiences. The synchronicities of the 2 hell dreams, the dream
that revolved around the participants’ birthdays and the rising seas dream open
up the possibility that there is an unseen realm connected to our physical world
where events are created in some kind of ethereal form before becoming
physical.
I have studied the law of attraction – a phenomenon that is far better
documented. Various hypotheses and interpretations have been posited for well
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over a hundred years now. I have watched Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret2 and
have read Karen Kelly’s book The Secret of “The Secret”, which is a broader
discussion of the origins, use and misuse of law of attraction, its claims of
scientific validity and its limitations. On page 123 Kelly states:
‘Science, it seems, does not say our thoughts change the world outside of our
own brains and our own perceptions. It does not say we attract things to us by
our thoughts.’3
event, occurs when we make the connection between the ethereal and physical.
That is to mean, the mental crossroads between the law of attraction and a law
of duality.
Paired Events:
1. Two Police Visitations:
In some events the interval of 40 days synchronizes with the phenomenon of
paired aspects and serves as a temporal connector between the instancing of
paired aspects. An example is the two police visitations and the allegations they
brought that I had made terrorism related threats, first on the 27th of April 2007
and then on the 13th of November 2007 (see chapter 1 above). My arrest on the
27th of April 2007 (which began as a police visitation) and the second visit by
the police captain from the Crime Intelligence Division on the 13th of November
2007 are dissimilar in that in the first event the police had an arrest warrant and
in the second event the police were investigating a bomb threat, or so that is
what the captain wanted me to believe. However, there is a strikingly similarity
between both police visitations and these similarities are categorized as paired
aspects. Three paired aspects are noted. Firstly on both occasions the causal
nexus for the police visits was that I was accused of making a bomb threat.
Secondly, on both occasions my father was the first to notify me that the police
had come to see me. Thirdly, on both occasions I was in the bathroom cleansing
myself when receiving that notification of the police visitation, in preparation
for the early afternoon prayer. Between the 27th of April and the 13th of
November are 200 days and the number 200 = 5 x 40.
The number 40 also recurred in the case of the military disasters, which befell
the United States of America (See New World, New Empire in Chapter 4
above). It is not a coincidence that the sinking of US warships in Pearl Harbor,
on the island of Hawaii occured 16000 = 400 x 40 days after the sinking of the
US warship, the USS Maine, in Havana Harbor on the island of Cuba and after
each of these military disasters America went to War and after each of these two
wars two European states, whose first endeavours to becoming an international
colonial empire was in the Americas, lost several of their colonies and their
respective empires finished.
4. Green Snakes:
Sunday morning, the 14th of November 2010 will be remembered as headless
snake day. After cleansing myself in the bathroom I began opening the curtains
and when I unlocked the front door and opened it at around 9 am I saw a green
mamba snake, approximately 40 cm long and approx. 1 cm thick on its upper
body. It lay motionless on the tiles of the front porch within a meter from the
entrance. Upon closer examination I saw that its head was bitten off and that
half way down its body a piece of flesh was chewed away so as to leave the
dead snake nearly in two segments. I closed the door, opened the curtains in the
lounge and dining room and then re-opened the door to examine it again. I
decided to sweep it up and bury it. I fetched a hand broom, a dust pan and a
small hand spade and then opened the front gate. The head was nearby and I
swept it and then the body onto the dust pan. I then dug a hole with the hand
spade on a patch of earth to the right of the gate. I emptied the dead snake from
the dust pan and buried it in the hole. I covered the hole and went back inside.
That’s when I saw the snake’s blood stains on the tiles. I don’t know what
fought with the snake but the day before, which was Saturday, was a hot and
sunny day. The skies were filled with flying insects and birds catching and
eating the insects. There was also a new cat in the yard. It is almost completely
black with a patch of brown hair at the edge of its tail. I first saw it a few nights
ago accompanied by the other resident black and white yard cat. Maybe this
green mamba snake was trying to enter the house from the gap under the front
door and then the cat came along and fought it and bit its head off completely. I
can only guess that this duel might have happened either Friday night, when I
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was watching Oliver Stone’s film about Alexander the Great whose opening
chapters introduced young Alexander and his scheming mother toying with her
pet snakes, or during the day of Saturday, or Saturday night, or early Sunday
morning.
Seventy nine days (or on the 80th day = 2 x 40 days) after the headless snake
was found outside the front door, on a Tuesday morning, the 1st of February
2011, I opened another door in the same house, which was a side entrance, and I
saw another small green mamba snake near the entrance. It quickly ran off and
curled up in the small plant in the corner of the veranda. It was approximately
30 cm in length and less than a centimeter thick along its upper body. If I
wanted I could have searched it out and attempted to kill it but I did want to kill
the snake. It was very unusual to see this reptilian repetition on the 80th day. It
made me feel as if I was being watched and that the snakes were sent to attack
me. I stepped back in and checked for gaps under the door and wedged some
cardboard in the back corner of the entrance. I then collected my shopping bag
and went about my day’s errands. This second snake did eventually make its
way into the house. About a week later the housekeeper saw it curled up on the
load selector knob of the washing machine in the laundry room. She killed it
with insect spray. It may have gotten in through the door on the opposite side of
the house that leads directly into the laundry room.
The paired aspects in this case is that both the snakes belong to the same
species, the green mamba and I saw both when opening the door from inside the
house and both snakes where very close to the doorway. I assume both the
snakes wanted to enter the house. We were saved when the head of the first
snake was bitten off. The second snake also wanted to enter the house and
might have if I did not chase it away but eventually it did enter the house and
was killed. Both snakes were killed.
Associative events:
1. Ahmed Deedat and the School Girl:
In chapter 1 I mentioned a series of events revolving around Ahmed Deedat:
Handing over the compact disc containing the e-books to the web hosting
company; the death of Ahmed Deedat; meeting a lady in the bookstore and
referring her to Deedat’s e-books and handing a compact disc containing those
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same e-books and two videos of Ahmed Deedat to the policeman are all
associative to Islam and Ahmed Deedat. Although 3 of these 4 events reference
the same e-books written by Deedat, when put side by side I do not see distinct
paired aspects between any 2 events. They are an associative time threaded
event. The thread began on the 28th of June 2005 when I set out to deliver the
compact disc to the web hosting company. Forty one days later Ahmed Deedat
died and then another 40 days later I was at the book store inviting to a lady to
read Ahmed Deedat’s books and lastly 359 = (9 x 40) – 1 days later on the 11th
of September 2006 I gave a compact disc containing Ahmed Deedat’s books
and videos to a policeman in the PR office of the Durban Metro Police building.
This thread is one of two threads that began on the 28th of June 2005.
Remember that I also wanted to see if the schoolgirl would appear at the school.
The school was closed for winter holidays but 1281 = (32 x 40) + 1] days after
driving by the school to search for the schoolgirl I did eventually see her after
all. Not in person but I saw her photo in the newspaper. These two events form
a second associative time threaded event that is linked by the interval of 40
days.
Part II
Part two continues the exposition of the symmetries and paired aspects of nature
I began in part 1 by branching into religion. Chapter 6 discusses dualities and
symmetries written into the structure and content of the Quran which correlate
to the hypothesis of paired aspects discussed in chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 7
presents a broad worldview. Included in the discussion is a hypothesis of
intelligent design from the perspective of paired aspects, causality, types of
creations, a broader perspective of the 40 day phenomenon, descriptions of
judgment day, and a discussion on origins and evolution.
***
If belief in a God is imperative it will be shown not to be a blind leap of faith
but rather a scientific deduction from a careful examination of the natural world
(the universe) around us and the application of logic and reason. You never
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have to bow to any person to know God and submit to God. Everyone is born a
believer, pure and sinless. This is the true religion – to be true to the universe
we live in and that we are a part of.
The universe is deterministically created with complete knowledge by an
intelligent designer. The illusion is randomness, chance and that the universe is
eternal and without creator. Nature is filled with signs of design. The
mathematical architecture of the universe is based on the smallest prime
number, the odd prime number, the only even number that can ever be a prime
number, the number 2. 2 = 1 + 1 and with properly trained eyes finding the
signs in nature can be as easy as knowing that 1 + 1 = 2. Anybody of any age
can know the signs and experience it in their lives, even the blind and the deaf
can know it and the young and the old too.
Nothing in creation resembles God. No one can be associated with God and
no one can commune with God. God is our sustainer, protector and eternal
refuge. In our love for God we must always remember that there is no God but
God. When we love God or when God loves us we must always remember that
love is not associative to his being – that love is created in his wisdom and
mercy.
Your life in this world is created for you and it is bordered and limited by
birth and death. We are endowed with a limited free will and we are tested on
the choices we make. We can choose faith, have dreams, pursue desires and
strive by the dictates of the structure found within us and around us in nature.
Striving begins with yearnings, dreams, prayers and meditation. These are inner
strivings. When we speak out our dreams, act on it or just even note it down in a
diary then our striving enters the material world, the outer world. These are
outer strivings. The better we know ourselves the better our chances of
manifesting our dreams – of connecting the inner and the outer. You have a soul
that will live beyond your death. God is merciful and wants you to strive to a
beautiful, luxurious and everlasting life after death in paradise.
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Chapter 6
For Muslims the Quran is a liturgical prayer book and radiating pillar of light,
teaching, guiding, commanding, advising, and reassuring. Muslims believe the
Quran to be the unchanged word of God revealed to prophet Muhammad,
through the archangel Gabriel. The Quran is prophet Muhammad’s legacy.
Prophet Muhammad was born on a Monday1 in April of 571a CE and lived in
Mecca, in Arabia. He belonged to a tribe called Quraish, which was the most
powerful and prominent tribe in all of Arabia during that period. Approaching
the age of 40 it was his habit to spend some of his nights, in solitude, in a cave
on the outskirts of Mecca. When Muhammad was 40 years old, in the year 610
Footnote a: The year 571 is calulalted on the assumption that prophet Muhammad was 40
lunar years old in the year 610. Several western scholars, while accepting the revelation year
to be 610 CE, state the year of prophet Muhammad’s birth to be the previous year of 570.
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CE, on a night in the month of Ramadan2, which is the 9th lunar month, an event
took place in the cave that marked the beginning of revelation. The archangel
Gabriel appeared before Muhammad and began reciting the first revealed verses
from the Quran. Muhammad narrated the event in these words:
"The angel caught me (forcefully) and pressed me so hard that I could not bear
it any more. He then released me and again asked me to read and I replied, 'I do
not know how to read.' Thereupon he caught me again and pressed me a second
time till I could not bear it any more. He then released me and again asked me
to read but again I replied, 'I do not know how to read (or what shall I read)?'
Thereupon he caught me for the third time and pressed me, and then released
me and said, 'Read in the name of your Lord, who has created (all that exists).
Has created man from a clot. Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous.’"
(96.1, 96.2, 96.3)3 b
Thus began revelation. The Quran is a single book but it was not given to
Muhammad all at once. Rather it is a collection of verses arranged in surahs
that was revealed to Muhammad intermittently over a period approximately 22
Footnote b: Prophet Muhammad’s sayings are different from the verses of the Quran. Since
the very beginning of Muhammad’s mission, when it became known amongst his people that
he was the messenger and prophet of God, his actions and sayings have been observed,
memorized and retold by his companions. These reports and narrations are called hadith in
Arabic. Some of Muhammad’s companions were meticulous and careful to report the exact
words that Muhammad spoke while others paraphrased what he said. As time passed these
hadith of Muhammad’s life were transmitted from generation to generation, from oral
tradition to written hadith but by then discrepancies and contradictions crept in.
Approximately two hundred years after the death of Muhammad a colossal effort was
undertaken by an army of Muslim scholars to classify the hadiths. Four primary categories
emerged: sound, good, weak and fabricated and within each of these primary categories are
secondary and tertiary sub-categories. Among the preeminent scholars of hadith, from
antiquity are Bukhari and Muslim whose published collections of hadiths are of the highest
category of their time, namely sahih (or sound) but it should be borne in mind that the books
of hadith are not on the same level of authenticity as that of the Quran because the entire
Quran was memorized and written in the prophet’s lifetime whereas some of the most relied
upon hadiths were only classified and written more than a hundred years after the death of
Muhammad when direct interviews with first, second and third generation transmitters was
impossible because they were long dead and buried.
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years – from the year 610 till his death in the year 632. A surah is a portion of
the Quran that in most respects is analogous to a chapter. There are 114 surahs
in the Quran. Each surah has a distinct subdivision called an ayat, which
literally means sign. It is these signs that are colloquially referred to in English
literature as verses. The largest surah has 286 verses of varying length and the
shortest has just 3 pithy verses.
In verse 7 of the 21st surah God says very clearly that the letter of the Quran
is the basis of the Quran. There are many discourses in the Quran, which can
become confusing very quickly without understanding the right context in
which the verses were revealed. For this reason a good commentary is
recommended. Misinterpretations of the Quran frequently stem from unspecific
or allegorical statements in the Quran. Many people in the past have examined
the unspecific verses of the Quran and sought to extract meaning from them.
Many medieval Muslim scholars spent more time focusing on meta-physical
thought than scientific observation and analysis. This led some people to want
to experience the Quran rather than to enumerate it. The result was the birth of
Islamic mysticism. There is a large body of mystical teachings that deviate from
the basic principles of monotheism and non-association to God. Apart from
unspecific and allegorical statements in the Quran there are other kinds of
misinterpretations of the Quran. One such misinterpretation relates to the soul of
Adam, the progenitor of the human race. Adam, we are told in 15th surah of the
Quran, was molded into shape:
15:28 And [mention, O Muhammad], when your Lord said to the angels, "I
will create a human being out of clay from an altered black mud.
15:29 And when I have proportioned him and breathed into him of My
[created] soul, then fall down to him in prostration."c
Footnote c: Unless otherwise stated all English translations of the Quran in this book are from
the publication of Saheeh International, The Qur'an: English Meanings and Notes, Riyadh:
Al-Muntada Al-Islami Trust, 2001-2011; Jeddah: Dar Abul-Qasim 1997-2001.
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not part of the self, and the second ‘my’ relates to the self. Unfortunately, some
have fallen into the trap that the soul of Adam is taken from the self of the
creator, God. This is not true.
Apart from the unspecific, allegorical statements and misinterpreted words in
the Quran, the structure of the Quran, the order in which verses are numbered,
the ordering of the surahs and the numerous repetitions in the Quran have also
come under scrutiny. It has been argued to me that trying to find hidden
meaning from the Quran’s structure is un-Islamic because it is as devious as
incorrectly interpreting the unspecific verses of the Quran. Here in this chapter I
will argue that in the proper context meaning can be found in the structuring of
verses in the Quran that is independent of the prima facie meaning of the words
themselves. The verses of the Quran are called ayahs in Arabic and ayah does
not mean verse. Verse is a European and Latinized word. Ayah means sign. To
prove this I present verse 15 of the 10th surah of the Quran:
10:15 And when Our verses are recited to them as clear evidences, those who
do not expect the meeting with Us say, "Bring us a Qur'an other than this or
change it." Say, [O Muhammad], "It is not for me to change it on my own
accord. I only follow what is revealed to me. Indeed I fear, if I should disobey
my Lord, the punishment of a tremendous Day."
In the above verse the opening Arabic phrase ‘ayah-thu-na’ translates to ‘Our
verses‘, referring to the Quran itself. However the Quran also informs us of a
different kind of sign. Verse 164 from the 2nd surah of the Quran, surah al-
Baqarah, will explain:
2:164. Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and earth, and the alternation of
the night and the day, and the [great] ships which sail through the sea with that
which benefits people, and what Allahd has sent down from the heavens of
rain, giving life thereby to the earth after its lifelessness and dispersing therein
every [kind of] moving creature, and [His] directing of the winds and the
Footnote d: Allah is the proper name of God in the Arabic Language. It is derived
from the Arabic word for god, which is ilah. Al is the definite article ‘the’. Thus al-
ilah becomes Allah or ‘the god’.
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clouds controlled between the heaven and the earth are signs for a people who
use reason.
In the last part of 2:164 God is very clearly saying that all of His creations, such
as the sun, the stars, the earth, the wind, the clouds, the creatures of the earth,
etc are a sign. Again as in 10:15 the Arabic word used is ‘ayah’ and if we
already accepted that the verses of the Quran are also signs then I argue and put
forward to see the Quran as a book of nature and as a mirror of nature. The
Quran is part of creation just as the stars are part of creation. I am aware of the
former scholars of the Quran who believed that Quran is the uncreated speech
of God. To say that the Quran is uncreated is to associate creation with God,
which is disbelief because it negates pure monotheism.
The Quran is a testament to the nature of the universe and in being so it is a
message to all of Mankind and not only Muslims. In the Quran God reveals
some of the architectural design features of this created realm. Clues are given
which help our understanding of the laws of nature found in the world around
us. From the collection of Bukhari we know that Muhammad called the Quran
Jawami al-kalim4 and he explained this term to mean that the Quran is a
summarization of the detailed descriptions that were revealed in the previous
Books of God, such as the Torah, the Psalms and the Gospel of Jesus. In the
Quran one or two statements are given for a particular matter but the previous
revelations from God had detailed descriptions of such matters. The previous
revelations of God may have contained detailed descriptions of natural
phenomenon, such as cloud formations; rain and the water cycle; the alternation
of day and night; the tilting of the earth’s axis that gives us the four seasons; the
motions of the earth around the sun and of the other planets; the evolution of
species; embryonic development, anatomy, pollination; germination;
descriptions of atoms; the nature of lightening; etc. Some of these things are
alluded to in the Quran. The Quran contains only cursory verses of planetary
motion, cloud formation, the origin of life from water, the water cycle,
cosmology, and human embryonic development. At the very least this statement
from Muhammad should inform people that the Quran is a not a comprehensive
encyclopedia. There are no detailed textbook styled descriptions of natural
phenomena. However the Quran does implore us to observe and to study nature.
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Verse 2:164 which was stated above proves this and it also serves as an example
of how the Quran has been described by Muhammad as Jawami al-Kalim.
As an example, if we look at lightening it is to be regarded, from antiquity, as
a heavenly apparition; the weapon of Zeus, if you believe in Greek deities; or
the effects of a celestial battle between the Gods of the heavens, if you were to
make up your own mythology. As a scientific race that relies on computer
microchips in our smart mobile phones to send emails and short messages, and
to read e-books we know and accept that lightening is a natural discharge of
electricity and importantly to my argument, that electricity was discovered not
prima facie from just looking at the streaks of light in the sky but through
careful examination of a myriad of other natural phenomena and eventually
when all the mathematics was done and computed and the laboratory testing
was completed we discovered how to harness the power of Zeus, which is
applied and conductive electricity.
Applied and conductive electricity was invented from the study of structures
in nature and structure comes from the fundamental forces of nature such as
electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces. These things are
mostly hidden from the eye unless we use a microscope or other scientific
instrument to test these phenomena. If you can accept the viewpoint that the
Quran is a book and a mirror of nature then it should not be difficult to accept
that if the forces and structures of nature, such as lightening, can be studied to
reveal their inner and hidden workings to give us electricity that makes our
microwave ovens, cell phones and computers function to our benefit, then we
can also study, in the proper scientific context, the structure and composition of
the Quran and then to compare our findings to nature.
There are numerous verses in the Quran, which alludes to the Quran being
strategically coded. One attestation that the Quran is strategically coded can be
found in the matter of the cancelled verse of the Quran that was reported on by
Bukhari. The cancelled verse was about a group of Muslim missionaries that
were sent by prophet Muhammad to the tribes of Ral, Dhakwan and Usaiya to
teach these people the new religion of Islam but instead they were murdered by
people from these tribes at a place called Bir-Mauna. After their demise a verse
was sent down announcing to the Muslims the good news that the martyrs have
met their Lord and that he was pleased with them. The verse was subsequently
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cancelled.5 There is nothing morally bad about this verse. On the contrary it is a
comforting verse and a thing to cherish. The cancellation of a verse does not
imply fallibility or weakness on the part of God. It is simply accepted as a
change of course. This change of course from God can only be fully understood
with an in depth knowledge of the mutable nature of the created universe.
Things are in play. Observers and participants in the world are free to choose
between good and evil and between submission to God or rebellion. God
predestines everything but an integral part of his creation involves his
seemingly personalized interaction with the participants of the world along
predefined lines. He defines his own rules of interaction. It is in this vein of
thought that it is possible to postulate that it is the strategy of God to insert and
remove verses from the Quran.
The structure of the Quran’s verses can also be thought of as a mathematical
program. A suggestion of the programmatic nature of the Quran comes from the
cryptic verses inserted at the beginning of some surahs. Nineteen surahs begin
with verses that do not have words in them. They contain only concatenated
letters from the Arabic alphabet suggesting them to be some kind of
abbreviation or secret code. Another 10 begin with cryptic letters followed by
introductory words. There are 29 surahs that contain the cryptic letters. Three
such surahs (38, 50 and 68) open with just a single letter (Sad, Qaf and Nun
respectively, which equate to the English alphabet letter S, Q and N). Another
10 surahs contain a combination of just 2 letters (20 with Ta Ha; 27 with Ta
Seen; 36 with Ya Seen and 7 consecutive surahs from 40 to 46 with Ha Meem).
Next are 13 surahs that begin with a combination of 3 letters. Surahs 2, 3, 29,
30, 31 and 32 begin with Alif Lam Meem; surahs 10, 11, 12, 14, and 15 begin
with Alif Lam Ra and surahs 26 and 28 begin with Ta Seen Meem. Only two
surahs have a combination of 4 letters (surah 7 with Alif Lam Meem Sad and
surah 13 with Alif Lam Meem Ra. Lastly, the 19th surah begins with the 5
letters Kaf Ha Ya Ayn Sad. Only in the 42nd surah does the second verse have
the cryptic letters Ayn Seen Meem. The 29 other instances of cryptic letters are
in the first verse of the respective surahs and of these 19 have just the cryptic
letters and the other 10 first verses have sentences after the cryptic letters. From
the 10 first verses that have sentences after the cryptic letters, in all but the 68th
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surah, the sentences are statements about the Quran itself. The sentence in the
first verse of the 68th surah is about the pen.
Up until discovering the phenomenon of paired aspects I was unconcerned as
to whether the Quran is strategically coded or not, but afterwards it became
clear to me that the Quran is strategically written. There are numerous
repetitions in the Quran that are simply not needed but I surmise that these
repetitive verses have been revealed to give the Quran a mathematical balance
for the benefit of its readers. Stories of past peoples are told in pairs and even
prophets are described and grouped into pairs. Following the concept of
connected paired aspects, which I developed in chapter 3, it appears to my eye
that portions of the Quran are mathematically coded to act as a connected pair to
other portions. If duality is a fundamental law of the universe then the Quran, as
a whole, may be its own pair. Why? For strategic benefit to its believers. So that
no other book can be written in the world to compliment or counter balance the
Quran. However, not every verse or word in the Quran is paired off with other
verses of the Quran. The word ‘samad’ in the 2nd verse of the 112th surah is an
example of a word that occurs only once in the entire Quran. However this does
not necessarily mean that the Quran is dualistically vulnerable. It may be that
the cryptic verses fill in as balancers.
The finding of paired aspects in the Quran is set apart from past research
endeavors into the Quran, which have solely attempted to show a numeric
coding that exists only in the text. At the very least these numeric codifications
show a degree of mathematical structuring. However what is lacking in these
endeavors is a correlation of the numeric codification beyond the Quran.
Without such a correlation the numeric codification is little more than an
internal check sum. Paired aspects found in the Quran is set apart from these
other numeric research endeavors because the Quran, which is a created
recitation and text, is acting as a mirror reflecting the light from nature and the
physical world, onto the eye of the reader. My endeavor here in this chapter of
the book is to show a correlation between the natural world phenomenon of
paired aspects, which was presented in part 1 of this book and the Quran
phenomenon of paired aspects, which is now presented hereunder in the
following seven examples.
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55:46 But for he who has feared the position of his Lord are two gardens -
55:48 Having [spreading] branches.
55:50 In both of them are two springs, flowing.
55:52 In both of them are of every fruit, two kinds.
55:54 [They are] reclining on beds whose linings are of silk brocade, and the
fruit of the two gardens is hanging low.
55:56 In them are women limiting [their] glances, untouched before them by
man or jinni -
55:58 As if they were rubies and coral.
55:60 Is the reward for good [anything] but good?
55:62 And below them both [in excellence] are two [other] gardens -
55:64 Dark green [in color].
55:66 In both of them are two springs, spouting.
55:68 In both of them are fruit and palm trees and pomegranates.
55:70 In them are good and beautiful women -
55:72 Fair ones reserved in pavilions -
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19:2 [This is] a mention of the mercy of your Lord to His servant Zechariah.
19:3 When he called to his Lord a private call [i.e., supplications].
19:4 He said, "My Lord, indeed my bones have weakened, and my head has
filled with white, and never have I been in my supplication to You, my Lord,
unhappy [i.e., disappointed].
19:5 And indeed, I fear the successors after me, and my wife has been barren,
so give me from Yourself an heir
19:6 Who will inherit me and inherit from the family of Jacob. And make him,
my Lord, pleasing [to You]."
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19:7 [He was told], "O Zechariah, indeed We give you good tidings of a boy
whose name will be John. We have not assigned to any before [this] name."
19:8 He said, "My Lord, how will I have a boy when my wife has been barren
and I have reached extreme old age?"
19:9 [An angel] said. “Thus [it will be]; your Lord says, 'It is easy for Me, for I
created you before, while you were nothing.’"
19:10 [Zechariah] said, "My Lord, make for me a sign." He said, "Your sign is
that you will not speak to the people for three nights, [being] sound."
19:11 So he came out to his people from the prayer chamber and signaled to
them to exalt [Allah] in the morning and afternoon.
In these ten verses we learn the following: Zechariah had reached an advanced
age where he had become physically frail and his wife’s womb was barren.
With a saddened heart he pleaded to God for an heir. In answering his prayer
God gave him the good news of a boy. Astonished, Zechariah asked God how
he and his wife could have a child in their present physical condition. God
responded with the words ‘It is easy for me’, but this was not enough and so
Zechariah asked for a sign from God and the sign of God was Zechariah’s
silence for 3 nights. These events constitute the first part of a set of connected
events. The second set of events which are connected to the story of Zechariah
and his wife is revealed in verses 16 to 26 of the same surah:
19:16 And mention, [O Muhammad], in the Book [the story of] Mary, when
she withdrew from her family to a place toward the east.
19:17 And she took, in seclusion from them, a screen. Then We sent to her Our
Angel [i.e., Gabriel], and he represented himself to her as a well-proportioned
man.
19:18 She said, "Indeed, I seek refuge in the Most Merciful from you, [so leave
me], if you should be fearing of Allah."
19:19 He said, "I am only the messenger of your Lord to give you [news of] a
pure boy [i.e., son]."
19:20 She said, "How can I have a boy while no man has touched me and I
have not been unchaste?"
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19:21 He said, "Thus [it will be]; your Lord says, ‘It is easy for Me, and We
will make him a sign to the people and a mercy from Us. And it is a matter
[already] decreed.’”
19:22 So she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a remote place.
19:23 And the pains of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm tree. She
said. "Oh, I wish I had died before this and was in oblivion, forgotten."
19:24 But he called her from below her, "Do not grieve; your Lord has
provided beneath you a stream.
19:25 And shake toward you the trunk of the palm tree; it will drop upon you
ripe, fresh dates.
19:26 So eat and drink and be contented. And if you see from among humanity
anyone, say, 'Indeed, I have vowed to the Most Merciful abstention, so I will
not speak today to [any] men.’”
In these eleven verses we learn the following: The Virgin Mary withdrew
herself from her family. While in seclusion the archangel Gabriel appeared in
front of her and gave her the good news of a son. Astonished, Mary asked how
she could have a son when no man had touched her. Gabriel responded with
God’s words ‘It is easy for me’. Thereafter Mary conceived Jesus and after
some time she travelled to a remote place away from settlements. The pains of
childbirth drove her to the shade of a date palm tree. At this place she gave birth
to Jesus. A hidden voice called out to her to eat the dates and instructed her not
to speak to any man. After giving birth to Jesus she returned back to her family
and her people carrying baby Jesus in her arms.
There are 4 noteworthy paired aspects from the stories of Zechariah and
Mary. The first pair compares verses 7 and 19. In this pair both Zechariah and
Mary are given the news of a boy to be born. The second pair compares verses 8
and 20. In this pair both Zechariah and Mary are in impossible situations in
respect of producing offspring. Each in turn questions: ‘…How will [or can] I
have a boy…?. The similarity of the question by each of them forms a
connected pair. The third paired aspect compares verses 9 and 21. In response to
their respective questioning (see verses 8 and 20) both Zechariah and Mary are
given the same answer …Your Lord says ‘It is easy for me…’ in verses 9 and 21
respectively, making it a third connected pair. The fourth paired aspect
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compares verses 10 and 26. After being given the good news of a boy to be born
(see verses 7 and 19 above) both Zechariah and Mary are placed in silence.
With Zachariah sound and speech was taken from him and with Mary she was
ordered not to talk to anyone. The resultant silence from both parents also forms
a connected pair.
The next set of paired aspects concern the two prophets that were born of
Zechariah’s wife and the Virgin Mary – John, the Baptist, the son of Zechariah
and Jesus, the son of Mary. Verses 12 to 15 reveal the first half of a set of paired
events concerning the prophets John the Baptist and Jesus.
19:12 [Allah said], "O John, take the Scripture [i.e., adhere to it] with
determination." And We gave him judgment [while yet) a boy
19:13 And affection from Us and purity, and he was fearing of Allah
19:14 And dutiful to his parents, and he was not a disobedient tyrant.
19:15 And peace be upon him the day he was born and the day he dies and the
day he is raised alive.
In these four verses we learn the following: John the Baptist was instructed to
follow the Scripture. Even while still a young boy we told that he was given
special guidance and sound judgment from God. He is then described as being a
dutiful son who was not a tyrant. Lastly God confers peace upon him on the day
he was born, the day he died and on the day of resurrection. The second half of
the set events that form a connected pair with the events in the life of John the
Baptist is revealed in verses 27 to 33.
19:27 Then she brought him to her people, carrying him. They said, "O Mary,
you have certainly done a thing unprecedented.
19:28 O sister [i.e., descendant] of Aaron, your father was not a man of evil,
nor was your mother unchaste."
19:29 So she pointed to him. They said, "How can we speak to one who is in
the cradle a child?"
19:30 [Jesus] said, "Indeed, I am the servant of Allah. He has given me the
Scripture and made me a prophet.
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19:31 And He has made me blessed wherever I am and has enjoined upon me
prayer and zakah as long as I remain alive
19:32 And [made me] dutiful to my mother, and He has not made me a
wretched tyrant.
19:33 And peace is on me the day I was born and the day I will die and the day
I am raised alive."
In these seven verses we learn the following: When Mary returned to her people
carrying her infant son Jesus she was questioned by onlookers on the grounds of
morality. But having taken a vow of silence (see verse 26 above) all she could
do was point to her infant son Jesus. Miraculously Jesus spoke to the people as
an infant and told the town’s people that God had made him a prophet and had
given him the scripture and commanded him to prayer and to pay zakah.e Jesus
also told the gathering that God had created him to be dutiful to his mother, not
to be a tyrant and that God conferred peace upon him on the day he was born,
the day he will die and on the day of resurrection.
The following are the paired aspects that exist in the stories of John the
Baptist and Jesus the son of Mary: John the Baptist and Jesus are instructed in
the Scripture (see verses 12 and 30): In verse 12 we learn that John the Baptist
was given judgment while still a boy and in verse 30 Jesus spoke to the people
as an infant saying ”He (God) has given me the scripture”. Between these two
verses the paired aspect is that both are given special guidance at a young age.
In verses 14 and 32 respectively both John the Baptist and Jesus are described
as dutiful to their respective parents and neither were tyrants. In verses 15 and
33 respectively God conferred peace upon John the Baptist and Jesus on the day
they were born, the day of their respective deaths and on the day of resurrection.
The combined birth stories of the paired prophets John the Baptist and Jesus
and their respective parents, Zechariah and Mary,spans 32 verses from verse 2
and ending in verse 33 of the 19th surah. This in itself forms a pair with the
dualistic descriptions of paradise that I explained in the first example above.
Those dualistic descriptions also spanned 32 verses, starting in verse 46 and
ending in verse 77 of the 55th surah. The example in surah 19 begins in the
Footnote e: Zakah is an annual wealth tax which must be paid to the poor and needy. Zakah is
also one of the five pillars of Islam and the rate of zakah paid by Muslims is 1/40th.
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second verse and the example in surah 55 ends on the second last verse of the
surah. This too is a paired aspect that hinges on a beginning and an end that
revolves on being second and second last respectively and second in itself is
derived from the number 2, which alludes to dualism.
The example of the 55th surah is of a perfected world that will be occupied
after judgment day and the example of the 19th surah is of this world, an
imperfect world where good and evil both co-exist. This disparity of the two
worlds resonates in the types of pairing presented between the surahs. The
pairings from the 55th surah are drawn from physical and biological set pieces
arranged symmetrically in a variety of sets and the pairings of the 19th surah are
drawn from grouped events that show fragmented pieces of different
symmetries jumbled up together.
An interesting question to ask is why was Prophet Zechariah's sign his silence
for 3 nights? Why not send a duck on the roof of his house quacking away for 3
consecutive sunrises as the sign? Why specifically silence? Silence means not
articulating sounds. Spoken words are sounds and the vocalisation of the words
is created in the body's voice box or larynx, which is the Adam apple on the
throat. The words then pass through our mouths, which itself is a cavity
enclosed by pouty fleshy labia – our lips. The mouth is our food organ, in which
our calcified teeth crush bites of food by chewing. Moisture is added with the
secretion of saliva. The mouth is also a place of experiencing pleasure because
the best part of eating, the tasting of food, is experienced by the sensitive organ
called the tongue.
To silence Zechariah is to make his larynx barren, but he could still open his
mouth to take pleasure. In other words he could eat food or even kiss his wife
on her lips. She evidently did not have her larynx made barren by God.
However the Quran does inform us that her womb was barren prior to the good
news. What is the womb? It’s a creative organ. Where is the womb? It’s at the
back of the vagina and the vagina like the salivary moist mouth is enclosed by a
set of fleshy folds called the labia. When we eat the labia (lips) part so that the
food can enter the mouth cavity. Our mouths secrete more saliva and the
pleasure of food is experienced on the sensitive organ called the tongue. When a
wife has sex the insertion of the husband’s penis parts the labia of the vagina.
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The vagina then secretes fluid and the pleasure of sex is experienced by the
sensitive organ called the clitoris. Notice the creative pairing: both the larynx
and the womb are creative organs situated at the back of two complimentary
pleasure experiencing parts of the body, viz. the mouth with its tongue and the
vagina with its clitoris, though the clitoris is not actually in the vagina proper
but ‘at the front of the labia at the opening of the vagina’.6
Delighted as Zechariah was with the news of an heir he came out to his
astonished wife, perhaps he hugged and kissed her – I wasn’t there but I guess
so – more things happened, fluids exchanged and behind the scenes God in all
his wisdom formed a mathematical bridge between Zechariah’s larynx and his
wife’s womb and via this mathematical bridge, for three nights, barrenness
vacationed on Zechariah’s larynx while fruitful fecundity checked in at his
wife’s womb for a tete-a-tete in which she conceived.
Barrenness is an attribute of an organ and not the organ itself. The attributes
are swapped and the organs remain in their natural place. It would be ridiculous
to swap organs because they made for different purposes and have different
structures and different types of tissue. If you are confused imagine it like a
small apartment which has a bedroom and bathroom but only one light bulb. If
you want to go to the bathroom you take the light bulb with you otherwise its
dark in there but between the two rooms there is always one room lit up and one
room dark. The same analogy applies with Zechariah and his wife. Between
husband and wife one would always have barrenness (the dark room) while the
other retained fruitfulness (lighted), but which had which at any given time
depended on the will of God and God swapped attributes between the barren
womb and the healthy larynx of Zechariah which made him silent and no words
came from his larynx while his wife’s womb was normalized to conceive in the
intercourse that she and her husband had, presumably on those very nights when
he was silent. The sign of God, which was silence for 3 nights, was not just a
static element before the miracle, but it was an active means through which the
miracle conception occurred. It may sound outlandish but in principle it’s not. I
don’t have mathematical backing or proof for the swapping of barrenness with
fecundity. I can only hypothesize that God in the completeness of his
knowledge effortlessly accomplished such an operation to make Zechariah’s
wife conceive.
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The method of swapping is repeated in verses 102 to 107 from the 37th surah
which narrates how Prophet Abraham laid his son down and was about to
slaughter him but God swapped a ram in the place of his son. Blood was
decreed to be spilled that day but via swapping his son’s blood was saved for
the blood of a ram. Swapping also occurs in the story of Mary and her little
lamb (baby Jesus) that I presented above. The verses I quoted tell us that Mary
was ordered to keep a fast of silence upon her return to the town. The people
were shocked to see an upright girl reenter society with what seemed to them as
illegitimate. They wanted her to speak out and explain the matter but all she did
was point out to the innocent baby in her arms. Finally her silence broke when
the word from her explained the matter but the word from Mary was not created
in her larynx. This was a special word made into flesh in Mary’s womb and
passed from the womb through her vagina and her labia to the outside world.
The most merciful and brilliant God decreed that a word from Mary would
explain her situation but via swapping she shut her mouth to let her
immaculately born son Jesus speak on her behalf – words that passed through
the cute tiny lips of baby Jesus who himself passed through the labia of his
mother, who was created in the womb – or in Latin, the matrix – and was
conceived from the word of God ‘Be’ or Kun in Arabic. Lips within lips – word
within word – one creation gives birth to another.
opening phrase ‘and he used to enjoin on his people prayer and zakah’ forms a
paired aspect with the nearly similar phrase in Jesus’ dialog in verse 31 above.
In this first set both verses begin with the phrase ‘that is from the news of the
unseen’ Both verses contain the reminder ‘and you were not with them’. Both
verses involve a cohort of men in discussion and/or dispute over a pious servant
of God, namely Mary the mother of Jesus and Joseph the son of Jacob
respectively.
In this second set the first verse does not mention a place by name but the
second verse refers to an object called Tur where God spoke to Moses. The first
verse mentions the name of Moses but in the second the name of Moses is not
mentioned but in the above translation the translators have interpreted it to be
Moses, hence his name in brackets. Muhammad is addressed in the opening
phrase of each verse. The English translations are not exact, although in Arabic
they are – ‘And you were not at the side’.
The pairing is obscure in these two verses. The first ‘you were not’ instance is
about physical presence and the second is about a lack of anticipation. However,
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they both reference holy scripture. In 28:45 the phrase ‘reciting to them our
verses’ refers to the Quran and in 28:86 the lack of anticipation is for the Quran.
The paired aspects are that both verses are focused on the birth of Jesus, the son
of Mary and are placed in the context that’s serves to clarify his status, that he is
man and not divine. Both verses end with kun-fa-ya-kun (Be, and it is).
In this second set the paired aspects are that both verses extol God’s
effortlessness to create anything he desires. Again, as in the first set both end
with kun-fa-ya-kun (Be, and it is).
2:117 Originator of the heavens and the earth. When He decrees a matter, He
only says to it, "Be," and it is.
and
6:73 And it is He who created the heavens and earth in truth. And the day He
says, "Be," and it is, His word is the truth. And His is the dominion [on] the
Day the Horn is blown. [He is] Knower of the unseen and the witnessed; and
He is the Wise, the Acquainted.
In this third pair the verses begin with a statement that the heavens and the earth
are originated and created by God respectively followed by the creative
command kun-fa-ya-kun.
4:120 He [i.e. Satan ] promises them and arouses desire in them. But Satan
does not promise them except delusion.
The phrase ‘But Satan does not promise them except delusion’ is mirrored at the
end of verse 64 of the 17th surah forming a connected paired aspect:
17:64 And incite [to senselessness] whoever you can among them with your
voice and assault them with your horses and foot soldiers and become a partner
in their wealth and their children and promise them." But Satan does not
promise them except delusion.
76:30 And you do not will except that Allah wills. Indeed, Allah is ever
Knowing and Wise.
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and
81:29 And you do not will except that Allah wills - Lord of the worlds.
***
Like prophet Abraham before him prophet Muhammad was a comprehensive
leader and he lead by example. He captured the imagination of his people and
filled their hearts with courage and determination. When he died his followers
rushed out into the world with a zest for learning, innovation and science. They
built beautiful cities and universities and wrote many books on science,
medicine and philosophy. Muslims have an excellent tradition of learning and
science which we passed on from one generation to the next.
Islam and its Quran are compatible with science and science is driven by
critical thinking and from asking difficult questions about natures many
unknowns. When we read the Quran and learn about the life and sayings of
Muhammad we must look at them with an eye of science and to not be afraid to
be critical and ask meaningful questions, not to insult and denigrate but to arrive
at the fundamental truth and gain new insight and wisdom. As an exercise in
critical thinking I want to open up two critical discussions: one on the prophet
and one on the Quran. On the night of the Miraj7 Muhammad rode on a winged
horse called the Buraq from Mecca to Jerusalem and thereafter ascended with
Gabriel into the heavens. At Jerusalem he was presented with three cups: wine,
milk and honey. He shunned the wine in favor of milk. Muslims take pride of
place in praising Muhammad for being the eminent guest of Heaven and for
advancing above the seventh heaven but we often overlook what the angel said
to Muhammad at Jerusalem after he drank the milk and shunned the wine. He
was told that if he had chosen the wine his people would have gone astray.8 By
implication Muhammad passed a test and if he could be tested when he was the
honored guest of God in the care of the archangel Gabriel they why not be
tested in other earthly pursuits such as wealth and women? The Hadith scholar
Muslim reports that on another occasion in Medina Muhammad prayed in the
mosque of Banu Mu’awiya and after the prayer he supplicated to God that his
people should not be destroyed by famine, flooding and civil strife.9 The first
two supplications were granted but the third was denied. That Muhammad was
not granted protection for his people from civil strife does not automatically
mean that future generations of Muslims will always spill their own blood but I
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heritage. I for one read into the structure of the Quran, which I believe to be
purposeful to give the Muslims greater resources to support the Umma, the
global Muslim community. The paired aspects of the Quran lend credibility to
the belief that the Quran was not conceived from the mind of Muhammad nor
was the ordering of its verses solely at his hands. Whoever the author is, the
mathematical structuring of verses and the inclusion of dualism in the ordering
of verses stands out for scientific scrutiny.
In the 28th verse of the 72nd surah of the Quran God states that he has
enumerated everything and that means that science can explain everything in
religion and the physical world. In this verse God is inviting the believer to
investigate nature and discover how it functions. Verse 2:164 is a verse to direct
our energies toward the natural world using reason and logic and to be critical
of what we observe. Muhammad uttered verse 2:164 but in the 7th century its
scientific import was not explored as vigorously as the taking up of arms,
prayers and taxes. When we overlooked this verse we overlooked a vital lesson
in critical thinking that would have directed us to scrutinize the structure of the
Quran more closely over and beyond the liturgical reading of the Quran that is
commonplace.
The paired verses in the 19th surah that I discussed in this chapter and two
more direct references to duality in the 36th and 51st surahs respectively, which I
will introduce in chapter 7, were already sent down in Mecca12 long before
prophet Muhammad’s migration to Medina. He stayed in Medina for almost a
decade and during this period was shown more duality and symmetry in the 32
verses from the 55th surah13 f describing the symmetrical beauty of paradise but I
have not found in the historical record lessons in duality or symmetry given by
prophet Muhammad to his companions. The 32 verses in the 55th surah, from
verse 46 to 77, which I discussed above, was a lesson from God but sadly I
haven’t come across any Muslim scholar coming forward before this book to
say these verses are a lesson to understand dualism, symmetry and paired
aspects found elsewhere in the Quran and in the physical world. Muslims need
to ponder long and hard about this oversight. God had given the means to
scientifically elevate and protect our religion and way of life and he had made it
Footnote f: There are conflicting interpretations of when the 55th surah was revealed. The
German Semitic scholar Theodor Noldeke considers it to be an early Meccan surah.14
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Chapter 7
Worldview
La ikraha fi-deen.
(No compulsion in religion. [Quran, 2:256])
The Islamic faith is a comprehensive and universal faith that gives its own
descriptions of God and his attributes, the nature of the universe and its
differentiation from God and descriptions about God’s creations and the kind of
things both physical and non-physical that form part of creation. Emerging from
these descriptions is a comprehensive view of existence that, for Muslims,
defines their faith, and which gives the Muslims their religious identity.
Knowledge about our existence is enlightening for Muslims because it removes
the illusion that religion and science are separate or incompatible thereby
allowing us to harmonize with the material world.
In chapter 3 I hypothesized about paired aspects but where in the grand
scheme of things does it fit in? Is there a bigger picture to see when we step
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back away from the canvas of our lives? In this chapter I will discuss the
cosmogonical background to the phenomenon of paired aspects because they
are relevant to the broader discussion on the symmetries of intelligent design.
This discussion is a worldview made up of interpretations of verses from the
Quran and of Muhammad’s sayings and my own hypotheses. There are 11
topics that I will discuss hereunder.
1. God is Ever-Living
2. The Universe is not God
3. One and Only God
4. Belief in God from Nature
5. Slave of Causality
6. Physical and Non-Physical creations
7. Hidden Metrics
8. Judgment Day and Beyond
9. Origins and Evolution
10. Nothing for Man but Striving
11. The Devil
1. God is Ever-Living:
The 123rd verse of the 16th surah of the Quran informs us that prophet
Muhammad was commanded to follow the religion of Prophet Abraham, the
patriarchal father of both the Arab and the Jewish peoples. Thus, if prophet
Muhammad is commanded to follow prophet Abraham then the followers of
prophet Muhammad must also follow prophet Abraham. The 67th verse of the
3rd surah of the Quran also tells us that Abraham was neither a Jew nor Christian
nor polytheist, but a Muslim. Abraham’s discovery of God from studying the
natural world is beautifully told in verses 74 to 79 of the 6th surah of the Quran.
One night he began a search for his Lord from the natural surroundings. He
wasn’t meditating or searching within himself with his inner eye, which meant
that he did not look upon himself as his own lord. He searched with his physical
eye and the glitter of a rising star caught his gaze. “This is my Lord”, he said,
but soon afterwards he rejected the star after it fell back to earth (it set over the
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horizon). Then he fixed his gaze on the moon, a heavenly sphere more radiant
that a sparkling star. It lights up the night and dispels darkness like a torch.
“This is my Lord”, he said, but the moon failed him when it too fell back to the
earth (the moon set over the horizon). Then in the last stage of the night he
looked up again and an amazing light appeared to him over the eastern horizon
and soon it lit up the entire sky and was more brilliant than the moon. As it rose
up higher its light intensified until its radiance outshined the moon and all the
stars. “This is my Lord; this is greater”, he said. There is no physical light that
shines upon the Earth equal or comparable to the sun. Then after noon the sun
receded and began falling over the western sky. It too was failing just as the
stars and the moon failed him the night before. He knew that he wouldn’t find
any greater torch than the sun because the sun was the greatest of them all but
his search was not in vain because it ended with a profound new realization.
Reason and logic prevailed over his outer senses. Abraham reasoned and he
understood that everything that has a beginning, like the rising star, the rising
moon and the rising sun has an end. The light of the stars, the moon and sun all
have a beginning in their rise and end in their setting. He realized that, that
which has both a beginning and end cannot create itself and with this realization
came the deeper realization that the beginning, preservation and the end of the
world is subjected to the will of one who has no beginning and has no end – an
unborn, undying and ever present and ever living independent lord and God.
When Abraham turned his gaze back to the earth he may have seen a tree. Its
beginning is in the germinating seed that grew roots into the ground and a stem
above the ground. Then the branches and leaves grew. Then the flowers and
fruits of the tree blossomed. When the wind blew it carried off the fruits and
seed of the blossoming tree and in a far of land the seeds of the tree germinated
and grew into new trees. Then after many years the tree withered and died. Is
this cycle of beginning, growth and ending for all trees or is there a special tree
that lives forever he might have asked? Would that be his lord? Would that be
greater than the falling star, the falling moon and the falling sun. But why
should there be special tree? If there was a special tree it would cover the whole
earth and consume all the soils and all the waters exclusively, while all the other
plants and trees wither and die off. Then how would the other creatures of the
earth bear such an undying tree? ‘No! It cannot be’, he might have realized. In
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beginnings and endings and in birth and death is sharing of earth’s resources
and rejuvenation. He might have looked up into the skies at the countenance of
the sun and spoken these words to the sun: "O radiance of the world. If you
shined unceasingly, what would be the fate of the earth?" The sun would reply,
"If that be I will dry up the rivers and lakes. I will parch the earth of moisture
and the greenness of the earth will turn to yellow. Then the animals will die off
with no food and water to consume." Thus, it is fitting that the sun falls to earth
and that night succeeds it so that the trees breathe and the animals rest and the
waters flow through the earth.
There is no lord in the heavens or the earth and all in between because from
heaven to earth everything follows the pattern of beginnings and endings for
resourcefulness, for sharing and dependency, and for rejuvenation. The true lord
is he that is above all the cycles of beginning and endings. The true lord is
supremely above the heavens and the earth and he is the unborn and undying
and therefore the independent. The true lord is ever present, ever living and
owner and sovereign of the heavens and the earth and all between. In the true
religion of Abraham there no divine that is born on the earth or that dies and is
afterwards resurrected.
The belief in an unborn, undying ever living God is not a blind leap of faith
rather it comes from a careful examination of the universe – the natural world
around us – and the application of reason and logic. This is the religion of
Abraham – a plain religion, which is accessible to all. It is the religion of reason
and truth and of all created things.
If all these assumptions were true then there would be no night. The skies above
us, even after the setting of the sun would still be as bright as day because light
from all the other stars in the universe would have reached the surface of the
earth and to every other 3 dimensional point in outer space. There would be no
darkness and outer space would be as white as field covered in snow. But
obviously one or all of the assumptions must be false for the simple reason that
the night sky is dark. A dark sky means that there has not been enough time for
the light from all the stars to reach every 3 dimensional point in outer space.
Thus the universe could not have existed forever. If the universe did not exist
forever it must have had a beginning and if it had a beginning then the universe
is not static and was not always uniform. Beginning implies a preceding state of
non-existence and non-existence is death. Thus, the universe is not the God of
Abraham because it is not ever present and therefore could not possibly be ever
living. That's all it takes to know that the universe is not God and that it had a
beginning – a little bit of knowledge about the composition of stars and the
application of reason and logic. No expensive scientific instruments are needed.
In the first verse of surah Ikhlas God is saying that he is an existential one. God
is singular. Logically, one does not have any partners. Before one is zero. Zero
is nothing. Therefore God who is one is first.
The oneness of God can also be logically derived from two important Quran
verses that reveal the fundamental nature of creation. These two verses give a
mathematical foundation to all of creation. The first verse is the 49th verse of the
51st surah of the Quran, which states: ‘And of All things we have created two
mates [i.e. counterparts]; perhaps you will remember.’ The second verse, the
36th versea of the 36th surah of the Quran, echoes the same dualistic foundation
of creation: ‘Exalted is He [Allah] who created all pairs – from what the Earth
grows and from themselves and from that which they do not know.’ These 2
verses from the Quran are like a mirror reflection of nature. Like nature, from
the cases I presented in chapter 3, they are telling you that everything is
designed and created in pairs. There are pairs in all aspects of nature, from what
we can see and comprehend and from those domains that are beyond our senses.
Pairs can be found in plant and animal life forms; in the forces of nature; in the
worlds beyond our sun, in the far reaches of the universe; and in the
microscopic realms of atoms and even smaller subatomic particles.
Everything in creation is in twos and everything created has a creator.
Logically, the creator exists or precedes creation. Now I will ask you a very
easy question. What comes before two? The answer is one. That is to say, in
mathematics, 1 precedes 2. Thus, it is logical that God, the creator, who comes
before creation, which is in twos, must be one.
The second verse is a difficult verse to interpret because it has just one word
after God’s name that is never repeated anywhere else in the Quran. This
singular word is samad. Scholars differ on how to interpret and translate samad
Footnote a: Notice that even the numbering of these 2 verses shows duality. 49 is the
multiplication of a pair of 7s and 36 is the multiplication of a pair of 6s.
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world as we know it is the effect of past causes – the big bang, the formation
sub atomic particles and atoms and the bonding of matter to form molecules,
gases, liquids, solids, stars, galaxies, planets, and people. Everything in the
universe has a beginning. Beginning implies that non existence preceded the
present state of being. Thus not being born means to not being non existent.
Therefore God is ever present and was ever living.
Examined as a whole, the concise meaning of this 3rd verse can be summed
up as follows: To beget or be begotten is the trait of a life or a creature that
belongs to species. In this verse God is declaring that there is no God species,
only God himself. This is a deduction that follows naturally from the first two
verses in which he says that he is one and first (1st verse) and that he is the self
sufficient and independent on whom all others depend (2nd verse).
In the fourth and last verse of surah Ikhlas God is saying that He has no
likeness anywhere in creation. This verse must be read with the first verse of
this surah: ‘Say he is Allah (who is) one’. One is singular and one is not
associative. Two is the smallest number that connotes association. The other
two verses from the Quran – 51:49 and 36:36 – informed us that everything
created are dualities. Dualities are born of the number 2. This fourth verse,
when read with the first verse means that God who is one does not have a
dualistic counterpart. By deduction we say that God is unique and distinct.
***
Examined as a whole, surah Ikhlas is philosophically elegant in structure and
content. Four attributes of God, numbered according to the verses, can be
summed up as follows:
1. First
2. Independent
3. Non-speciate
4. Unique
With these attributes in mind the 4 verses of the surah can be sub-divided to
make up two pairs. The first pair is the 1st and 2nd verses and the second pair is
the 3rd and 4th verses. In each pair the leading verse is a declaration and the
following verse is a derivative. In the 1st pair the declaration is first and the
derivative of being first is independence. In the 2nd pair the declaration is non-
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speciate and the derivative of being non-speciate is uniqueness. From the 1st pair
first and independent can be categorized as non-physical attributes. From the 2nd
pair non-speciate and unique can be categorized as physical attributes. Between
non-physical and physical we can deduce the following: In the 1st pair God is
the highest principle of all conceptualizations. God is prime. In the 2nd pair
God's might is unparalleled. God is supreme.
***
From verses 51:49 and 36:36 we know that everything is created in pairs. Put
another way, it means that everything in creation has its co-partner. Two is also
the smallest number that denotes association and equivalence. God is one. One
is not associative. In numeric format we would write 1 ≠ 2 and this numeric
codification shows that God (1) cannot be associated or equaled with Creation
(2). There is no unity between God and the world, between creator and his
creation.
True faith in God repudiates both monism and pantheism. Our knowledge of
God is defined in the language of mathematics. That is to say, knowledge of
God is deductable. Experiential knowledge of God is a fallacy. Verses 48 and
116 of the 4th surah in the Quran inform us that associating creation to God is an
unforgiveable sin. When something is unforgiveable it means you stay in hell
forever. The repeated warning in these 2 verses is interpreted to mean that if
you die associating anyone or anything to God then you won’t be forgiven but if
you repent and change before you die and move away from associating to God
then you will be forgiven. When a person prays he is warned not to imagine
God in his mind or to mentally picture God for that would be association and
would render his prayer worthless and he would be counted as a disbeliever. To
make a mental picture of God is the idol of the mind. Imagination is part of
creation. Don’t imagine God in any form and don’t make any picture or idol of
what you might think is God’s form for that is association. That is disbelief.
We are implored to know our creator and to separate in our minds the creator
from His creation. God wants us to know and to believe that He is not an
associative deity. No one shares sovereignty with God. No person, neither the
prophets nor the saints, are divine. God has no partners.
The credo of a Muslim is the declaration “La ilaha Ill Allah. Muhammad-ur-
Rasul-Allah” (No God except Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah).
This is the statement one has to utter when adopting the Islamic faith. The first
part of this statement is a testification to the oneness of God and it is derived
from the middle section of verse 163 of the 2nd surah of the Quran: ‘And your
god is one God. There is no deity [worthy of worship] except Him, the Entirely
Merciful, the Especially Merciful.’
Muslims received this testification from the lips of prophet Muhammad and
prophet Muhammad received it from the Quran, as recited to him by the angel
Gabriel. Prophet Muhammad is a part of nature but if we separate Muhammad
from the rest of nature then we can say that those Muslims who believe in God
from Muhammad’s teachings and recitations from the Quran are indirect
believers. Since the time of Sahabah (the companions of prophet Muhammad)
the majority of Muslims are believers in God through the agency of prophet
Muhammad. Thus, without Muhammad and Quran the people would have no
testification and not be believers. It is correct when the European colonialists
called our forefathers Mahomedans because that is how most of them became
Muslims – through the agency of Muhammad. This indirect belief in embodied
in verse 2:163, as quoted above, but in the very next verse, 2:164, which I
quoted in chapter 6, God says that his creation at large, which is the rest of
nature all around us and has been with us from before the Quran was revealed,
is also a sign for those who use reason. If there is a sign in nature then what is
its purpose? I put forward that the sign in nature, as stated in 2:164, is that we
can believe in God’s oneness directly from nature. That is to say, we can derive
the same testification: No God except Allah without the Quran and without
prophet Muhammad. Supporting verse 2:164 is the 30th verse of the 30th surah
of the Quran which states:
30:30 So direct your face toward the religion, inclining to truth. [Adhere to] the
fitrah of Allah upon which He has created [all] people. No change should there
be in the creation of Allah. That is the correct religion, but most of the people
do not know.
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The first sentence of this verse translation ends with the words ‘toward the
religion, inclining to truth’. Omitted from this English translation is the Arabic
word hanif. Hanif is a religious concept that existed in pre-Muhammad Arabia
to refer to the monotheistic religion of Prophet Abraham. Bukhari reports of a
contemporary of prophet Muhammad, Zaid bin 'Amr bin Nufail, who enquired
about different religions on one of his travels. He reports that after making
enquiries separately from a Jewish and Christian scholar respectively about their
respective religions each in turn explained that Hanif is the religion of Prophet
Abraham who was neither a Jew nor a Christian5. Thus, in this first part of this
verse the Quran is imploring its reader to follow in the path of Prophet
Abraham, as was discussed above in the first sub-heading titled God is Ever-
Living, which referenced verses 74 to 79 of the 6th surah of the Quran. That is to
say, to discover, as Abraham did, that nature directs toward the true belief of
God. After the word hanif in the first sentence the second sentence of this verse
introduces the word fitrah. Bukhari and Muslim reported that prophet
Muhammad explained that every child is born with fitrah but that it is the
parents who make a child a Christian, a Jew or polytheist.6 What the prophet
meant here is that fitrah embodies a natural and innate inclination to truly
believe in the one and only God. Thus, every human being is born in submissive
harmony with God. Hanif and fitrah are natural to every person. Though
prophet Muhammad is traditionally accepted as the prophet of Islam, here in
this verse we are told that the true and correct religion of hanif and fitrah
predates prophet Muhammad. Hanif and fitrah are not different from Islam. In
fact verse 67 of the 3rd surah of the Quran explicitly states that Abraham was
‘Hanifa Muslima’. Islam means submission in Arabic and Muslim simply
means ‘the one who submits’. Thus, Hanifa Muslima and the fitrah are wholly
Islamic. Every child is born Muslim. After this verse the 95th verse of this same
surah (3rd surah) orders prophet Muhammad to publically announce to the
people to follow ‘Ibrahima Hanifa’. That is to mean, to follow the pure
monotheistic hanif Islam of Prophet Abraham that is founded on deducing
belief in one ever living and independent God directly from nature.
Between verses 2:164, 30:30 and verses 67 and 95 of the 3rd surah of the
Quran God is trying to show us that nature and the whole world is a sign of
intelligent design. If we find signs in nature that the world is designed then the
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Paired aspects are found right under our noses – literally. Observing, being
knowledgeable and contemplating paired aspects are signs from God to show us
that this realm we live in is created out of intelligence and not randomness.
Everyone from the vagabond to the prince can witness and experience these
signs of God. Rich or poor it’s up to each individual to apply his or her mind to
understand its metrics and submit accordingly.
I’ll now repeat the same argument I stated in the previous section but it’s
worth the repetition because it arrives at the same two deductions of belief in
God’s oneness and his separation from creation, but from direct observation of
nature and thereby independent from the Quran and prophet Muhammad: The
phenomenon of paired aspects stems from a law of duality. The design system
of the universe rests on the number two and two is also the smallest number that
denotes association and equivalence. The intelligent designer that willfully
governs the universe is independent of his designs. If the design system of the
universe rests on the number two then it follows logically that the intelligent
designer, whom we will call God, must be before the number two to be
independent. Therefore the first deduction of a dualisitic intelligently designed
universe is that its designer, God, is one. One is before and independent of two.
The second deduction is that God and his creation are not joined or associated.
In numeric format we would write 1 ≠ 2 and this numeric codification shows
that God (1) cannot be associated or equaled with Creation (2). God cannot be
associated to his creation. There is no unity between God and the world,
between creator and his creation. True faith in God repudiates both monism and
pantheism. I am saying the same thing that I said in the previous section where I
used the verses in the Quran, but now I am not using the verses of the Quran to
prove my point. Belief in God directly from nature means to believe in God’s
oneness. If one’s personal deity is an association of two or more entities then
this association is not the one God that created nature and therefore the
association surmounts to disbelief.
5. Slave of Causality:
All events and actions taken in the universe are outcomes and effects of prior
events. The world as we know it is the outcome of an unbroken chain of past
events. This process is called causality. The more we know about past events
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the more predictable the outcome of any current or future event becomes. In a
mathematical model, the past events are input values and the current and future
outcomes are output values.
For Muslims God is an all powerful and absolute Lord. God is the ever living
supreme being without any beginning. Thus God has absolute independence and
primacy in making any choice. All of creation depends on the will of God. In
the 49th verse of the 54th surah of the Quran God states that all of creation is
predestined. This verse from the Quran is supported by a hadith from the
collection of Muslim in which prophet Muhammad stated that God had
ordained the measure of all things fifty thousand years before he created the
heavens and the earth.7
Islam advocates complete determinism – where everything that will happen
has been enumerated and determined before it comes into being. While Muslims
believe in complete determinism it must be pointed out that present day
scientists dismiss complete determinism because of a scientific discovery
known as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It was formulated by the
scientist Werner Heisenberg after studying the position and momentum of sub
atomic particles. The more precisely a particle’s position is measured the more
uncertain its momentum becomes and vice versa. So there’s no way to know
both position and velocity simultaneously.8 Scientists dismissal of complete
determinism does not necessarily mean it is not reality. Human reality is limited
to our sense perceptions and human observers, born millions of years after the
formation of elementary matter, are late observers from within. We are not
programmers from without. Only the creator of the universe can have
conceptual knowledge from which to determine all future outcomes. God who
has all the creative resources at his disposable can build a system that is
completely deterministic.
Humans are slaves to causality. Everything a person does has already been
written down by an angel. Prophet Muhammad is reported to have said, that
after the first 120 days of embryonic development in the womb of the mother,
God sends an angel to write down 4 things in respect of the new fetus: Its deeds,
its livelihood, the time of its death and whether it will be blessed or wretched –
that is, whether it will be of the people of paradise or the people of hell.9
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If one’s deeds are written why should a person care what he or she does and
does not do? Everything that is written for him or her will happen anyway. I
mean, what’s the point of caring and taking responsibility for ones actions if it
is already decided before you were born? We should care because a person’s
fate is what he or she makes of their life. We choose the path that is ahead of us
by virtue of our free will. People who refute destiny argue that destiny refutes
free will. In this line of thinking free will rests only on absolute independence. I
say free will is a function of sentience. Free will arises from being self aware
and does not require absolute indepdendence to be valid.
Human awareness is not eternal. It arose from being born. We exist on an
interval that is bordered by birth and death – a beginning and an end. To be
bordered means to be limited. By extension our free will and choices are
limited. We can only make reactive choices. Reactive choices are limited in
their scope because they are dependent on choices that were made before such
as the choice of our parents to make love and have a baby. Verses 76:30 and
81:29 are two instances in the Quran where God states the limitation of human
free will. In both verses God says: ‘And you do not will except as Allah wills'.
Thus, we choose and yet we are slaves to causality – slaves to the higher choice.
Muslims are not fatalists. Muslims do not refute free will. Every choice and
every action becomes the cause of future choices and actions. Thus choice and
causality can coexist on the same continuum in harmony with each other.
Choice is not an illusion but absolute independence and free will are for all,
except God.
as ‘Be, and it is’. In the Quran this is the most that God reveals concerning his
creative powers. Nowhere in the Quran does God reveal a textbook explanation
of the operation of what ‘Be, and it is’ entails.
However, we can deduce some aspects of God’s creative abilities despite the
limited information in the Quran. God’s creative ability is twofold. Firstly God
has the existential ability to create from nothing. God’s creative ability does not
exhaust his strength nor is he in need of an energy source to create from.
Secondly, now that God has this existential ability he has to decide on an
approach to create. An approach to create stems from God’s intellectual ability
to think and conceptualise. These two creative abilities: His existential ability to
create from nothing and his intellect form the primary powers of God.
From the symmetrical descriptions of paradise in the Quran and what is
presented here in this book of paired aspects and dualisms it is clear that God
creates in an orderly and structured approach. Structure and orderliness
themselves emerged from prior states. God is the first being and being first
gives him primacy to emerge his own abstractness which would define
orderliness and structure and from whence would come sustainable creative
states that in turn would be computable into mathematical expressions of
knowing. His knowing actualizes time and whatever he may intend to create
thereon would be known before it is actualized. Thus with a structured approach
to creation we can deduce that God’s creations encompasses both physical and
non physical things. Physical creations include such things as the oxygen we
breathe, the ground beneath our feet, and all the elements of nature that combine
to make complex molecules, objects and life forms that we see, hear and touch.
Non physical creations include such things as our thoughts, emotions and
time. Mercy is a word describing compassion. Mercy is non-physical. It is an
emotion. It is without form or shape and we cannot physically see, hear or touch
it yet it is real to our being. We feel it and we can relate to it. A hadith in the
collection of Bukhari states that a companion by the name of Abu Huraira
reported prophet Muhammad to having said that God created mercy and the day
he created it he divided it into one hundred parts and sent only one percent of
his mercy to all his creatures.11 It is from this one percent that human beings and
the other creatures have mutual love for one another. Another hadith from the
collection of Muslim informs us that the remaining ninety nine percent of God’s
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mercy is withheld until judgment day.12 Every surah of the Quran, with the
exception of the 9th begins with the verse ‘In the name of God the entirely
merciful, the especially merciful’ and this is a constant reminder that God is the
greatest in mercy. In yet another hadith from the collection of Bukhari,
transmitted by Abu Huraira, prophet Muhammad said that when God finished
his creation he wrote on his throne that his mercy has preceded his anger.13 b
Since mercy is created and it precedes anger then it follows that God’s anger is
also created. Mercy and anger are paired opposites. Likewise justice and
injustice are also created and form an intricate part within God’s mathematical
architecture. Justice began when creation began. It had no purpose before
creation. Justice is a system and as a system it serves other systems such as life.
Justice varies in form because it serves life and its associated support systems
which constantly evolve and change with time. Justice in our world is not
always immediate and retributive. Justice is tempered with mercy.
Mathematically mercy emanates from wise and benevolent substitutions that
delay the wrath and anger of God. It is these substitutions and mercies from
God that are telltale signs of an intelligent designer. How much mercy is infused
into systems of justice depends on what life God creates, its complexity of being
and consciousness and its meaning and purpose. Ultimately justice is the design
of God but being designed does not make it any less fair.
7. Hidden Metrics:
In chapter 5 I discussed the Concorde and the Columbia shuttle aviation
disasters; the sinking of American war ships first in 1898 and then in 1941; my
arrest and the second police visitation; and my two dreams of being incarcerated
in hell. All these examples exhibited time intervals of 40 days or its multiple in
the associated events. Islamic texts such as the Quran and the hadith books also
give instances on the fixation to the number 40 but here the range of usage of
the number 40 extends beyond the term unit of 40 days. From the collection of
Bukhari we know that prophet Muhammad taught that embryonic development
Footnote b: There are 3 other hadiths in the collection of Bukhari that corroborate the timing
of the inscription written on the throne to be after the creations and one hadith in Bukhari
(number 643, book 93, volume 9) that states that the inscription was made before the
creations.
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of the fetus in the womb of the mother advances in periods of forty days. In the
first forty days the cellular material is collected; in the second forty days it
becomes a thick clot of blood; and in the third forty days the fetus becomes a
piece of flesh. Thereafter, on the completion of the third forty day period, that
is, after 120 days, the angel is sent to the womb and he writes down 4 things in
respect of the new fetus: Its deeds, its livelihood; the date of its death and
whether it will blessed or wretched – that is, whether it will be of the people of
paradise or the people of hell in the afterlife. Then the soul is breathed into the
developing fetus. 14
The unit of 40 days is also applicable to an individual’s personal striving.
Verses 142 to 150 of the 7th surah of the Quran informs us that after the Jews
were delivered from Pharaoh’s Egypt Moses lead his people to the object called
Tur where he previously spoke to God. They camped at the base of the mount
and Moses ascended it and remained there for 30 days plus an additional ten
days. After 40 days he returned with the commandments inscribed on the
tablets, but by then his people had already taken to the golden calf.
Greater strivings are measured in greater units. Prophet Muhammad received
his first revelation of the Quran in the year 610 CE when he attained the age of
forty under the lunar calendar, and generally, verse 15 of the 46th surah of the
Quran informs us that forty years for individuals is an age of maturity when a
person must thank God for the favors God bestowed upon him/her and his/her
parents; to ask for God’s guidance into righteousness; and to be blessed.
Even for larger groups comprising many tribes or an entire nation 40 years
completes a term of collective striving. Verses 20 to 26 of the 5th surah in the
Quran narrates that after the Jews were delivered from Pharaoh’s Egypt and
after they had received the commandments at the Tur object they were directed
to the holy land of Israel but they refused to enter therein because the land was
occupied by another people whom they regarded to be tyrannical. They said to
Moses that they will only enter until after the other people had vacated the land
and they refused even to fight for the land saying to Moses that he and God
must fight those people for the land while they stood and watched. Moses was
astonished by their arrogance and prayed to God for a judgment, whereupon
God ordered the holy land to be forbidden to them for 40 years during which
time they wandered about in the wilderness. Besides being a term unit the
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number 40 is also applied in Islamic taxes. The wealth tax called Zakah, paid by
Muslims to the poor is one fortieth or 2.5%.
As can be seen from the above religious descriptions involving the number 40
that it applies in days, in years and also in wealth sharing that apportions one
fortieth to zakah. There appears to be a measuring system based on the unit of
forty but this system is largely hidden from us. Humans too have measuring
systems and our measuring systems depend on our numeric systems. Just as we
speak hundreds of languages there are numerous number systems created by
different civilizations but by far the most ubiquitous number system is the 10
digit decimal number system of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and zero (0). Built on top
of this decimal number system is the internationally accepted Metric System of
weights and measure. We have units of distance such as millimetres,
centimeters, metres and kilometres that are based on units of 10 or exponents of
10. Ten millimetres make a centimetre and 102 (10 by 10) centimetres is 1 metre
and 103 (10 x 10 x 10) metres is 1 kilometre. Similarly we have measurements
for weights that advance from grams to kilograms to tonnes. Like our base 10
metric system God appears to use a base 40 metric system.
earth will be pounded and levelled. Verse 9 of the 70th surah of the Quran and
the 5th verse of the 101st surah of the Quran inform us that the mountains will
become like carded wool and the first 3 verses of the 82nd surah of the Quran
state that the stars will fall and scatter; the sky will break apart; and the seas will
erupt respectively. After the destruction is completed the bodies of the dead will
be cloned and the souls will be placed into the new body. On judgment day
people will be resurrected and be given a complete record of their first life. On
Judgment day the secrets of the earth will be revealed.
Islam is a judgmental religion. Judgment means is to arrive at a decision and
the judgments on judgment day are given after examination of all the deeds of a
person relating to the first life. Every deed will be enumerated and weighed
against the universal system of justice that God has designed and implemented.
Every wrong will be righted on judgment day. Sin is punishable but judgment
day is not without mercy. In the 87th verse of the 19th surah of the Quran and
120 (equals 3 x 40) verses after in the 109th verse of the 20th surah we are
informed that a person may intercede on judgment day for a less fortunate soul
but intercession is only allowed by God’s permission.
Judgment day is also the last day for all deeds of the former life to be settled.
On judgment day the old world will be gone forever and when all deeds have
been settled a new way proceeding from judgment day will be created for
mankind. The new way arises from the dualistic nature of creation. As far as
Quran dictates there are only two places to go to – Paradise or Hell, which are
separated and apart. Thus, judgment day is the day of separation.
Bukhari records prophet Muhammad to having said that after the people of
paradise have entered paradise and after the people of hell have entered hell
they will reassemble and Death will come forth in the form of a black and white
ram and it will be slaughtered before the assembly of mankind15 to show that
there will be no more death and that life will henceforth be forever. On the one
side will be the people of paradise and when they see death killed they will
rejoice that all the pleasures they will have in paradise will never end. On the
other side will be the people of hell and when they see death killed they will be
terrified in the knowledge that all of their future torments will never end.
From the collection of Muslim and Bukhari we are told that after judgment
day the believers will enter paradise and satiate themselves all the while God’s
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other times a credit entry is passed that transfers the debit of sin to the Foot of
God account. When that happens it means you are forgiven. The largeness of
the foot of God is to cater for millions of sins that so many people unthinkingly
commit but do not treat sin lightly.
Adam was created in the presence of angels, in another world far away from
this earth. We are aliensc created in another world but placed on this Earth to
live, work and strive.
My beliefs about mankind’s origin lies at an inward point on the spectrum of
origins interpretations. On the one end of the origins spectrum we have the
Darwinian evolutionist who says that all life on earth has evolved from the
evolutionary processes that began over 3 billion years and that human beings
are part and product of this evolutionary chain. On the opposite end are some
religious adherents that teach that evolution is completely false and that
evolution is in stark opposition to their creationist beliefs. They believe that not
only human beings but the other plant and animal life forms are un-evolved
creations of God. 21 Yet another group has emerged in recent times, which is not
at the extreme edge of the spectrum but a degree inward from the un-evolved
creationist. They have formulated the hypothesis of irreducible complexity.22 In
this hypothesis the border region between un-evolved creation and evolution is
found in the microscopic spaces. They say that some microscopic biological
components, such as proteins and specialized cells are too complex to have
evolved from random interaction. Instead they hypothesize that those biological
components were designed and placed in the world by an intelligent agent. The
intelligent design that I hypothesize in this book is beside irreducible
complexity. I have focused on symmetries, symmetry breaking and paired
aspects.
Evolution is part of the mathematical architecture of God – part of the
wondrous creation of God. The sea creatures that evolved to become
amphibians and later terrestrial creatures that again evolved to the earliest
primates and upright walking hominids are the creation of God by evolution.
Footnote c: Islam is not opposed to the belief in alien life in outer space. Verse 29 of the 42nd
surah in the Quran states that God is the creator of both the heavens and the Earth and that he
has dispersed creatures in both. The creatures in the heavens are alien life forms in other
worlds, deep in outer space. The word heavens in this verse is in the plural form and it is not
the paradise of the life after death and resurrection. It refers to the skies above the Earth,
which is filled with millions of stars, planets and galaxies. Just as life is dispersed throughout
our world (the Earth) so too is life dispersed throughout the heavens. As evolution created
and retained life on Earth life it could have evolved on planets orbiting other suns, in distant
regions of our Milky Way galaxy and in other galaxies.
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Adam and his progeny are not on their biological family tree. Man is the
vicegerent of God and we have inherited the Earth from the ancient creatures.
We have arrived very recently on the scene, after being molded in another
world. Believing in evolution does not imply believing everything Darwin
theorized. We must change the way we think. We must remove the mental
barrier that says if a thing is evolved it is not created and if a thing is created it
never evolved. If the Darwinian evolutionist has to ask: where on the temple
mount site in Jerusalem is the stargate (interstellar wormhole) to deliver Adam
and Eve to their new home? My answer is that I was not there when it
happened. Neither was any scientist present to witness the theorized evolution
from sea creatures to amphibians and terrestrial creatures. Nonetheless it’s a
well grounded theory and I accept it, with the singular exception that Adam and
his Eve are separate from this over 3 billion year old earth evolutionary chain.
Admittedly human beings have similar genes as ancient hominids but no
scientist can physically disprove the belief that that they are creations from a far
away world, genetically designed with DNA that closely mimics the DNA of
ancient hominids. They may say it is a foolish belief and ask: What is God’s
purpose to mimic the evolved DNA on a new creation called Adam but they
won’t physically disprove my belief of “human exceptionalism”.
Even though I posit human exceptionalism I still don’t know why it is so. The
cell is the smallest unit of organic life on earth. Scientific findings show that all
biological life forms on earth, including human beings, are monophyletic and
not polyphyletic. All cells emerged from a single foundation.23 DNA is a code
system and what scientists have found is that all life forms – assuming we not
counting viruses, some of which have RNA and not DNA, as true life forms –
are written in one code base, which is DNA.24 Software that runs on our cell
phones, DVD players, notebook computers, and other electronic devices are
programs written in structured programming languages. There is C and C ++,
Delphi, Visual Basic and Java, to name a few popular ones and many others and
many of them put together can run simultaneous on one operating system on
one computer processor but in the biological realm everything is written only in
one structured programming language and that is DNA. Why?
When scientists hypothesize on the possibility of extra-terrestrial life they do
consider that those exotic life forms won’t necessarily be written in DNA and
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yet here we are. The human being is an alien to the earth and his code base is
still DNA. It would have been interesting if humans, being created in another
world, had another code base distinct from DNA, but it’s not so. What is so
special about DNA? What is God’s wisdom here? Is it that all life forms in the
universe all have DNA? It would be very telling if we found life elsewhere in
the universe and discovered that its code base is DNA.
***
Now I can tackle the gaps between prophetic hadith and archaeological record.
From the collection of Bukhari we are told that Adam was 60 cubits tall and that
ever since mankind has been decreasing in stature.25 The cubit is an archaic unit
of measure and its length differs from one culture to another. The ancient
Egyptian old kingdom cubit was roughly 52.3 centimeters.26 Another found by a
German assyriologist, Echhard Ungar, in Nippur dating back to the time 2560
BC, was used by Sumerians and is approximately 51.8 centimeters.27 A more
recent cubit, in the collection of the Tlemcen Museam in Algeria dated back to
the year 1328 CE is 47 centimeters long.28 Taking an approximation of 50
centimeters for prophet Muhammad’s cubit gives the height of Adam at just
over 98 feet, or 30 meters. To the best of my knowledge there is just no credible
physical evidence of giant humans found anywhere on this earth. Anatomically
“modern humans” emerged roughly two hundred thousand years ago29 and the
average height is 6 feet. A stature of 98 feet would put back the advent of
humans on this planet, hundreds of thousands if not millions of years ago.
Hominid remains are dispersed over hundreds of locations in mostly Africa,
Asia and Europe.
The 13th verse of the 49th surah of the Quran tells us that God made us from a
single male and female into nation and tribes. In the 19th verse of the 10th surah
of the Quran God says that mankind was one nation and as time passed on we
differed. We can interpret this verse to mean that at some point in our past
everyone followed one religion and culture. It is possible that the reason why
we haven’t found giant human remains is because at one time all our ancestors
lived in one region of the earth – a place that is yet to be discovered by
archaeologists – and that people migrated and dispersed across the continents
only in recent times when human stature is in conformity with archaeological
records. Alternatively it could be that the hadith from the collection of Bukhari
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is flawed in the number of cubits or just outright false. Whatever the truth is let
them dig. Don’t harass the paleontologists in their search for hominid remains
even if they don’t believe in Adam and Eve. Just let them be about their
business.
settles down in an ordered life he will see that nature around him is also ordered
and is filled with signs that it is intelligently designed. Witnessing the paired
aspects that run through nature, including one’s own life, and applying the
reason and logic of prophet Abraham (discussed above in section 1) leads to the
truth of the existence of God and the correct beliefs about God.
Rejecting God is unnatural and can only arise from corruption of mind and
from falseness. Corruption of mind and falseness ensues from a divided and
compartmentalized mind. A thing that should be interconnected and integrated
with other things becomes separated and isolated resulting in prejudices and
suffering. It usually starts with a little lie. Lies divide the mind allowing quasi
personalities to develop in the sub-conscious that operate differently in different
situations. The mind can be divided like the compartments in one’s wardrobe.
Like the thief who opens up one compartment outside him home. In it are the
tools of his despicable vice. He keeps in this compartment his lies, his deceit,
his corruptibility, his immorality. When he comes back home the compartment
is closed and another compartment is opened. In this second compartment he
keeps his love, care, devotion, righteousness, maybe even his prayer and Quran,
for himself and his family. The murderer; the robber of people’s possessions;
and the fraudulent swindlers have their modus operandi rooted in a
compartmentalized mind. As divisions are retained in the mind against social
justice, divisions can also form in the mind in respect to the universality of faith.
The disbelievers mind is criminalised because just as a criminal differentiates
between the people he robs from his own family – he shows respect and love for
his family and he won’t show respect and love for the people he robs – a
disbeliever applies reason, logic and rationality for procuring his basic needs
(food, clothing and shelter) and yet when asked to acknowledge God’s existence
he won’t apply reason, logic and rationality. Thus, just as an earthly judge
incarcerates criminals so too will God incarcerate disbelievers. In other words
disbelief is treated as a criminal offence.
Disbelieving in God is not like being an atheist in a democratic society. See
disbelief from God's perspective as king and lawgiver. A disbeliever is the one
that wants to live in God’s kingdom without acknowledging there is a lawgiver
from whom issues all laws. God will not allow you to live in his kingdom
without accepting him and his law. He will not tolerate anyone wanting to setup
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a rival law system in his own created kingdom. Thus you either believe in God
or leave his kingdom. But there is nowhere to go because God also owns all of
creation including the disbelievers. Thus disbelievers, who are also regarded as
criminals, will be incarcerated.
Islam is the lawgiver’s system of laws. In Arabic the word Islam means
submission and the word Muslim means the one who submits. It is only logical
that in Islam the first law is to believe in God, the lawgiver. In the 85th verse of
the 3rd surah of the Quran it is written that if anyone desires a religion other than
Islam it will be rejected and the one who deviates will be at a loss.
Importantly for everyone to understand is that people can choose honesty,
honour and integrity or they can choose dishonesty, corruption of mind and
falseness. The choosing of doing good or evil is the striving of the individual.
Belief and disbelief in God are equally one’s own striving. In God’s system of
justice a person is requited according to what they strove for. The immortal life
that you are given on judgment day will be based on what you strived for in this
life. If you believed in God and died a believer you will go to paradise. If you
disbelieved in God and died a disbeliever, from corruption and falseness, then
you will be incarcerated in hell and let me tell you that hell is huge. Muslim
reports that when a stone was thrown in hell it took seventy years to reach the
bottom.30 Both Bukhari and Muslim have reported prophet Muhammad to
having said that the least punished in hell will have two smoldering embers
placed under their feet and the heat from it would make their brains boil.31 If in
addition to disbelief a person committed other crimes in his/her first life then
he/she will be requited for his/her evil strivings and to this end you can expect
more of the body to burn. The Quran informs us what happens after the burning
in hell. Verse 56 of the 4th surah of the Quran states that burnt skin will be
replaced with new skin, thus perpetuating the torment. The second life is
immortal and therefore the containment and punishment repeats endlessly.
Muhammad was orphaned at a young age and placed under the care of his
uncle Abu Talib who was a polytheist and remained a polytheist even when
Muhammad rose up and preached Islam to his kinsmen. He was kind hearted
and never once scolded Muhammad for preaching his new religion in Mecca.
When the other Meccans began oppressing the Muslims Abu Talib sheltered
them.32 Never did he turn against the Muslims but never did he accept their
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religion. When he died Muhammad raised his hands to ask God to forgive him
but at once the 113th verse of the 9th surah came from Heaven explaining to
Muhammad that it is unbecoming of a Muslim to ask for the forgiveness of
polytheist even if he is a relative because such a person belongs to the people of
hell. Afterwards Muhammad is reported by his companions – and recorded by
Bukhari and Muslim – to having said that his intercession may help Abu Talib
on judgment day so that his punishment could be lessened to a shallow fire that
would reach up to the ankles only to make his brains boil.33 This hadith shows
that for even the most kind hearted and gentle polytheist disbeliever, without a
believer interceding on his/her behalf on judgment day, the punishment is
severe. What then for the corruptors, tyrants and oppressors who die in
disbelief?
In a hadith from the collection of Bukhari prophet Muhammad stated that the
end deeds of this life determine one’s fate in the second life after judgment
day.34 We have to strive in religion and pray to God for guidance that we die
believers and doers of good. You could lead a life of sin but if in the end you
sincerely repent and believe in God then you may be forgiven and admitted to
paradise. To this end I want to present here the story of a mighty king, the jihad
that he fought and died in and the belief and submission he offered to God at the
end of his life.
Jihad is mentioned in several different places in the Quran and is usually
stated in the context of rousing the believers to be active for their religion
including fighting against the enemies of Islam. In this segment of this chapter I
want to focus on the literal and root meaning of jihad. Jihad is an Arabic noun
which when translated into English can mean effort, struggle or striving.
Amongst all the stories about past prophets and past peoples that are
mentioned in the Quran, the story of Moses and the Israelites is the most
narrated. It is an epic story about slavery and freedom; about the triumph of
good over evil; and about belief and disbelief. The pharaoh of the exodus is
unnamed in the Quran and is only referred to by his Egyptian title. To date, no
verifiable historical records have been discovered in respect of the exodus of the
Israelites from bondage in Egypt. The earliest records of Israel, which were
dated to the reign of pharaoh Merneptah, do not speak of Israel as a prosperous
nation state but instead of the tribe of Israel.35 Chronologically this suggests that
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the exodus would have occurred very recently and most likely in the reign of
Rameses II, the immediate predecessor of Merneptah. It is my belief, that the
Pharaoh of the Exodus is Rameses II. Rameses was the son of Seti I. His reign
began in the year 1279 BC and lasted for 66 years.36
In 1274 BC Rameses led a military expedition37 into the Levant, which is a
region on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean of what are now the lands of
Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.38 His military objective was to confront
and check the Hittites, a people who descended from the lands of Asia Minor39
(modern day Turkish Asia), and who were encroaching on Egypt’s Middle
Eastern possessions. Rameses set out with a very large army headed by his
charioteers that were split into 4 sub-divisions – Amun, Re, Seth and Ptah,
named after the Egyptians gods. Rameses personally commanded the Amun
chariot division.40 During the march into Syria Rameses received intelligence
that led him to believe that Muwatalli, the Hittite king, was in the far north – too
far away to be of any immediate threat to the Egyptian army traveling through
Syria.41 Ahead of him lay the border town of Kadesh. Kadesh was located in the
vicinity of the present day city of Homs in western Syria. The river Orontes
runs through it.42 Capturing Kadesh now became a military objective.
Overconfident and thinking it to be an easy conquest he proceeded with the
Amun chariot division ahead of his other chariot divisions and camped on the
outskirts of Kadesh. Then suddenly out of the unknown came the whole Hittite
army to attack Rameses and the Amun chariot division that he commanded. It
appeared that the intelligence that Rameses initially received was bad and that
the Hittite king and his army were in the immediate vicinity of Kadesh.
Compounding this adverse turn of events, unbeknown to Rameses, the second
chariot division, Re, had already been routed by the Hittite army. Its few
survivors fled to the Amun division’s camp when they were under attack by the
Hittite army. Fearing the end of his life Rameses gathered his remaining
chariots and mounted a counter attack but they were outnumbered. The Hittites
surrounded Rameses. Alone, desperate, fearful and with no one at his side to
defend him he called on his god Amun to rescue him as he single handedly
fought off the enemy knives. Fortunately for him, his prayers were answered by
you know who and he was rescued just in the nick of time for at that very critical
moment an Egyptian support force from the south entered the fray and threw off
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the knives of the Hittite attackers. The day was saved for Egypt but at high cost
and without capturing Kadesh.43 Rameses returned home to a hero’s welcome
where he launched a massive propaganda campaign to boost his self image as
the victor of the battle of Kadesh. In time the battle of Kadesh became the most
famous battle of antiquity not because of its importance or any historic
consequence but simply because of the grandiloquent manner and sheer scale on
which the event was reported in Egypt.44
In the latter years of Rameses’ reign, the Jewish prophet and messenger of
God, Moses, entered into Rameses’ court and asked for the release of his people
from bondage. Verses 17 to 19 of the 44th surah of the Quran narrates this event:
44:17 ... and there came to them a noble messenger [i.e., Moses]
44:18 [Saying], "Render to me the servants of Allah. Indeed I am to you a
trustworthy messenger,"
44:19 And [saying], "Be not haughty with Allah. Indeed, I have come to you
with a clear authority.
Moses came to Rameses with clear authority showing him wondrous miracles.
Despite witnessing the miracles performed by Moses Rameses refused the Jews
their right to freedom. Too proud to bow to an unseen God, Rameses could not
tolerate his superiority being challenged by an unarmed Jew who had no
standing army. He became more resolute on keeping the Jews in bondage in
Egypt. Moses’ pleadings fell on deaf ears. In the 133rd verse of the 7th surah of
the Quran we are informed that, for their haughtiness and cruelty, God punished
the Egyptians with plagues of locusts, frogs and other things that would humble
them before their Jewish slaves. Yet still, Rameses did not yield and he
continued to tyrannize over the Jews. In verse 88 of the 10th surah of the Quran
Moses speaks of Rameses’ arrogance:
10:88 And Moses said, "Our Lord, indeed you have given Pharaoh and his
establishment splendor and wealth in the worldly life, our Lord, that they may
lead [men] astray from Your way. Our Lord, obliterate their wealth and harden
their hearts so that they will not believe until they see the painful punishment."
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The following verse informs us how God responded to Moses’ prayer, a curse in
fact:
10:89 [Allah] said, "Your supplication has been answered. So remain on a right
course and follow not the way of those who do not know."
Then God commanded Moses and the Jews to leave Egypt as is revealed in the
23rd and 24th verses of the 44th surah of the Quran:
44:23 [Allah said], "Then set out with my servants by night. Indeed you are to
be pursued.
44:24 And leave the sea in stillness. (divided as in a furrow). Indeed, they are
an army to be drowned."
On hearing of the Jews flight from Egypt Rameses reacted just as God had
foretold to Moses. Enraged, he assembled his army and chased after the feeble
Jews. At the shores of the Red Sea Rameses saw the great miracle of God. He
saw the pathway across the Red Sea basin flanked on either side by towering
columns of water. He lead his army into it and chased to kill or capture the
runaway Jews. Then the command came from on high to drown the army. The
columns of waters fell over the advancing Egyptian army. Rameses, like in
Kadesh all those many years ago, was once again surrounded. The 90th verse of
the 10th surah of the Quran describes Rameses’ pursuit of the Jews during the
exodus:
10:90 And we took the children of Israel across the sea, and Pharaoh and his
soldiers pursued them in tyranny and enmity until, when drowning overtook
him, he said, "I believe that there is no deity except that in whom the children
of Israel believe, and I am of the Muslims."
In this verse we see the unmistakable dualistic design of God. Now for the
second time when Rameses was surrounded by the forces of God, the columns
of water that came crashing down all around him and covered his head, and he
was alone, drowning, and his aides and assistants and bodyguards were helpless
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and could not rescue him, he called out not to the false Egyptian gods Amun or
Re. No! In this truly fateful moment he had abandoned the false Egyptian gods
in favor of the God of Moses. Now he believed and now he submitted to the
almighty God of the worlds and the response from God was to rescue him in a
way that forms a fitting pair with the first rescue at the battle of Kadesh, for this
is the established system of God. The paired aspects in both these epochal
events, at the battle Kadesh and while charging across the Red Sea basin, is that
Rameses was alone, desperate, fearful and was surrounded. In both
circumstances he called out to his lord and the result each time was that he was
saved – if not in spirit but at least in body. God’s response to Rameses’
declaration of faith is recorded in the 91st and 92nd verses of the 10th surah of the
Quran:
10:91 Now? And you had disobeyed [Him] before and were of the corruptors?
10:92 So today We will save you in the body that you may be to those who
succeed you a sign. And indeed, many among the people, of Our signs, are
heedless.
Regrettably for Rameses he called out to God when drowning overtook him –
when he beheld with his own eyes the end of his life. His belief in God and
submission to God after drowning overtook him was a spiritual striving for his
soul but it was too late. God has established ways for testing and even for
guiding mankind. In the last 4 verses of the 40th surah of the Quran God warns
of the destruction of numerous past peoples to whom were sent prophets whose
message of submission and righteousness was rejected. The last two verses are
worth quoting:
40:84 And when they saw Our punishment, they said," We believe in Allah
alone and disbelieve in that which we used to associate with Him."
40:85 But never did their faith benefit them once they saw Our punishment. [It
is] the established way of Allah which has preceded among His servants. And
the disbelievers thereupon lost [all].
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Likewise with Rameses in the 40th and 41st verses of the 28th surah of the Quran
God condemns thus:
28:40 So we took him (Pharaoh) and his soldiers and threw them into the sea.
So see what was the end of the wrongdoers.
28:41 And we made them leaders inviting to the Fire, and on the Day of
Resurrection they will not be helped.
Rameses died that day from drowning, but his body was returned to the land for
the sign of God that was to manifest and be witnessed by future generations.
When I looked at a photo of the mummified body of Rameses it became clear
how the sign of God is manifest. The elaborate process of Egyptian
mummification was the intricate striving of the pagan Egyptians for an
immortal afterlife. Great care was taken to ensure the utmost attention was
given to the person’s corps in providing for the journey in the afterlife and the
final stations of the netherworld. The outcome of mummification varies from
body to body depending on the natural surroundings in which the body is
interned, the embalming agents and the technique applied. Rameses’ body is
something of a miracle by ancient standards. The prominent cheekbones, ears,
nose and skin enclosing the eye sockets are preserved without any trace of
deformities to the general appearance of the face. After more than 3000 years
Rameses' kingly demeanor is miraculously preserved.
To understand why God saved the body of Rameses and why it is a sign for
future generations one must look at Rameses’ life striving. Rameses’ reign of 66
years was amongst the longest reigns in Egyptian recorded history. He fathered
forty five sons45, twelve of whom he outlived46 and at least forty daughters, four
of whom he married and were given the title of great royal wife. 47 His
monumental achievements are unparalleled from amongst all New Kingdom
pharaohs. Rameses had an obsession for building and for self-glorification.
There was hardly a town or village in all of Egypt that did not have a statue of
him on display. So great was his desire for self glorification that hundreds of
statues bearing his name were in fact usurped from the reigns of previous
Egyptian pharaohs.48 From Nubia in the south to the Nile delta region in the
north all the major temples of Egypt set up monumental statues of Rameses for
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he would still walk out of hell after punishment and with his belief and
repentance strived for, he would then walk toward paradise.
See the pairing between prophets Moses and Muhammad – the first a Jew and
the second an Arab. Moses and Muhammad are descendants from their
patriarchal father prophet Abraham from his sons Isaac and Ismail respectively.
Both are messengers of God sent to lead their respective nations and to this end
both were given new scripture. To Moses was given the Torah and to
Muhammad was given the Quran. It is not a coincidence that neither of them
grew up with their respective fathers. The 39th verse of the 20th surah of the
Quran informs us that Moses was placed in a chest and cast into the Nile and
then picked up by enemy of God, which is interpreted to be pharaoh. Thus
Moses grew up in the palace of a polytheist. Muhammad’s father Abdullah
passed away before he was born and when he was six years old his mother
passed away. Then he was placed in the care of his grandfather Abdul Mutalib
who died when Muhammad was eight years old. When the grandfather died
Muhammad was transferred to the care of his uncle Abu Talib53 who was a
polytheist. Muhammad remained in the household of Abu Talib till reaching
adulthood. Thus like Moses, Muhammad grew up in the home of a disbelieving
polytheist. Pharaoh and Abu Talib were the father figures in the lives of Moses
and Muhammad and both of them broke away from the religion of their father
figures but in the case of Moses there was violent opposition. This breaking
away from the religion of the father figure is a family echo resonating from their
patriarchal father Abraham. The 48th verse of the 19th surah of the Quran
narrates how Abraham broke away from his father’s idol worshipping religion.
The father is the central figure in family and God created the lives of these
prophets to strive against their own father figures’ falseness to underscore the
importance of putting correctness of belief in God before family relations.
no less than 5 different places and each narration is slightly different from the
other because different aspects of the story are told separately. Starting with the
first story the 30th verse of the 2nd surah of the Quran informs us that in the
upper heavens there was a grand announcement. The angels assembled and God
announced that he was going to create a leader for the Earth. The angels
questioned God’s wisdom asking whether the creature will spread corruption on
earth and shed blood and God replied “I know that which you do not know”.
Before continuing with the story it is important to note here that God did not
retort back with might. He did not say something like “Be silent lest I smite you
to ashes.” God is not bullying his angels into his submission out of might and
strength. Rather he reminds them of his orderliness and his immense
knowledge.
Earth’s new leader was Adam. In the 28th and 29th verses of the 15th surah of
the Quran we are told that Adam was first molded out of dried clay from a
blackened altered mud and then a soul was breathed into him. Verses 31 to 34
of the 2nd surah of the Quran informs us that after Adam was brought to life a
test was staged before the assembly of angels. First, God exclusively taught
Adam the names of some of his creations. Then those creations were displayed
before the assembly and they were asked to name them but they knew not and
when Adam was asked to name them he gave the correct answers. For their
ignorance everyone in that assembly was commanded to prostrate to Adam and
without question everyone assembled there, except for one, prostrated to Adam.
All the angels prostrated to Adam. In the 50th verse of the 18th surah of the
Quran we are informed that the one in the assembly that refused to prostrate was
not an angel. He was from the species called jinn and his name is Iblees.
To know about the Jinn we go to the 15th verse of the 55th surah of the Quran
which tells us that the jinn are created from a smokeless fire. The quran gives
only fragments of information concerning jinn but from folklore it is believed
that they can change form, become invisible and infuse or possess other life
forms, people included. Stories of vampires, aliens, ghosts, headless monsters
running about in graveyards and werewolves are usually manifestations of jinn.
Not all jinn are evil. Some are believers and Muslims. The word jinn is from
Arabian lore. In European lore they are the elves.
In 12th verse of the 7th surah of the Quran God asked Iblees why he refused
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to bow to Adamd and he replied: “I am better than him. You created me from
fire and created him from clay.” That is to say, Iblees argued that it was beneath
his dignity for him, a creation made from fire, to bow to a creation made from
dried clay from a black altered mud.
Clearly Adam was better than Iblees on that day when he excelled over the
others in God’s test of knowledge but Iblees attached himself to his form of fire
when there was no basis to raise objections based on race and form. The
assembly was multi-racial, comprising angels, a jinn and a human. The test had
nothing to do with form. If the test was about form God could have arranged a
sporting contest for everyone to witness whose form was most superior. Angels,
I assume, have even greater form than jinn. From the hadith collection of
Muslim the prophet’s wife Aisha informs us that prophet Muhammad said that
angels are born from light.54 The 1st verse of the 35th surah in the Quran informs
us that Angels also have wings. Iblees knew this and yet he refused to bow to
Adam. He was intolerant – a display of raw bigotry that grows from ego and
pride. There is no ignorance here in Iblees’ stubbornness. It is seen as arrogance
and jealousy against Adam.
Verses 13 to 18 of the 7th surah in the Quran inform us that Iblees was
expelled but before he left he asked for respite from punishment until judgment
day and he vowed to mislead the progeny of Adam. God granted his prayer for
respite but God did not specifically say that the respite will be till judgement
day. Iblees was then reproached and in the 85th verse of the 38 surah he is
condemned to hell along with any who would follow him.e
***
When Iblees vowed to lead us astray he in fact declared war on our species. The
main thrust of Iblees’ war effort is to stop the spread of belief and to develop
social systems that spread disbelief. In our quest for knowledge and happiness
humans have spread out thoughout the world and wherever we went close on
our heels were the detachments of Iblees planning and working toward our ruin.
Footnote d: The asking is to make evident before the assembly. It is not that God’s
knowledge is incomplete.
Footnote e: For a more detailed account of the making of Adam, the fall of Iblees and the fall
of Adam and Eve from the garden see 2:30-39, 7:11-25, 15:26, 15:28-42, 17:61-65, 18:50
and 20:115-123 in the Quran.
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Iblees’ war efforts go far beyond creating dysfunctional social systems that
lead to self ruin. Sometimes when he succeeds in making a people disbelievers
he directs them to make war on other peoples, usually Muslims. In war we find
that, from the sayings of prophet Muhammad as reported by Bukhari and
Muslim, the prophets before Muhammad, if they engaged in military jihad,
could not take war booty. This changed when Muhammad began to rule from
Medina. With the advent of prophet Muhammad the taking of booty from war
was now permissible60 so that Muslims could retain their resourcefulness to
defend themselves. Prophet Muhammad and his companions took full
advantage of this provision and let me tell you that war booty includes farming
land, livestock, gold, silver and war captives both male and female.
It is no longer enough to defend ourselves by waiting for the enemy to attack.
One has to think ahead and often the best defence is a good offence but not
everyone sees it that way. In these desperate times some non-Muslims call us
terrorists and jihadists, despite our best efforts to say that we are a people of
truth and justice fighting to retain our Islamic values and beliefs. There are
some non-Muslims that say they fighting the tyranny of prophet Muhammad
and the Muslims respond by saying that they are defending against the spread of
disbelief and that the 107th verse of the 21st surah of the Quran says that prophet
Muhammad was sent by God as a mercy to guide people to submission to God.
Iblees lives on this earth and he has a large following drawn from his own
species, the jinn. They live in hidden places that we cannot perceive with our
physical eye. The ranks of Iblees’ following includes demons, warriors,
magicians, personal whisperers, sirens, social and industrial engineers, dream
makers, mentalists that seed ideas in the sub conscious and that use hypnosis to
make unsuspecting people experience false past life memories, spies that
eavesdrop on the discussions of angels in the heavens above and a host of other
satanic specialists.
Virtually every murder, rape, highway robbery, hijacking, extra-marital
affair, arson, computer virus, voodoo magic, occult practice and so much more
are in some way orchestrated by one of Iblees’ minions. They are constantly
planning, strategizing and doing evil but every evil action has an equal and
opposite good action. Nothing is free. Every deed and deceit has a price. No one
can truly get away with murder. Counterbalancing is inherent to the dualistic
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system of God. Thus Iblees is constantly managing his own evil. Every misdeed
of the CIA is managed over decades if not centuries. Every bank robbery and
every wife beating is also managed if evil is to prevail. There is this unceasing
post evil management to ensure that the evil doer is not hit back because if the
evil doer is hit back he/she would repent and the evil actions becomes a means
of spreading goodness, repentance and forgiveness. When evil is done on
someone there must be some way for the victim to have invited the evil in the
first place or to sub consciously acquiesce and approve the evil afterwards,
while consciously hating being the victim. Otherwise a ransom must be paid to
the victims to compensate for their loss and injury and here too there are
deceitful ways to manage this using charity and philanthropy. Don’t you notice
that some of the worst people in society are giving the most charity to the poor?
Not all charity is really free charity. Some of it is actually ransom. But it can’t
always work perfectly and then Iblees’ next strategy is to extra-dimensionally
delay the opposing good reaction for as long as possible but here too he can’t
delay indefinitely. All ages, eras, time systems and growth stages have cut off
dates when the balancing must materialize and as the end of an era approaches
then that is when we see anomalies, such as great disasters, natural or manmade,
in quick succession, or an individual person is endowed with almost super
human physical and mental abilities and whose tank of luck is always full and
brimming. This is the hero. All of Iblees machinations to thwart and delay the
auto balancing good will eventually, at the end of the era, materialize in
anomalous events or in the actions of the hero.
A hadith from the collection of Muslim tells how prophet Muhammad taught
his wife Aisha that every human being has a personal satanic Jinn61 that follows
him or her everywhere, continuously suggesting evil into the mind. Often a
synchronistic event is sourced to the whisper of the personal satanic jinn. You
have an encryption program installed on your notebook computer by a friend,
who is an activist. He asked you never to uninstall it. You rarely use it and
months later you see the icon on the desktop and think of him and you realize he
hasn't called you in over 14 months. There and then you decide to uninstall the
encryption program. One minute later your friend calls and says: “Hello old
friend. I need a favor and it has to be done in the next five minutes. Remember
that encryption program I installed on your computer?” Your jaw drops. It can’t
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be a coincidence. You fumble for words: “Yeah sure, it’s right here,” you
sinfully lie to him while scurrying about with your fingers on the keyboard in a
desperate attempt to search for the program on the internet to download and re-
install it. Your speed and dexterity impresses you and the favor is finished in
time. He owes you a great debt in kind but you had to lie to earn the credit.
That’s your sin the devil gained over you because moments before you
uninstalled the program and also before the activist friend called the devil
networked with other jinn across the world and received the information of an
impending phone call and favor. It’s not fair right? However there is hope. In
another hadith from Muslim we are informed that when prophet Muhammad’s
companions asked him if he too had a jinn following him he replied in the
affirmative but also added that God helped him in a way that made his personal
jinn only whisper good to him62 and not evil.
If a devil is with us all the time then why is he/she so elusive? Why won’t
he/she just come out and get us, like physically grabbing the steering wheel of
someone’s automobile to slam it into a concrete wall? From verse 27 of the 7th
surah of the Quran we are informed that Iblees and his fellow jinn followers
operate from a hidden plane from which they can see us but we cannot perceive
of. It is my belief that this strategy is founded on the law of duality. If Iblees’
detachments do the evil themselves and then run back to the hidden realm then
the balancing action is that a force of good must enter their realm and inflict a
similar blow on the evil doers but if they never directly do the evil in our realm
then there is no counter balance to enter their realm. Thus Iblees’ base of
operations is safe that way. Direct contact with humans is kept to an absolute
minimum. Mostly, he and his jinn followers work in the mind. They whisper the
evil to us and coach the most sinful of us to take up positions of power in
society. They make it easy for this sinful group, giving them wealth, women and
hidden help until Iblees has built around our civilizations evil social and
industrial control systems for the perpetuation of war and misery and to spread
false beliefs about God that become the culture and way of our forefathers that
we dare not go against because that would make us the trouble makers and
terrorists of society. If you count how many Muslims there are in the world and
document what their material status is compared to non-Muslims and then
analyse the extent to which alcohols and interest are consumed in world society;
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the legalization of gambling in many parts of the world and the proliferation of
illicit video pornography, all of which are forbidden to Muslims, its fair to opine
that the world has become the devil’s paradise. Opportunists and terrorists have
taken center stage in world affairs. Humans have becomes devils in their own
right and there are reports and stories of humans working with the satanic jinn
for power or in some cases serving Iblees for the enslavement of mankind.
Over millennia hundreds of peoples have fallen prey to Iblees’ control
systems inviting darkness upon darkness until the command from heaven was
destruction, as was the case with the peoples of Ad, Thamud and the people of
prophets Noah and Lot respectvely. Prophets were constantly sent to many
peoples of the world to reform and inform about the correct beliefs concerning
God but the people were so corrupt and attached to their evil ways and customs
that sometimes they turned on their own prophets and slew them. More than
killing the prophets the books that were sent down from heaven and the wise
saying of the prophets were altered to suit the devils ambitions of using religion
to spread disbelief. Prophet Muhammad was sent during a period of darkness
and he brought a light from God. He too was turned upon by his own misguided
kinsmen but he overcame.
If we assume that Adam’s descent to earth corresponds to the rise of
anatomically modern humans roughly 200 000 years ago then Iblees must be
older than that. His longevity affords him the opportunity to acquire terabytes of
scientific knowledge and historical knowledge. With his in depth knowledge of
paired aspects, which spans over millennia, from the stone ages to the space age
he is amongst the most knowledgeable of beings able to predict the rise and fall
of dynasties; the ebb and flow of cultures, the changes in the earth’s climate and
the evolution of life on earth.
Iblees' knowledge of the created universe gave him a technical advantage
over us. We too can learn the laws of the created universe to defend and assault
on Iblees but Iblees has another weapon that no force of good can acquire. It is
his true source of power. Iblees wears a ring like no other. The ring is virtually
indestructible. It was forged from the fire and only in the fire can it be destroyed
and to the fire it will return on judgment day, together with its wearer and any
that follow after him and the ring’s charm. The ring is filled with darkness upon
darkness and it has withstood the light from God's holy books. The Torah, the
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Psalms, the Gospel and the Quran have all failed before its dark strength. This
darkness is veiled. The ring is covered with a deceptive sheen. Iblees uses its
charm on friends and foes alike. In all ages and in many tribes and nations of
the world it captivated the minds of men. The ring is a king maker and king
breaker. Princes, kings and queens have fallen to it becoming the undead slaves
of Iblees – haunting figures that invite to the fire. Other souls too lust after its
power but they deceive themselves and lose their minds to it – bewitched and
hideous they fall with it into the unending fire.
The last paragraph you just read is not entirely true. The ring is pure fiction
from J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings but the spiritual
import is true. My interpretation is that Sauron is Iblees/Satan and his ring of
power is pride. Sauron, the lord of the ring is the lord of pride. Like the ring of
Sauron which cannot ultimately be used for good pride too cannot be used for
good. The ring is a metaphor of the fall from Iblees to Satan, from paradise to
banishment, and from the company of angels to the company of demons. Pride
in all ages and in all the tribes and nations of the world is the fall of mankind.
Iblees was not born with the name Satan. He became evil Satan when he
chose pride over humility. Likewise when man chooses pride it leads him to
evil. Pride is our undoing and it's what makes the devil stronger just as it caused
prince Isildur's failure to destroy the ring which kept Sauron alive. The heroes
who defeated Sauron are the small, the meek, the persevering humble hobbits
Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamjee. We must all imbue ourselves with hobbit
like humility in the war against Iblees. We must overcome our pride – cast the
ring back into the lake of fire – and then, God willing, we can stop our
infighting, wars and racisms.
Iblees is strong and removing him from this earth may have too high a price.
We don't know if his death is separately concurrent with the end of the world or
that the cost of killing him will culminate in the destruction of the Earth. Both
ways, he is expected to live till the last day of this world. Religious teachings go
as far as warning mankind about the evils of Satan and implore us to take refuge
in God from him but I know of no advises in the Quran to physically make war
with Satan and to imprison or kill him. God willing, that can be the future of
Islam - to rise above Satan and into the heavens by our own striving and to
make our own paradise.
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Part III
Programs, Perception
&
The Pentagon
Chapter 8 are again discussed in chapter 9 but here the discussion is interpretive
of the Law of Attraction phenomenon combined with Islamic Imagery. In
chapter 10 I discuss some of films that were discussed in chapter 8 but now the
discussion focuses on terrorist events and how the 40 day phenomenon and the
phenomenon of paired aspects runs through these events.
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Chapter 8
At the start of this chapter I have a personal story to tell that involves the wing
of a mosquito and a world famous Hollywood film revolving around an
underground fictional city called Zion. The 1st of September is the start of the
spring season in the southern hemisphere and in the densely lush green and
wooded region where I live it is also the season when mosquitoes begin to
emerge in large quantities. While slumbering one night in my bed I was rudely
awoken by a mosquito that came buzzing by my ear. I began flailing in the dark
like an orchestral conductor ending with a soft thud on the pillow. Mosquitoes
are tricky vermin. Before sucking blood they lighter and quicker in the air, and
harder to kill one. After sucking blood they heavier and slower in the air and
easier to kill. I switched on the bedroom light. Yes! I got. No! I had to get out of
bed and clean the blood stains. It was about 3 am in the morning and the date
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was Saturday, the 27th of September 2003. I pulled out the pillow case, washed
it in the bathroom and then put on a dry one but I couldn't fall asleep again and
my thoughts drifted off about end of the world.
For some weeks I had been pondering over a particular prophecy told by
prophet Muhammad and the choice of words he used to stress its inescapable
occurrence. The prophecy of Muhammad described a future Muslim Imam
(leader) called Mahdi. From the hadith collection of Abu Da’ud we are
informed that Mahdi will be a descendant of prophet Muhammad, from his
daughter Fatima1; his name will also be the same as the prophet’s2; he will have
a broad forehead and prominent nose; he will rule for a period of seven years;3
and that "he will fill the earth with equity and justice as it was filled with
oppression and tyranny".4 This last statement does not necessarily mean that
Mahdi will rule the whole world. We can interpret justice and oppression
mathematically. Oppression and justice take up two side of a scale. If we
remove the weight from the side oppression and transfer it to the side of justice
then the scale tilts to the side of justice. Mahdi may achieve something or
introduce new laws, or abolish something that will shift the balance of power
away from the oppressors and tyrants and start a new trend toward a new world
order of justice and fairness.
Coming back to my personal story, on this September night I dwelt on the
words of a particular prophecy asserting Mahdi’s advent. Muhammad did not
have to state it in that particular way but he did and I wondered why. The
following hadith from the collecton of Abu Da’ud is an English translation of
what prophet Muhammad is reported to have said about Mahdi:
Now I know from the research that I have done concerning the advent of Mahdi
that he will appear some time in years before the actual last day and that
between Mahdi and the last day there will be several other portents. So it got me
thinking as to why he said it in that way. Why would he say the words ‘If only
one day of this world remained. Allah would lengthen that day’? Is it a clue, a
hint of some kind or just plain exaggeration? Then I remembered a verse from
the Quran which I thought might be related to the prophet’s utterance. Verse 64
from the 5th surah of the Quran reads as follows:
"The hand of Allah is chained." It's a metaphor to mean that God is obliged to
carry out such and such matters. If God decrees a matter or an event then he is
chained to that course of action. This is the thinking of those Jews. That God is
bound to the effect of his own cause and that God himself is the slave of
causality. That God can be tied down. That God can be surrounded. That God’s
plans can be stopped and perhaps even that judgment day can be stopped. Such
a line of thought can only be conceived of in a deterministic world and with
knowledge of the underlying mathematical architecture of the world.
It dawned on me that those Jews did not believe that God was supremely
independent. So on that night of the 27th of September 2003 I wanted to pledge
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my submission to God not to join those who would foolishly and falsely attempt
to tie the hand of God and to do so I decided to offer a prayer, which is called
salah. The prayer format is unchanged from the daily compulsory prayer a
Muslim has to offer 5 times everyday but what is different is the intention which
is uttered while standing on the prayer mat in the moment just before one
commences the prayer. I don’t remember all words I used in making my
intention but I know I was cautious not to misguidedly offer to help God, for to
think that God needs help implies that that you believe him not to be supreme
and independent and that is blasphemous. Had I thought that God needed my
help I would be no better than those ancient Jews that I read of in the Quran.
Unbeknown to me at that hour in the stillness of night was that the 40 th a day
ahead of me would be the 5th of November 2003 a date on which thousands of
people flocked to cinemas around the world to cheer on the saving of the
fictional city of Zion in the final installment of the Wachowski siblings’
(brothers Andrew and Lawrence, popularly known as Andy and Lana) futuristic
science fiction trilogy called The Matrix. The name Zion comes from a hill in
Jerusalem, in the Middle-East and is a direct symbol of the Jewish people and
their struggle to reclaim the land of Israel that was given to their forefathers.
The modern state of Israel is the product of Zionist engineering. The 3 films of
the Matrix trilogy are: The Matrix (U.S. Release Date: 31 March 1999); The
Matrix Reloaded (U.S. Release Date: 15 May 2003); The Matrix Revolutions
(U.S. Release Date: 5 November 2003). The Wachowski siblings directed the
films and also wrote the screenplay for the films.6
I only became aware of the 40 day connection when after some weeks I saw
an advertisement, which portentously stated in bold print the worldwide release
date for The Matrix Revolutions film. After seeing the advertisement I pondered
on the timing of my prayer and what it meant. On the 27th of September I had
dwelt on the metaphor from the Quran the hand of Allah is chained and 39 days
later a dramatization of this metaphor was seen during the worldwide release of
Footnote a: 39 is not 40. At 4 am on the 5th of November 2003 39 days of 24 hours each were
counted. The 40th day only completes on the following day, the 6th of November. The sunlit
hours of the 5th of November 2003 is part the 40th day. South African time is 6 to 9 hours
ahead of the North American Time zones. So when I was praying salah at about 4 am on the
27th of September, the time in New York was approximately 10 pm, the 26th of September
2003 and in Los Angeles, on the West coast, the time was approximately 7 pm.
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the film The Matrix Revolutions. In this film the metaphor of chaining the hand
of God is dramatized by the role of Neo, who is the hero of the fictional
underground city of Zion. What was the purpose of my thoughts and why did I
perform the prayer 39 days prior to the worldwide release of The Matrix
Revolutions, wherein the fictional superhero, Neo, metaphorically ties up the
hand of the fictional Architect and saves both Zion and the Matrix world? In
2003 I did not regularly perform salah in the late part of the night. So if the
mosquito did not wake me up I would have slept through till morning. I had
made my choice either consciously or sub consciously long before and 39 days
before the international release of The Matrix Revolutions, when thousands of
people around the world flocked to cinema houses to cheer on the saving of
Zion, I was awakened by the night visitor, the mosquito that ‘whispered’ in my
ear, to act on my choice, in the form of salah.
The Matrix:
The Matrix is a science fiction film about a dystopian future in which artificially
intelligent machines have taken over the world and have made humans their
slaves. The majority of human beings are no longer born but are grown in fields.
At a tender age the infants are carried off to a structure that physically attaches
them to a computer network grid through an electrical cable that plugs into the
brain from the back of the head. The computer network feeds a digital
simulation into the brain which the slave now perceives as the world around
him/her. This simulated experience, complete with touch, sight, hearing and
smell is The Matrix experience and the simulated environment is the same as
the real world, complete with buildings, cars, homes and outfields. Even the
aspects of nature including rain, sunshine, clouds, gales and breezes are
simulated. The life of the enslaved human is spent in this simulated world,
where all actions, all events and all interactions are in virtual reality. These
people who are enslaved to this simulation have no idea that that their reality is
a hoax whose purpose is to enforce a system of control over the human race.
The Matrix is a simulated world whose purpose is to create a prison of the mind.
Previously I mentioned the opening words of verse 64 of the 5th surah of the
Quran: ‘And the Jews say, "The hand of Allah is chained"’ and these words are
relevant to my discussion here because the plot of The Matrix films revolves on
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this false understanding of God. In The Matrix films the plot opens up at the end
of the second film titled The Matrix Reloaded where the hero of the fictional
underground city of Zion, Neo, meets The Architect, the designer and creator of
the Matrix world, himself suitably clad in an early 20th century European suit –
a time when advanced mathematics such as complex numbers, group theory,
and Lie groups was used by European scientists and mathematicians in the
frontiers of science. Neo meets him in a space capsule which he enters through
a star gate located in a hidden floor of a building in the Mega City of the digital
matrix world.
Neo was born in The Matrix world and through the assistance of Zionist
agents who hack into The Matrix world he unplugged and joined their struggle.
The Architect is not human. He is an artificially intelligent software program
that resembles a human. At this meeting with the Architect Neo learns that the
Matrix world is built on mathematical and deterministic principles. One of the
Architect’s objectives is to bring balance and stability to the Matrix world. His
approach is entirely mathematical and he shows no remorse for the
consequences of his actions. To him people are just numbers and variables in an
equation. All interactions within the Matrix world are seen as mathematical
equations that must be counted, solved and balanced off against each other. His
quest is to create a perfectly deterministic world of mathematical precision. In a
perfectly deterministic world virtually every outcome would be known and
measured before its occurrence and thus all humans would be under his direct
control.
The first Matrix that he developed was a blissful utopian world of flawless
design but it was a failure. Realizing that humans are inherently imperfect he
constructed a new Matrix, which reflected the varying grotesqueries7 of human
nature and again his endeavor failed. He had only to realize that his greatest
obstacle to creating a stabilized world was choice. By chance a solution was
stumbled upon by a program, similar to him in its human form called The
Oracle. In his own words the Architect describes the Oracle as ‘an intuitive
program initially created to investigate certain aspects of the human psyche’.8
The Architect regards himself and the Oracle to be the symbolic father and
mother of the Matrix world.
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To stabilize the Matrix the Oracle suggested that the enslaved humans be
given a choice as to whether they wanted to stay in the Matrix or to unplug from
the Matrix. When he gave humans a choice nearly 99 percent of all test subjects
accepted the program and the Matrix world stabilized. The solution did function
but it was fundamentally flawed. Absolute determinism was unattainable with
the introduction of choice. The introduction of choice into the Matrix world
created uncertainty and with this uncertainty the Architect could not enjoy the
satisfaction of complete control over all humans. In even the most simplistic
equations choice created fluctuations that could not be solved and balanced
timeously. Systemic mathematical anomalies developed within the Matrix.
These anomalies were subsequently managed. Control systems were put in
place. One such control system was the creation of the underground city of Zion
for those individuals who chose to unplug from the Matrix but with the creation
of Zion the Architect was faced with another problem. War broke out. War with
the citizens of Zion, the ones that chose to unplug from the Matrix, was
inevitable. For at least 100 years this Zionist community, which was constantly
at war with the machines, strove to free the millions of humans that were still
enslaved by the machines in the Matrix. This ongoing jihad to free the enslaved
humans soon threatened the stability of the Matrix world. If Zion was left
unchecked the Architect calculated that they ‘would constitute an escalating
probability of disaster’.9
In the space capsule the Architect told Neo that the underground city of Zion
will, for the future security of the Machines, be destroyed for the 6th time and
that Neo’s existence was yet another system of control over all of mankind. The
architect explained the situation to Neo in these words: ‘Your life is the sum of a
remainder of an unbalanced equation inherent to the programming of the
Matrix. You are the eventuality of an anomaly of which despite my sincerest
efforts I have been unable to eliminate from what is otherwise a harmony of
mathematical precision’.10 Neo was created with a special code which was vital
for the survival of the millions of people plugged into The Matrix and which
can only be unlocked by returning to the machine source – the machine
mainframe computer. In the space capsule the Architect presented a choice to
Neo. He could either return to the Matrix and to Trinity – Neo’s significant
other – and his fellow Zionists or advance to the machine source. Returning to
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the Matrix would afford him the opportunity of saving Trinity from her fall and
helping in the defense of Zion. If he follows this path then he also chooses not
to advance to the machine source and choosing not to advance to the machine
source means that the entire Matrix system will, in the near future,
cataclysmically crash and the millions of humans plugged into it would all die.
Further, the machine army that the Architect sent to destroy Zion was too
powerful to withstand. Thus, with the death of every inhabitant of Zion,
including Neo himself the entire human race would become extinct. Choosingb
to return to the machine source would stabilize the Matrix world but it also
means abandoning Trinity and Zion to be destroyed by the machine army.
Then a new cycle of the system begins when Zion is repopulated with new
people (8 males and 16 females) extracted from The Matrix world, and after
another 100 to 150 years or so another savior like Neo is born when the sum of
all anomalies reaches a critical point and again Zion will be destroyed. This was
the only way that the Architect could exercise control over all of mankind.
The fate that was planned for Neo is that he would choose to abandon Trinity
and the thousands of Zionists and submit to the Architect’s designs to save the
millions more that were plugged into the Matrix. But this was not to be. Neo
loved Trinity and he wanted to return to her. Acting emotionally and not
rationally he chose to go back to the Matrix to save Trinity from her fall,
foregoing the door that led to ‘the source’, machine mainframe computer, from
which place the code in him is released to stabilize the Matrix world and
thereby save the millions of people living in it.
To the audience the Architect is a god like character with great creative
Footnote b: Similar dramatizations can be found in numerous films involving comic book
heroes. Neo‘s role is like Superman whose might and strength was challenged when Lex
Luther launched a pair of nuclear missiles in opposite directions – one to a metropolis in the
east and another to the San Andreas Fault Zone in the west, in California.12 Where must
Superman fly off to? Can he save both the people in the east and the west? Similarly
Spiderman had to choose between rescuing Mary Jane Watson and the helpless children
trapped in the suspended cable car.13 The distinctive attribute of Superheroes is that they
always succeed on both frontiers and Neo is no exception to this super club. In the third
Matrix film titled The Matrix Revolutions Neo succeeded in defeating Smith, (the machine
created Anti-Neo), he saved the humans living in the Matrix, saved Zion from the onslaught
of the machine army and succeeded in creating a peace between the machines and Zionists.
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powers over the humans in the Matrix world. However the uncertainty of choice
impedes his independence and supremacy over mankind. It is in this reality that
the architect’s hand can be tied. To us, the audience, this small deficiency of the
Architect is suggestive that in the real world God’s hand can be tied. I interpret
the fictional city of Zion to symbolize the modern state of Israel and there
possibly might be some misguided Jews and Zionists who still hold onto the
ancient Jews’ false belief that God’s hand can be chained and tied down to alter
the future and control the fate of Israel.
To both the characters in the Matrix films and the films audiences all over the
world the Matrix is exhibited in 3 tiers. That is to say, there are 3 knowledge
classes associated with the Matrix films. In the lowest knowledge class are the
millions of people that live in the Matrix world and who are unaware of the
illusion. The citizens of the underground city of Zion fit into the second or
middle class. Neo, the hero of Zion, with all his superpowers, still only fits into
this middle class. He along with his fellow Zionists are still shown by the
producers of the Matrix films to be ignorant of the fundamental nature of the
Matrix. Even with the gift of dodging bullets, destroying the Matrix agents and
actually seeing the green bits of code while plugged into the Matrix – things no
other citizen of Zion can do – Neo is still blind to the highest vision of the
Matrix.
A closer examination of the Matrix films reveals that only 2 principal
characters in the Matrix films belong to the highest knowledge class and those 2
individuals are the Architect and the Oracle. The highest knowledge class is that
the Matrix, in addition to being a mathematical programmable construct built by
the machines, is deterministic and governed by the law of duality and the law of
attraction. Three other characters namely, the Merovingian, his wife Persephone
and Smith appear to know only about the law of duality.
From the dialog of the Merovingian the audience is given a glimpse of the
nature of the universe in the Matrix films and the debate surrounding the central
themes of choice and causality. In The Matrix Reloaded the Merovingian sits
down with Neo, Morpheus and Trinityc in his restaurant and explains his belief
Footnote c: Morpheus and Trinity are friends of Neo and they are fellow Zionists. Morpheus
frequently hacks into the Matrix world to find and assist anyone wanting to unplug. Trinity is
an officer on his hovercraft ship and she is Neo’s girlfriend.
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in causality being the only real truth. The Merovingian says to his guests:
'...There is only one constant. One universal. There is only one real truth.
Causality. Action, reaction, cause and effect.'14 Morpheus responds by saying:
'Everything begins with choice.' The Merovingian responds to Morpheus,
saying: 'No. Wrong. Choice is an illusion created by those with power and those
without.' In The Matrix Revolutions he again says to Morpheus and Trinity in
the underground nightclub: “I have told you before there is no escaping the
nature of the universe. It is that nature that has again brought you to me. Where
some see coincidence, I see consequence. Where other's see chance, I see
cost.”15 The nature of the universe that the Merovingian speaks of is the law of
duality. The Architect has designed the Matrix in such a way that it involves the
pairing of all events and interactions. Every event is one half of a pair of events.
There is an important scene in the third film – The Matrix Revolutions – where
The Oracle tells Neo “That man (referring to the Architect) can’t see past any
choice”. Neo Asks “Why Not?” and the Oracle answers “He does not
understand them. He can’t. To him they are variables in an equation. One at
time, each variable must be solved and counted. That’s his purpose – to balance
the equation” – via the law of duality. Neo then asks “What’s your purpose?”
and the Oracle answers “To unbalance it”16 – via the law of attraction. While
the Architect is the master mathematician the Oracle is portrayed as superior to
the Architect because in addition to understanding the law of duality she has
special psychic abilities for reading the thoughts, dreams and desires of people.
The Oracle is a whisperer who has psychic abilities like the retreating
whisperer mentioned in the 4th and 5th verses of the last surah of the Quran – the
whisperer who whispers into the breasts of mankind – leading people to a fate
she has masterminded.
We also see that the Oracle predicts events outside the Matrix world. In the
first Matrix film we are shown how the Oracle predicted that Morpheus’ life
would be in danger and Neo would have to make a choice about saving his life.
This prediction came true. The Oracle also told Trinity that she would fall in
love with The One. This prediction also came true. What this means is that the
dualistic and attractive nature of events of the Matrix films is not a design
feature created by the Architect to govern interaction only in the Matrix realm
but rather that the Architect, and most likely the Machine Source, the deus ex
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machina, had discovered the law of duality and the law of attraction and they
adopted these laws in building the control system that is both the Matrix realm
and the underground city of Zion.
In the remainder of this chapter I will be examining the intentional scripting
of paired aspects into 5 films written by the Wachowski siblings: the 3 Matrix
films, V for Vendetta and Cloud Atlas. The Matrix films were released between
1999 and 2003, V for Vendetta was produced after the third film of the Matrix
trilogy and released in 2006 and Cloud Atlas was released in 2012.17 d All of
these films except V for Vendetta were directed by the Wachowski siblings. V
for Vendetta was directed by James McTeigue but the Wachowski siblings
wrote the screenplay and they are also the producers of the film along with Joel
Silver and Grant Hill. In all of these films there are several scenes that will be
discussed. If you going to analyze the films while or after reading this book
please don’t skip to the relevant scene and pause the film. That’s not the way to
verify my research. In all except the first example you need to examine the
entire scene, before and after the relevant frame, in normal playback time to
evaluate what I interpret to be intentionally scripted paired aspects.
Footnote d: Explicit sexual scenes can be avoided by skipping the following chapter
segments: In the second matrix film watch till 0:26:20 (end of chapter 7) and then skip ahead
15 seconds into chapter 9 until you reach 0:31:00. In Cloud Atlas skip the 6 seconds from
1:55:20 till 1:55:26 and the 14 seconds from 1:55:40 till 1:55:14.
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in the opposite direction. A second after she passed behind Neo Morpheus told
him to look again at the woman. When Neo turned his head he found himself
starring down the barrel of a gun held in the hand of a mock-up agent. The
woman in the red dress had turned into the agent. Pause the DVD at exactly 55
minutes and take a look. In the center is the mock-up agent Smith pointing a
pistol. In front of him Neo lowers his head away from the barrel of the gun and
blocks his face with his right hand. Morpheus is standing behind Neo, wearing a
long black leather coat and oval sunglasses. Upon closer examination of this
scene I have spotted 8 identical twins from the melee of people in the plaza.
They are not all easy to find. The two bald headed gentlemen in the bottom
center of the image are perhaps the easiest. To the left of them but higher up in
the image are twin girls dressed in black and behind these two twins, at the very
edge of the picture are two more female twins wearing striped tops. The only
other female twins are the blondes but they are not walking together. They are
on opposite sides of the image walking toward each other and each blonde twin
is accompanied by another male twin wearing a black suit. The remaining 3 sets
of twins are all males, two of which have their back facing the camera. In the
eighth set of twins each is walking alone from opposites sides toward each
other.
Twins are pairs. Their outward form is a biological paired aspect and like
everything else in the digitally programmable simulation, they are created. The
dialog in this plaza scene is only between Morpheus and Neo. Morpheus tells
Neo that agent programs can possess any person still hard wired – enslaved – to
the Matrix. The woman in the red dress that Neo glanced at turned into the
mock-up agent Smith. The lesson that Neo learnt in the simulation is that agents
are everywhere and nowhere – that every enslaved human in the Matrix is a
potential agent. However, nowhere in this scene and nowhere in the entire film
is there any explicit dialog about symmetry, symmetry breaking, the law of
duality or paired aspects. In fact, in the subsequent 2 sequels that followed this
film, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions there is not a single
direct reference to connected paired aspects, but as you will read below these
paired aspects are intentionally scripted into the screenplay written by Laurence
and Andrew Wachowski. Why? For the audience. To train our eyes. To make us
understand. Some know it consciously and some know it in their sub-conscious.
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After the film’s worldwide release between March and June 1999, on
Saturday night, the 6th of November 1999, Andrew and Laurence Wachowski
participated in an Internet chat with their fans. A transcript of the chat was
posted on the website of Warner Bros. Pictures. The transcript was published on
the Internet at: http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/cmp/larryandychat.html.
During the course of the online chat the film was played and when the Plaza
scene showed Laurence and Andrew Wachowski posted this message:
People don't realize how important this scene is, because we are all staring at
the woman in the red dress! There are actually twins and triplets that we hired
in that scene. And all of the clothes are based on black and white costumes,
like nuns, chefs, brides, sailors. We had the idea that Mouse just doubled
people instead of making originals. But we couldn't afford to do it digitally, so
we ended up hiring as many doubles, or as many twins, as we could find in
Sydney. It was kind of like a bad dream on the set.
out into the hallway and then climbed up to the roof of the building. More
police officers entered the building lead by agents and they chased after Trinity,
leaping from rooftop to rooftop. With an armed agent in close proximity Trinity
runs to the edge of the building and makes a daring leap forward, diving
through the window of a nearby building and tumbling down a flight of stairs.
For the moment she is safe but time is still against her. She exits the building
and steals her way to a dimly lit street. A phone booth is installed on the
sidewalk. The phone rings and just then a dump truck, passing by on the road
screeches to halt and the driver skids around to point the truck at the phone
booth.18 It’s a face off. The driver jambs his foot on the accelerator and Trinity
runs to the phone booth to answer the call, but who will get there first? Trinity
sprints into the phone booth, answers the call and a fraction of a second later the
dump truck slams into the phone booth, destroying it. After the truck backs up
the driver emerges and he turns out to be agent Smith. He examines the
demolished phone booth but Trinity’s body is missing. Luckily she managed to
exit the Matrix world just in the nick of time. Zionists enter and exit the Matrix
through a data phone call, which is analogous to people in our world logging on
to the Internet through a phone line. That is why Trinity was so desperate to
take the call. It was her escape from the Matrix and the agents who were trying
to capture or kill her.
In the climactic end of the first Matrix film Trinity and Neo attempt a daring
rescue of Morpheus who was being held prisoner by 3 government agents in a
fortified government building. After rescuing Morpheus they hurry off to a
subway station. The phone booth in that station is the exit point from which
they can all exit the Matrix. At the subway station the phone rings and
Morpheus takes the first call and exits. Neo then places the phone handle back
on the hook and awaits the next call. In a darkened corner a vagabond is
sleeping on the concrete floor. As he watched Morpheus’ body digitally
disappear he got spooked. Agents are hard wired to the Matrix and they are able
to conduct searches by reading the thoughts of humans living inside the Matrix
world. Suddenly the vagabond turns into agent Smith and he emerges from the
darkness with a gun in his hand. The phone is ringing and Trinity is about to
answer it but she also wanted to say something to Neo. As Smith’s form appears
before her eyes she grabs the phone handle and places it on her ear.19 A fraction
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of a second later Smith shoots and the bullet goes through glass and shatters the
ear piece of the phone handle. Luckily for Trinity she exited just as the bullet
trajected out of Smith’s gun.
The paired aspect between these two scenes is the similarity of Trinity’s near
death experiences. Both times Trinity escaped from Smith by exiting out of the
Matrix at a public phone booth with just a fraction of second to spare. The
unmatched aspects are the dump truck, Smith’s gun and the different locations
of the two public phone booths.
Oracle: Morpheus believes in you Neo and no one, not you, not even me can
convince him otherwise. He believes it so blindly that he is going to sacrifice
his life to save yours.
Neo: What?
Oracle: You're going to have to make a choice. In the one hand you'll have
Morpheus' life and in the other hand you'll have your own. One of you is going
to die. Which one will be up to you.21
The choice that Neo faces is the first half of a paired aspect. The second half of
this paired aspect reveals itself in the second Matrix film: The Matrix Reloaded.
This time the life that is placed in his choice is that of his lover, Trinity. In the
city of Zion Neo receives an information disk from a hovercraft captain which
contained a request from the Oracle to meet inside the Matrix but before he sets
of with Morpheus and the other crew members in the Nebuchadnezzar
hovercraft Kid comes running along one of the corridors in the city of Zion and
presents him with a gift from one of the orphans.22 It’s a dirty rag and when Neo
rolls open the rag there is an a dented iron spoon inside. Neo then enters the
Matrix world and meets the Oracle’s bodyguard Seraph who takes him to meet
the Oracle in a courtyard enclosure. They sit down beside one another on a
wooden bench and a conversation opens up about the role of the Oracle, other
sentient programs and the path of The One. Neo is often called The One by his
believers. A portion of the dialog in this courtyard scene is transcribed below:
The first paired aspect in this case is that each time Neo goes to see the Oracle
he takes a spoon in his hand from a young boy. The second paired aspect is the
critical life threatening choice that the Oracle informs Neo about in respect of
Morpheus in the first Matrix film and Trinity in the second Matrix film.
Coupled with these two fateful choices that Neo had to make in respect of
Morpheus and Trinity is the heroic acts he performed to save their lives. In the
climactic end of the first Matrix film Neo and Trinity attempt a daring rescue of
Morpheus who was captured by three agents and held prisoner in a heavily
fortified government building. An armed helicopter is captured and they use its
heavy gun to fire on the 3 agents surrounding Morpheus. After the agents are
gunned down Neo ties a belt around his waist and dives out of the helicopter to
catch Morpheus in midair as he jumped from the government building.24 Had
Neo not made the midair dive Morpheus would have fallen to his death on the
road beneath. Morpheus did initially attempt to jump directly to the helicopter
but at an instant before he made the leap agent Smith emerged from the body of
a guard in an adjoining room and shot him in the leg causing him to fault in his
spring.
In the climactic end of the second Matrix film, The Matrix Reloaded, Neo
attempted a nearly impossible rescue of Trinity who jumped out of a very tall
building in the Mega City to escape from two agents.25 As she begins to fall an
agent jumps out the same window and during the free fall he shoots her in the
chest. Meanwhile Neo flew through the streets of the Mega City at supersonic
speeds and caught Trinity within a second before her body would have smashed
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onto the bonnet of a car. He then flew her up to the roof of another skyscraper to
take out the bullet lodged in her chest.
The paired aspects are that Neo chose to save the lives of Morpheus and
Trinity and afterwards he caught them in midair, thereby saving their lives, after
they jumped out of high rise buildings in the Mega City and each time he caught
them they had already been shot. Morpheus was shot in the leg and Trinity was
shot in the chest.
offered to accompany him to the machine city. Then they both set off but the
journey was off to a bad start when they discovered a rogue crew member,
Bane, who had earlier been assimilated by the ex-agent Smith, had stowed away
on board the Logos. A battle was fought between Neo and Bane. Bane was
killed but not before blinding Neo with a live electrical cable. Neo then asked
Trinity to pilot the Logos. It was long journey through the network of
underground tunnels until they reached the surface, from where they journeyed
at low altitude toward the machine city, following the path of the power cables
that led from the Matrix power grid to the machine city. The final approach on
the machine city crossed over a mountain range, on which was arrayed a battery
of defense installations that fire exploding missiles. The attack begins and
hundreds of missiles are fired at the Logos but Neo used his telekinetic powers
to destroy the missiles before impact.28 As they came closer to the mountain
range a band of sentinels attacked the Logos from beneath. Neo was
overwhelmed and told Trinity to fly up into the clouds in order to repel the
sentinels from ripping apart the Logos. Up they went and the sentinels began
losing power. Their grip on the Logos hovercraft loosened and they began to
fall through the clouds like lifeless squid. The Logos on the other hand pushed
up above the clouds. In that brief moment above the clouds Trinity caught a
glimpse of the sun she never before saw. A moment later the Logos began
plummeting to the ground. Hovercrafts are designed for low altitude flying and
when the Logos ascended above the clouds its engines powered off. Under the
force of gravity the Logos pierced back into the blanket of cloud falling toward
the machine city below. Once more, as in the first Matrix film, Trinity is at the
helm of a defective aircraft and beneath her lies a city controlled by the
machines, first it was the virtual Mega City in the Matrix world and now the
machine city above ground. Neo suggested that she slowly pump the igniter to
restart the hovercraft’s engines. It worked but It was too late to pull the Logos
out of danger and now for the second time an aircraft piloted by Trinity crashed
into the face of a building in a huge city.29 The paired aspects you already know
but what is unmatched between the two incidents is that Trinity escaped out of
the helicopter in the Mega City but now in the machine city crash she is
mortally wounded by metal rods that punctured into her torso. She died from
her wounds but Neo lived on to face the Deus ex Machina.
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them if Neo will give her a kiss. Trinity responds angrily but Morpheus stops
her and then Neo steps forward and kisses Persephone thus completing a pair of
kisses. The paired aspects is that both husband and wife make their way to the
restaurant’s bathroom, he to the lady’s and she to the men’s and then each is
given a kiss, he below his navel and she above the neck.
the endeavor to extract the mainframe computer code from Morpheus’ mind
failed the standby plan was to deploy sentinels in the underground tunnels to
search out the Nebuchadnezzar hover craft and then destroy it along with its
crew. The endeavor failed when Morpheus was rescued from the government
building. The agents then ordered the strike on the Nebuchadnezzar hovercraft.
The hovercraft’s early warning system detected the sentinels at some distance35
and to thwart the attack the hovercrafts electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) weapon
was charged up and standing by for use but Morpheus could not fire the weapon
until Neo exited from the Matrix. If Morpheus did not wait any crew member
still connected to the Matrix would die because the Data connection to the
Matrix would be lost when the EMP disrupts all electricity within the blast
radius. Neo was inside the Matrix, in combat against the 3 Matrix agents. The
battle dragged on from an abandoned subway station, into alleyways,
apartments and to an abandoned hotel, all the while the sentinels laser cut into
the hull of the Nebuchadnezzar hovercraft to search out and kill its crew. After a
few minutes the sentinels cut through to the main deck and swooped down upon
Trinity but Morpheus fired the EMP and saved Trinity. A fraction of second
earlier Neo took the exiting call from inside the Matrix and he too was saved.
In the climactic end of the second Matrix film Neo tells Morpheus’ and the
other crew members of the Nebuchadnezzar hovercraft that the Oracle’s
prophecy of The One ending the war was a lie. Just as he finished speaking the
Nebuchadnezzar’s early warning alarm sounded off.36 Three sentinels were in
an adjacent tunnel just out of EMP range. One of the sentinels began to spin
around on its axis and then released an object. Neo alerted everyone that it was
a bomb. There was no time to charge the EMP and everyone ran out of the
hovercraft into the darkened tunnel. After a few seconds the bomb hits the
hovercraft and the ship goes down in a ball of fire. The sentinels then advanced
on Neo and the other crew members. They ran a bit but then Neo stopped and
turned to face the sentinels. He began to feel their presence and then he disabled
them telekinetically. These two attacks on the Nebuchadnezzar form a
connected pair. Two blasts emanate from the Nebuchadnezzar: The EMP in the
first attack, which saves the Nebuchadnezzar and the bomb blast in the second
attack which destroys the Nebuchadnezzar. Each time the crew was saved from
the attack of the sentinels. In the first attack the EMP disabled the sentinels and
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in the second attack Neo telekinetically disabled the sentinels. In both attacks
the only crew members are Neo, Morpheus, Trinity and the hovercraft operator
to the Matrix, who in the first Matrix film is Tank and in the second Matrix film
is Link. Even their names have similar spellings: Li~nk and Ta~nk.
Footnote e: Ave is an abbreviation for Avenue. The Mobil Ave station is programmed by a
person called the Train Man in such a deranged way that it is continuous everywhere but
differentiable nowhere. Mobil Ave is a visual depiction of a mathematical expression known
as the Weierstrass function.43 Further, the word Mobil as chosen by the film’s screenplay
writers, the Wachowski siblings, is actually a spin on the word Limbo. After Neo
telekinetically disabled the sentinels at the end of the second Matrix film he fell unconscious
and awoke in the Mobil Ave train station. There he met Rama Kandra with his wife Kamala
and their young daughter Sathi. Upon awakening Neo said to Rama Kandra that he did not
know where he was. Rama Kandra responded: ‘This place is nowhere. It is between your …
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Neo had gone to see the Oracle to unravel the mysteries surrounding himself,
such as his telekinetic powers in the real world, and for guidance and direction.
During their conversation the Oracle made a statement about the dualistic nature
of the Matrix world. Her exact words to Neo are: ‘Everything that has a
beginning has an end’f. The very same expression 'Everything that has a
beginning, has an end' was again spoken to Neo at the end of the film by the
Oracle assimilated into Smith. Thus the same expression was spoken twice to
Neo.
After crash landing into the machine city Neo plugged into The Matrix to find
that Smith had assimilated everyone in the Matrix into copies of himself. Neo
was then Smith’s only remaining obstacle to complete domination of the Matrix
world. Standing in the middle of street he was decked on either side by rows
upon rows of copies of Smith. He looked up into the buildings and saw more
rows of Smiths in the surrounding buildings. Then the Oracle assimilated into
Smith stepped forward into the street. A fierce battle ensued but neither Neo nor
Smith was able to defeat the other in hand-to-hand combat. Smith was stronger.
He subdued Neo in an aerial fight and plunged him into the street below with
such a force that their impact made a deep crater in the street. Neo woke up in
the impact crater. He stood up and fought back but again the duel was a
stalemate. Smith once more overpowered Neo and while standing in a pool of
… world and our world.’ In Christian theology children who die in infancy before being
baptized are said to be taken to a place that is neither heaven nor hell. Not heaven because
they were not baptized and because the original sin is still on them and not hell because they
too small to have committed sins. That place is called Limbo. Likewise the Mobil Ave train
station is in limbo – neither in this world nor the next world.
Footnote f: I have already showed this to be a natural law of our world in the story of Prophet
Abraham that I discussed in section 1 of chapter 7: God is Ever Living.
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rest of the Matrix. The paired aspects are that Smith first kills Neo or defeats
Neo by assimilation and then Smith was destroyed from within.
V for Vendetta:
V for Vendetta is political action thriller film, based on the graphic novel of the
same name by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, whose central plot revolves
around the blowing up of the British Parliament on the 5th of November, which
is Guy Fawkes Day, by a political revolutionary named V, the film’s title
character. V is bent on revenge against the British government. The screenplay
for V for Vendetta was written Laurence and Andrew Wachowski, the same
brother’s who wrote and directed the Matrix films. Principal shooting of the
film was completed in June 2005 and the producers hoped to have the final cut
released on Friday the 4th of November 2005, one day before the 400th Guy
Fawkes Day. Delays, however, pushed back the release to 17 March 2006. 47
March 17, 2006 is 132 = (3 x 40) + (3 x 4) days after the 5th of November 2005.
In my research I have found two events related to the Matrix films that have a
date connection to the film V for Vendetta. Firstly, I have already mentioned in
Pair A that on Saturday night, the 6th of November 1999 the Wachowski
siblings participated in an online chat with fans from all over the world. The 6th
of November is 1 day after Guy Fawkes Day. Secondly, the timing of the
worldwide release of the 3rd Matrix film – The Matrix Revolutions coincided
with the 398th Guy Fawkes Day, the 5th of November 2003. Are both these dates
– 6 November 1999 and 5 November 2003 – intentional and significant and did
the timing of these events serve as a harbinger for the film V for Vendetta?
Before I begin to reveal the intentional paired aspects in the film, I must
explain a little bit of history first, because the main thematic character in the
film, Guy Fawkes, is a historical personality. Guy Fawkes was a man who lived
over four hundreds of years ago in Europe. He was religious man and in the
year 1605 he and few others conspired to blow up King James I, the king of
England, and the rest of the English Parliament at the opening of Parliament in
November of 1605. On the night of 4-5 November 2005 Guy Fawkes was
caught in a cellar underneath the House of Lords with 36 barrels of gunpowder
and arrested. Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators were in revolt against the anti
Roman Catholic laws of England. Since the majority of the English parliament
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was firmly Protestant, Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators decided that they
would kill the King and his supporters in parliament by blowing them up in the
House of Lords at the opening of parliament. The plot was discovered and the
king and his parliament were saved.48 Under torture he confessed the names of
his co-conspirators and all of them were either shot while on the run or arrested
and hanged for treason. In January of 1606 parliament met and passed the
Thanksgiving Act, paving the way for the failed gunpowder plot to be
commemorated.49 Guy Fawkes Night is celebrated in Britain and other parts of
the world with fireworks, bonfires and an effigy of Guy is sometimes burned. 50
It must be borne in mind that in the year 1605 England was still using the
Julian calendar, as were several other European states. The Julian calendar was
named after Julius Caesar. The lower countries such as the Italian states, Spain
and Portugal had since the 1580s adopted the Gregorian calendar, named after
Pope Gregory XIII who, in 1582, saw the need to correct the slight inaccuracy
of the Julian calendar. The evidence put forward was the shifting of the vernal
equinox, which fell on 21 March in 325 CE, the year of the first council of
Nicaea, to the 11th of March in 1582.51 Thus the Gregorian calendar shifted 10
days forward. Under the new style of dating 5 November 1605 CE in London
England was actually 15 November 1605 CE in Rome. England only changed
over to the New Style Calendar in 1752 CE.52
The setting of the film V for Vendetta is a dystopian futuristic Britain
characterized by religious intolerance and political totalitarianism. The lead
characters of the film are V and Evey Hammond. Sometime in the second
decade of the 21st century, The USA, the country that had it all, wealth, fame,
technology and international prestige was gripped in a bitter second civil war
and internationally it had receded from the world stage. The cause of this
turmoil was its disastrous wars in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.
News excerpts from a fictional television network called British Television
Network (BTN) shows violent clashes between U.S. government troops and
insurgents occurring at various places in the country's mid-west. Among the
many consequences of America's war on terrorism was that the conflict spread
to Europe and to Britain where it took on religious dimensions. The British
government’s reaction to the wars and to the threat of terrorism was to restrict
civil liberties. Laws were changed. There were police crackdowns against
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In the opening scenes of the film V, wearing a traditional Guy Fawkes mask,
met Evey Hammond, a young lady who works for the BTN. After rescuing her
from the fingermen in a dimly lit alley he took her to one of London’s rooftops
just moments before midnight of 5 November. At midnight the court house
building, the Old Bailey, is blown up in front of their eyes. The next day V then
laid siege to the BTN’s broadcast offices where he forced the employees, under
threat of life, to broadcast a message to the nation in which he claimed
responsibility for the bombing and promised to blow up parliament – a symbolic
target with reference to Guy Fawkes – in one year’s time. In the months leading
up to the following 5th of November V hunted down and killed all of the key
people who were responsible for the atrocities at the Larkhill detention facility.
The film ends with V accomplishing his Vendetta and Londoner’s gathering
in the streets around parliament to witness the Parliament building being blown
up just after midnight on the 5th of November. To carry out this second bombing
V used an underground subway train loaded with explosives. Moments after the
stroke of midnight the subway train was set off in the direction of Parliament
with the explosives timed to go off while the train passed under parliament. The
British parliament, after more than 400 years since Guy Fawkes failed attempt,
is destroyed in a spectacular explosion. Thus, two government buildings, the
Old Bailey and Parliament, are blown up in two consecutive years and both
bombings occur just after midnight on the 5th of November. Coincidence or
paired aspects?
Most of the central characters in the film at one point or another speak of
coincidences and connections that reinforce the theme of the unseen hand of
God in all matters. Shortly after V broadcasted his responsibility for the
blowing up of the Old Bailey, the audience was introduced to police inspector
Finch, who headed the investigating team to hunt down the elusive V and to
stop him before the 5th of November in the following year. Throughout his
investigation Finch was plagued by all the coincidences surrounding the
terrorist events of the past two decades. These apparent coincidences began to
challenge his faith in the government and his belief of the government’s version
of what really happened at St Mary's. Finch learnt that three government covert
intelligence agents went missing or died in the days after the St Mary's viral
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happen. It was like a perfect pattern, laid out in front of me and I realized that
we were all part of it and all trapped by it.’ Dominic asked: ‘So do you know
what’s gonna happen?’ Finch responded: ‘No. It was a feeling.’56
The theme of dualistic intelligent design is strewn throughout the film. Five
sets of paired aspects will now be discussed:
television chat show on the BTN channel. On the first morning that Evey woke
up in Deitrich’s home she walked into the kitchen where she found Deitrich
preparing breakfast for her.58 Deitrich made her the exact same breakfast, Egg
on toast, which she took note of and she told Deitrich of the first egg on toast
breakfast meal she ate in V's kitchen.
The way that Evey expressed her amazement made it all too clear that the
scene was shot with the explicit intention to draw the audience’s eye to this
pairing of events. The paired aspects are that in both events V is off to do
something criminal – blowing up the Old Bailey and murdering the priest
respectively – and each time Evey accompanies him. Afterwards Evey is on the
run, first from the police and then from V himself. Then either unconsciously or
by her own effort Evey manages to escape and find refuge and then when she
wakes up the following morning her protector – first V and then Gordon – serve
her egg on toast for breakfast.
did when she was a little girl, and asked her to hide.60 Evey jumped out of bed
and again she hid under the bed. While under the bed the door burst open, the
police rushed in, assaulted Deitrich and carried him off with his head covered in
a black bag. Evey is left crying under the bed recalling this to be the second
time she had faced similar danger. In this scene the paired aspects are easy to
spot. In both events Evey is asleep in bed. Then suddenly in the middle of the
night her guardian – first her mother and then Gordon – rushed into her room
and asked her to quickly hide. Each time she crawled under the bed and
moments later the bedroom door burst open. Her respective guardians are
assaulted by the secret police and carried off with their heads covered in a black
bag.
his shoe laces. This too isn’t the real V but a stage actor. Then the acting
chancellor called for his guards to capture the acting V. All the while the
audience is laughing hilariously at this comical spectacle with appropriate
comedy music played in the background. Eventually acting V is caught and
when the acting guards take off his mask it turned out to be another acting
chancellor. Then the two acting chancellors fought each other on the talk show
set. Finally the acting guards intervened and separatde the two. Then the
enraged first acting chancellor ordered the acting guards to shoot the second
acting chancellor whom he regarded as an imposter and the second acting
chancellor gave the same order to the acting guards in respect of the first acting
chancellor. The acting guards who were confused by this fiasco opened fire on
both of them simultaneously. Both the acting chancellors dropped dead and the
stage curtains came down. End of the show. The spectacle of seeing the acting
chancellors die is the first event of this 5th connected pair.
The satirical show enraged the real chancellor and he ordered the secret
police to immediately arrest Gordon. Later on that same night the secret police
stormed his home and Gordon rushed into Evey’s bedroom and asked her to
hide before being assaulted and dragged off by the secret police with his head
covered in a black bag (see the 2nd pair above). The audience is not shown the
scene, but in a later scene we learn from V that Gordon was subsequently killed
by the police while in custody.
The second event of this 5th connected pair follows the secret pact that V
made with Peter Creedy, the head of the secret police. The last person that V
wanted killed in his vendetta was the chancellor Adam Sutler and to get to the
chancellor he approached Creedy. An agreement was reached and on the eve of
the 5th of November Chancellor Adam Sutler, beaten up and blindfolded, was
dragged into an abandoned subway station by armed secret police agents at the
behest of Peter Creedy. In the dim lid abandoned subway station a kneeling
Adam Sutler was given a red rose by V and then Creedy shot him (Chancellor
Sutler) in the head, thus killing him.66
After that Creedy asked V to remove his mask but he refused and then
Creedy’s men opened fire on V. V was mortally wounded but he fought back
and killed all the secret police agents including Creedy. After killing Creedy he
returned to Evey and died in her arms. The paired aspect is that in imagery the
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audience is treated to seeing the chancellor die twice – first in a mock satire on
Gordon Deitrich’s talk show and then in the abandoned subway station.
However this intentionally scripted pair is not isolated. Both V and Gordon
Deitrich form a pair in their own right. Both served egg on toast to Evey. Both
were present at the killing of the chancellor by government agents. With
Gordon it was a mock death of the acting chancellor on the chat show set and
with V the real chancellor was killed in his presence in the abandoned subway
station. Both the acting and real chancellor were killed by government
employees. The acting chancellor was killed by acting police guards and the
real chancellor was killed by secret police agents.Then subsequent to the deaths
of the acting and real chancellors both Gordon and V are killed by the
government’s secret police agents. These events in Gordon’s and V’s lives run
parallel to each other and form a set of paired aspects.
Cloud Atlas:
Cloud Atlas is an epic science and history drama film made by the Wachowski
siblings and Tom Tykwer and was first released on 8 September of 2012 at the
Toronto International Film Festival.67
Cloud Atlas is the thematic continuum of the Matrix films and V for Vendetta
and what appears to be reincarnation is just an illusion and the real underlying
mechanism at play can be described as symmetrical invariance across the
centuries. The Wachowski siblings along with Tom Tykwer wrote the
screenplay for the film and when they scripted the dialog 'Our lives are not our
own' it is not an allusion to reincarnation but to the fragmentation of symmetry;
of the formation of paired aspects and of complimenting and opposing pairs that
scatters through the centuries, and in the very lives of ourselves and in the past
and future fragmented instances of our material selves. Our triumphs and
struggles shatter, scatter and reform elsewhere.
The main theatrical feature of the film is an ensemble cast that plays multiple
roles set in six different time zones beginning in 1849, then 1936, 1973, 2012,
2144 and finally 106 winters after the great dying which is referred to as ‘the
fall’. For example, you will see actor Tom Hanks in the 1849 story, in the 1973
story, the 2012 story and as Zachry 106 winters after the fall. Likewise the other
actors and actresses also hop between the different lives. In Tom Hanks’
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fictional lives you will see a slow progression and in actor Hugh Grant's
fictional lives it’s the opposite – a slow regression. He starts off as a shrewd
businessman and husband in 1849 and 106 winters after the fall he is a cannibal.
The lives portrayed look like reincarnation but the Wachowski siblings and
Tom Tykwer are exhibiting a mathematical concept called symmetry breaking.
Let me reference a scene from the film to explain my interpretation: The 1936
story portrays the life of two lovers. At one point, in a happy scene, toward the
end of the 2nd hour in the DVD, the lovers are in a room filled with chinaware:
vases, figurines, mini statues, plates, etc. They pick up some of the items and
one by one begin shattering them on the floor.68 The shattering is a symmetry
breaking event. Before symmetry breaking there is symmetry, like the form of a
butterfly or vase, beautiful and balanced. Rotate the vase and its appearance
remains invariant (it looks the same from all angles). Invariance is the main
attribute of symmetry. When the vase is shattered on the floor the symmetry is
lost – destroyed. In the broken ceramic pieces are the aspects of the former
symmetry. They are swept away, thrown out the window, ground to dust and
scattered by the winds and yet one day the fragmented aspects will again
reassemble, even centuries later. That is how peoples’ lives repeat over the
centuries. In one life they are in one form. In death they shatter and scatter with
the wind and a few decades or centuries later the fragments reform elsewhere as
the clothing of another soul – someone else is born in their form and which
gives the illusion of reincarnation. The same actors are repeated in the different
roles to assist the audience in making the right connection to duality and
symmetry. The wrong connection is to think the film is portraying
reincarnation.
The choice to repeat the same actors in the different roles spanning over 400
years is a conscious choice based on the phenomenon that runs through the film
but which echoes from their earlier films such as The Matrix and V for
Vendetta. However, Cloud Atlas is far more sophisticated and complex and has
a potent moral thrust.
When comparing Cloud Atlas to The Matrix is becomes clear that The Matrix
depiction of the law of duality is a lesson in the ABC's of paired aspects
analogous to learning what atoms are made up of (protons, neutron and
electrons) before moving on to complex interactions of atoms into complex
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molecules that bond via mechanisms such as, hydrogen bonding, covalent
bonding, ionic bonding etc. Cloud Atlas exhibits a similar kind of complexity.
The symmetry breaking that is exhibited in the lives of the fictional characters,
with similar features, such as the same actors that are casted for hero and villain
roles respectively and dissimilar features, such as different time zones in which
the hero’s professional designation in the19th century time zone is that of lawyer
and in the 22nd century time zone the hero’s professsional designation is first
science officer, are rooted in the phenomenon of paired aspects.
Star Wars:
Apart from the Wachowski siblings another notable Hollywood film producer
who also shows a biding interest in dualistic film scripting is George Lucas, the
creator of the Star Wars films69. An interesting facet of the Star Wars films is
the dualistic nature of the Star Wars universe. There are some scenes which I
interpret to be intentionally dualistically scripted along the lines of paired
aspects. The all-pervading and all binding force has a dual nature – there is the
light side of the force and a dark side of the force – and the Jedi Masters are
always talking about bringing the force back into balance. Secondly, there is a
vergence70 (Star Wars language) in the force surrounding the person of Anakin
Skywalker. This vergence is analogous to the convergence of paired aspects that
I have hypothesized of in chapter 3. Even Master Yoda teaches us at the end of
Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace that the Sith are always grouped
into pairs – a master an apprentice.71 Thirdly, in Star Wars Episode Two: The
Attack of the Clones, Anakin sets off with senator Padme to the semi-aquatic
planet of Naboo, which is also Padme’s home planet. Shortly thereafter his jedi
master Obi Wan Kanobi sets off to the planet of Kimino to hunt down a bounty
hunter assassin and this too turns out to be an aquatic planet. Unexpectedly the
hunt leads to the arid planet of Geonosis and likewise his Jedi student Anakin
makes an unexpected visit to another arid planet, his home planet of Tatoo'in,
also in pursuit of an individual, his mother in this case, who had been taken
hostage by a hostile species called the Tuscans. Thus both Padme and Anakin
each had a turn to revisit their respective home planets and after their
adventures they fall in love with each other. A climax is reached when each of
the Jedi heroes, Anakin and Obi wan, discover their respective villains under the
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cover of darkness. However the outcomes are different. On the surface Anakin
subdued his enemies while Obi wan surrendered to his enemies but spiritually
Anakin was at a greater loss because the murder of the women and children in
the enemy Tuscan camp brought out his dark side. The dark side also tempted
Obi Wan after his capture when the Sith lord Tyranus came to him in the
Geonosian jail cell and attempted to seduce him to join him in his fight against
the Sith but he resisted and passed his test. Eventually in the climactic end of
Star Wars Episode Three: The Revenge of the Sith, the two Jedi heroes faced
off in mortal combat on the volcanic planet Mustafa and with the name Mustafa
the discussion of Star Wars continues in chapter 9.
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Chapter 9
Perception, Belief
&
Images, sounds, colors, symbols and words are external stimuli to the brain
acquired and interpreted. We form a perception of the world around us – of
what reality might be or could be. In turn, perception affects our beliefs. With
enough knowledge of cultures, history and past strivings images, sounds, colors,
symbols and words can be combined and sequenced to influence perception and
belief in a chosen direction.
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Greek mythology, Morpheus is the god of dreams and he is the son of Hypnos 2,
the god of sleep. In Greek mythology Morpheus sends to the dreamer the
images of human beings.3 In the first Matrix film Morpheus assisted Neo to
extract himself from the Matrix. After Neo swallowed the red pill Morpheus
escorted Neo to the adjoining room and when he sat down for the extraction
process Morpheus said to Neo:
Morpheus: Have you ever had a dream Neo that you were so sure it was real.
What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the
difference between the dream world and the real world?4
Here lies the secret meaning of Morpheus’ name. Not only does Morpheus
assist people with extraction from the Matrix world but also he himself is a
dreamer who refuses to surrender his dream. It is the law of attraction that
applies to Morpheus. By the law of attraction if you believe in something then it
will be created for you. It is this understanding of belief that is used by the
Oracle in The Matrix films.
The law of attraction tells us that our inner strivings of thoughts, prayers and
yearnings are involved in creating the world around us. Any person is capable
of applying the law attraction in their lives. However, some are extraordinary.
They don’t rely on material aides such as vision boards, nor do they need to use
correction fluid on their bank statements to help them imagine that they are
richer, in order to really make themselves more richer. The extraordinary ones
are the dreamers. Dreamers are an extraordinary class of people whose
imagination and ability to day dream and believe is enormously greater than
most people. The Oracle already knows this psychological quality applies to
Morpheus, which is why she had planted the prophecy into Morpheus' mind that
he would find The One and that The One would end the war with the machines.
We learnt of Morpheus' extraordinary dreaming abilities in the conversation
between Neo and the Oracle in the first kitchen scene. Reproduced below are
just the relevant statements from the Oracle: (See Pair C in chapter 8 for a
longer dialog transcript)
…
Oracle: Morpheus believes in you Neo and no one, not you, not even me can
convince him otherwise. He believes it so blindly that he is going to sacrifice
his life to save yours.
The Oracle gave Neo a choice – to sacrifice Morpheus’ life or his. Neo believed
that he could save Morpheus from the agents who would kill him after they
extracted the codes to the Zion mainframe computer from his mind. Everything
changed when Neo saved Morpheus from the government building because Neo
not only saved a human life but he also saved the dream and when Neo saved
the dream he became The One.
Belief is a vital step in one's inner strivings and to applying the law of
attraction. When you believe something so blindly then it becomes your living
daydream. For dreamers their inner and outer strivings are one and combined.
Dreamers are living their dreams and their outer strivings are nested within their
inner strivings. That is to say, what they do on the outside is within the sphere
of influence of their daydream, which is their inner striving. In extreme cases
their personality is at the mental border region between normality and
schizophrenia. It is in this context that some of the people in Zion such as
commander Loch and Link’s girlfriend Zee harbor mistrust against Morpheus.
Morpheus is living the dream of the end of the war and peace with the
machines. Everything he touches; everyone he talks to; the food he eats; his
running; his jumping; his speeches; his wise sayings; the criticism he shrugs off;
etc are all part of the daydream. All of it echoes and resonates through the
different realms – the Matrix world; the real world and the dream world.
Without Morpheus' constant day dreaming the Oracle knows that her cause is
lost. Now that she has Morpheus' mind directed toward the salvation of Zion
she, using her vast knowledge of the law of duality and the law of attraction,
can go about manipulating the dualistic equations governing Zion and the
Matrix world to re-balance them and disrupt the future plans of the Architect.
She must take great care in her dealings and everything must be timed well to
achieve the desired outcome. Ultimately she is the mastermind to be credited for
tying up the Architect’s hand.
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Other characters also show the potential of manifesting their inner striving in
the Matrix world. Children, in particular, have the greatest potential of
manifesting their inner strivings. In the third Matrix film, The Matrix
Revolutions, the young Indian girl Sathi, daughter of Rama-Kandra, shows her
creative potential to the Oracle. In the ending scene when all is done and Zion is
saved, at the time of sunrise Sathi comes running to the Oracle, who was seated
on a park bench in one of the public park’s of The Mega City. When Sathi
approached her they both looked at the sunrise and the vibrant color spectrum
created in the sky around the rising sun. The dialog in this scene is as follows:
Seraph, the Oracle’s personal bodyguard, was also with them in the park and the
few words he exchanged with the Oracle stresses the importance of belief. He
asked the Oracle:
***
Zionism is a Jewish movement to unite Jewish peoples from around the world
and to establish a homeland in Palestine.6 The modern state of Israel is the
product of this movement. Zion is the ancient Hebrew name of the holiest place
in the holy land. It is the Temple Mount site in Jerusalem that is sacred to both
Jews and Muslims. When the word Zion is mentioned almost instantly one
thinks of Israel and because of this common association between the two names,
in the Matrix films, in the mind of the viewer, the fictional city of Zion, which
is a small enclave of rebel humans, forced underground by the advanced and
hegemonic machines is perceived to be the modern state of Israel – a tiny
Jewish state surrounded by the ocean of Arab Muslims. Since its formation in
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1948 the Zionist state has fought three major wars with its Arab neighbors: in
1948 immediately after its formation; the six day war in 1967; and the Yom
Kippur war of 1973.8 It can be interpreted that the Machine City’s war with the
small underground city of Zion in the Matrix films symbolizes Israel’s wars
with its larger Arab neighbors. Thus when audiences cheer for the Zionists and
their hero Neo, they may, by the law of attraction, attract victory and security
for the real state of Israel from Arab aggression.
In the Matrix films I interpret the Machines war against the underground city
of Zion to be far more ominous and far reaching than some non-Muslim viewers
care to know. The Architect’s master plan to retain control over Zion and the
Matrix world incorporated Neo forsaking Zion in favor of saving the Matrix by
returning to the source. In the second Matrix film, The Matrix Reloaded, the
Architect told Neo that the Matrix was rendered through 5 previous versions.
Through each version an anomaly (represented by Neo) was created to balance
off the remainder of an unsolved equation, which arose out of the fluctuations
created by giving people a choice. Each version of the Matrix went as planned
with the anomaly choosing the Matrix over Zion. Through each of the previous
Matrices all of the inhabitants of Zion were first killed by the machines and
then, through the anomaly, Zion was re-populated with 8 males and 16 females
– a pair of females per male,9 which you should also know is an echo from a
prophecy of prophet Muhammad recorded in the collection of Bukhari which
states that the men in paradise will have two wives.10 The parallel to our world
is that prophet Muhammad is reported to have told of a curse that will befall the
Jews in which the stones and trees will speak out calling the Muslims to kill the
Jews. The following prophetic hadith recorded by Muslim explains this killing
of the Jews:
Abu Huraira reported Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying:
The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews
and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind
a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of
Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would
not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.11 a
Footnote a: Who are these Jews? Will they include pious orthodox Jews who practice …
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Trees and stones do not normally speak. This speech from them is then a
miracle of God. Thus the killing of these exposed Jews is triggered from God
and God is a creative architect. In the Matrix films the Architect is the creator of
the entire Matrix realm inhabited by billions of people. He is a God like
program and it is he that ordered the two hundred and fifty thousand sentinals to
attack Zion. Thus, I interpret the scripted killing of Zionists in the Matrix films
to symbolize the above prophecy of the killing of the Jews.
The Matrix films revolve around saving the city of Zion and saving Zion
begins with the belief that Zion will prevail and that The One will succeed
against the machines. In the real world Zion symbolizes the modern state of
Israel. When thousands of people flock to cinema houses to cheer for Neo they
cheer for Zionists and subconsciously for Israel. In that moment when they
believe that Zion could be saved from the Architect’s machine army of sentinals
they could be subconsciously attracting security for those exposed Jews, who
may be Israeli and Zionist Jews, and since the Oracle and Neo tied up the hand
of the Architect and altered the fate of Zion from destruction and death to peace
… Judaism or are they only those non-religious ethnic Jews, such as Jewish atheists, who do
not follow Judaism? Are they all the Jews in the entire world or just Jews of a particular
locality? Are they only Israeli or Zionist Jews? Hypothetically if these Jews turn out to be
Israeli or Zionist Jews then this could mean that the modern state of Israel may come to an
end. Such a ghastly apparition as that of stones and trees speaking out against Jews would
send a shockwave throughout the world and will have dire religious and political
repercussions for Israel’s friends and supporters around the world. To help answer some of
these questions there is another prophetic hadith in the collection of Sahih Muslim that sheds
some light. Anas bin Malik reported prophet Muhammad to having said that the antichrist
‘would be followed by seventy thousand Jews of Isfahan wearing Persian shawls.’12 This
hadith could mean that the Jews that will be exposed by the trees and stones are only this
group from Persia (Iran) but the hadith does not preclude Israeli and Zionist Jews living
elsewhere in the world, or even non-Jewish Zionists from being amongst those exposed by
the trees and stones.
As regards the purpose of this deadly curse, for a moment let us suppose that the stones
that will speak out will only be from one locality – the holy land. Let us analyze what the
implications are: Stones are concentrations of elements tightly bound together in discrete
lumps. They very hard but importantly for us they are from the land itself. Thus for stones
from the holy land to speak out it means that the holy land speaks for itself and to put it
frankly and unreservedly the holy land is giving the cursed people its verdict and it is passing
its sentence: Guilty and death be upon you.
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and co-existence they may also be attracting toward tying up the hand of God
and altering the future.
In chapter 8 I stated the prophetic hadith from sunan Abu Da’ud concerning
Imam Mahdi and I asked myself why would prophet Muhammad say the words
‘If only one day of this world remained. Allah would lengthen that day’ even
though in other reports from prophet Muhammad it is clear that other events are
predicted to occur after the advent of Mahdi and before the actual last day. Is it
possible that Muhammad was hinting to us that the secret plan of some Jews is
to tie up the hand of God to save the Jews from their pre-destined fate of being
exposed by trees and stones and then killed by Muslims? Can this work? Can
people actually threaten God? The firm believer in God says no. Those who
believe in God believe that God is supremely independent of his creations. No
one’s beliefs, thoughts or consciousness is independent of God.
As regards the intentions of the Wachowskis in their choice of names for The
Matrix films I cannot say with certainty that they intentionally wanted to attract
security and support for the modern state of Israel. It is not uncommon in
filmmaking and other older media such as written novels for writers and
storytellers to borrow names, themes and motifs from the real world. Quality
filmmaking depends on artistic freedom and one expression of artistic freedom
is artistic license to twist and alter real world names and events to create
familiarity or to immerse the viewers emotionally into the film. The
Wachowskis can easily say that they never had the modern state of Israel in
mind and nor were they intent on attracting favorably towards Israel’s security
when they named their fictional underground city Zion but that instead they
wanted to attract toward the universal theme of freedom from slavery and
liberty of choice in an open and free democratic society and what better way to
do that than to invoke to memory of prophet Moses and the ancient Jews
enslaved by Pharaoh. In other words the hero of the fictional city of Zion, Neo,
may have been modeled on prophet Moses and that Neo is a kind of deliverer.
***
To my eye filmmaker George Lucas has infused Islamic symbolism in the
Star Wars films. Throughout episodes 1, 2 and 3 Anakin is portrayed as “the
chosen one”13 who will bring the force back into balance. In Star Wars –
Episode One Anakin’s mother reveals the unnatural circumstances around
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Anakin’s birth. When Quigon Jin asked ‘Who was his (Anakin’s) father?’ he
was told by Anakin’s mother that ‘There was no father’14. So in the mind of the
viewer Anakin is perceived to symbolize Jesus Christ of the real world, because
he is the only person, believed by billions of people, to be conceived without a
father.
In the climactic end of Star Wars – Episode Three, Anakin, who has now
become Darth Vadar, after becoming the new apprentice of the Sith lord Darth
Sidius (Chancellor Palpetine), fought his own Jedi Master Obi Wan Kanobi on
the dimly lit, volcanic Mustafa planet.15 Anakin lost the duel and fell on the hot
ash alongside the volcanic lava flow. His body then caught alight. Obi Wan
Kanobi then left him for dead and returned to the landing platform where he
found Padme lying unconscious. He carried her into the space jet and they
exited from Mustafa and in came Darth Sidius to rescue Anakin. A medical
capsule was brought in, which took Anakin back to the planet Corosant where
he underwent surgery. After surgery film viewers saw the rise of a new and
darker Anakin in the all too familiar black mask and cape of the villainous
Darth Vader. The Islamic symbolism into Star Wars is that the name of the
volcanic planet Mustafa is an Arabic word and appellation. In Arabic Mustafa
means “the chosen one”. Mustafa is the appellation of prophet Muhammad.16
My perception from watching Star Wars is that after the handsome Anakin
perishes on Mustafa, which is a dimly lit, volcanic planet akin to hell, the black
masked Anakin (Darth Vader) who rises from the ashes of Mustafa, rises in
darkness, in the name of or in the dominion of Muhammad Mustafa. Anakin
symbolises Jesus and the image of Jesus to Trinitarian Christians is that of Lord
and Savior. When Anakin's outward image changes from handsome to Darth
Vader mask, because of the severe burning on Mustafa it symbolises a change
in image from Trinitarian Christian Jesus to an Islamized Jesus. Star Wars first
premiered in 1977 with Episode 4 – A New Hope.17 Film viewer’s first sight of
Anakin was in the Darth Vader mask, and ever since then the Darth Vader mask
has become a symbol of fear and hatred. The Islamic imagery in the naming of
the volcanic Mustafa planet is to attract fear and hatred for an Islamized Jesus.
To appreciate the full import of what an Islamized Jesus means I turn to a hadith
from the hadith book Sunan Abu Da’ud concerning Jesus Christ’s descent
which states the following:
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The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: There is no prophet between me and
him, that is, Jesus (peace be upon him). He will descend (to the earth). When
you see him, recognise him: a man of medium height, reddish hair, wearing
two light yellow garments, looking as if drops were falling down from his head
though it will not be wet. He will fight the people for the cause of Islam. He
will break the cross, kill swine, and abolish jizyah (a tax). Allah will perish all
religions except Islam. He will destroy the antichrist and will live on the earth
for forty years and then he will die. The Muslims will pray over him.18
Jesus’ descent is founded on the Islamic teachings from the 157th and 158th
verses of the 4th surah of the Quran which states that Jesus was not crucified and
not killed and that God raised him into the heavens to save him from the
Romans that wanted to arrest him and crucify him at the behest of the
pharisaical Jews. Presently Jesus remains safe in the upper heavens and when
God orders his mission to be renewed he will descend back to earth to do the
things as stated in the above quoted hadith. If Jesus was never crucified then the
cross is false. Thus Jesus’ breaking of the cross affirms the true events of his
rescue.
Islamic monotheism is non associative. Thus not even Jesus, who walked on
this earth, can be divine. Jesus will turn away and disown his own divinity. He
will rebuke the Trinitarian Christians who called him their Lord and Savior and
who loved him and who worshipped and relied on him and who believed that he
is the son of God. The 171st verse of the 4th surah in the Quran informs us that
God does not have any son. This verse explicitly states: ‘And do not say,
“Three”; desist – it is better for you.’ Thus, the Trinity is false. The cross is
also the symbol of Trinitarian Christianity and the breaking of the cross also
disavows Trinitarian Christianity. Jesus is the word of God made into flesh and
the word of God is God’s creative will. Jesus was created and is therefore not
divine. Calling Jesus the son of God is to associate to God and in section 3 of
chapter 7 I already referenced the verses of the Quran that state that association
to God is unforgiveable and even if the Quran never existed nature is telling
you, from the paired aspects all around you, that association to God is false.
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Chapter 10
The year 2005 marked the 400th commemoration of Guy Fawkes’ failed
gunpowder plot and in that year the spectre of Guy Fawkes loomed dark over
London. Three subway trains and a double-decker bus in the city of London, in
the United Kingdom, were bombed resulting in the death of 52 people.
Approximately 700 other people were injured. The police believe that 4 Muslim
suicide bombers carried out the attack.1 The bombings are commonly known as
the 7/7 bombings.
Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia, published an article titled 7 July 2005
London bombings. An older version of the article from November 2007 had a
section 1.3, which was about the context of the bombing. Since then the article
was updated as more information became publically available but section 1.3
has now been removed. Here is what was written in section 1.3:
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‘The bombings came while the UK was hosting the first full day of the 31st G8
summit, a day after London was chosen to host the 2012 Summer Olympics,
two days after the beginning of the trial of fundamentalist cleric Abu Hamza
al-Masri, five days after the Live 8 concert, and shortly after the UK had
assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. The
bombings were on the fourth anniversary of the racially-motivated Bradford
Riot.’2
However, I have yet to find any published report that connects the timing of the
subway bombing to one of England's oldest and undoubtedly the most famous
of all terrorist plots: Guys Fawkes failed gunpowder plot of 5 November 1605
CE. There is a significant connection to be noted: the number 40 links the 7th of
July 2005 to Guys Fawkes Day, which is the 5th of November. The 7th of July
2005 is 121 day before the 5th of November 2005 – the 400th Guy Fawkes Day.
Subtract 1 from 121 and it becomes 120 and the number 120 is 40 multiplied by
3.
I investigated further and discovered that another terrorist plot was thwarted
in the United Kingdom. Several transatlantic flights to the United States of
America and Canada, which were scheduled for departure from the United
Kingdom were allegedly targeted by the suspected terrorists. The arrests came
during an overnight raid on the night of 9-10 August 2006, which is
approximately 399 = (10 x 40) – 1 days after the 2005 London bombings.
Beginning on the day of 10 August 2006 new security measures were put into
effect at Heathrow Airport and frustrated passengers had to wait in long queues
to pass through stringent security checks.3
My next discovery was that in the previous year, on the 11th of March 2004,
another train bombing had occurred in the city Madrid in Spain. The
coordinated bombing of 4 commuter trains during the morning rush hour
claimed the lives of 191 people and 1800 other people were injured. Several
bombs were placed into backpacks that were placed into the trains shortly after
7 am. The bombings became known as 11-M. Twenty eight people were
arrested and put on trial in connection to this bombing. Twenty one of the
defendants were convicted on the 31st of October 2007.4
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The number 40 also links the Madrid train bombing to The 5 th of November.
The 11th of March 2004 is 239 days before the 5th of November 2004, the 399th
Guy Fawkes Day. Add 1 to 239 and it becomes 240 and the number 240 is 40
multiplied by 6. The following diagram is a timeline sketch of the linked
terrorist events as described above:
There are three similarities between the real world train bombings and the
scripted events in the film V for Vendetta. Firstly, the train bombings in Madrid
and London are closely linked to Guy Fawkes Day in intervals of 40 days and in
the film V for Vendetta V blows up the two buildings on the 5th of November.
Secondly, the Madrid and London terrorist attacks are a pair of train bombings
occurring in 2 consecutive years just as the fictional character V from the film V
for Vendetta blew up two government buildings (The old Bailey and
Parliament) in two consecutive years on the 5th of November. Thirdly, the most
important similarity is between the London 7/7 train bombings and the blowing
up of Parliament on the 5th of November in the film V for Vendetta. Both are
subway train bombings.
There are 3 peculiarities about the Wachowski siblings Matrix films; the film
V for Vendetta and the real world train bombings. Firstly, the Wachowski
siblings participated in a live Internet chat on the 6th of November 1999 (I
quoted a part of this chat in chapter 8). Secondly, the third Matrix film, The
Matrix Revolutions, was released in America, Europe and Asia on the 5th of
November 2003. Thirdly, principal shooting of V for Vendetta was completed
in June 2005, several weeks before the 7/7 bombings.
I think it’s just remarkable that the Wachowski siblings chose to have their
character V load a subway train full of explosives and set it off in the direction
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Ziad Cassim
of Parliament and then timing the explosives to go off as the train passed under
parliament moments after midnight on the 5th of November and that afterwards
a real world subway train bombing in the city of London would occur 121 = (3
x 40) + 1 days before the 400th Guy Fawkes Day. I, in no way accuse nor allude
in any way, and I distance myself from any statement, that the Wachowski
siblings or any other persons, organization or company involved with the
production of the Matrix films and the film V for Vendetta are associated with
the people who are responsible for the horrible events in Madrid and London. I
will say this much, though: It's odd play for Muslim terrorists to carry out two
bombings on days that are so closely linked to the 400th commemoration of Guy
Fawkes’ failed gunpowder plot by the number 40 and that one of the bombings
– the London subway bombing – would take place in striking similarity to the
plot of the film V for Vendetta, and its timing to coincide with the production of
the said film. It’s just bizarre to think that all of it put together is nothing more
than a mere chance coincidence.
On the 21st of July 2005, two weeks after the London 7/7 bombings, a nearly
identical attack went off in the city of London. This time there were 4
explosions, 3 on the trains of the London underground public transport system,
and the 4th was a double decker bus. Fortunately no one was killed. In all of the
explosions the detonators went off but the explosives did not go off. It’s likely
that the exploding materials were incorrectly connected to the detonators. So
there were no big fiery explosions after all. Several Muslim men were arrested
in connection to this muted attack.5
Reflecting back to 7/7 and 11-M the paired aspects between them was that in
these train bomb attacks the explosives did go off and people were killed and
each attack is linked to Guy Fawkes Day by a number that is just 1 day off from
being a multiple of the number 40. The two London attacks are a different pair.
Here the paired aspects are that the targets were the trains of the London
underground public transport system and a double-decker bus. The unmatched
aspect of course is that in the second attack the explosives did not go off
because the detonators in the bomb packs were, in all probability, incorrectly
connected. In my view the second attack was a deliberate copycat attack.
Muslim extremists were believed to be the perpetrators in both these terror plots
in the city of London. In my experience of coincidences I have to think beyond
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Ziad Cassim
the conventional and ask a few awkward what if questions. What if the terrorist
planners directing those that carried out the attacks had advanced knowledge of
the law of duality and of paired aspects and simply wanted to close off the
London pair without hurting anyone? What if they gave the bag runners the
faulty bomb packs to consciously act out a real but muted attack? But isn’t that
bizarre? I mean be realistic. Muslims extremists that killed 52 innocent people
would then repeat the attack two weeks later with the intention not to kill
anyone in compliance with the law of duality. Are these Muslim extremists that
sophisticated and asinine all at the same time? If they killed 52 people and
frightened thousands more shouldn’t they have wanted to kill more people on
the 21st of July? The last awkward what if question is what if the terrorist
masterminds are not Muslims and not connected to Muslim extremists
elsewhere in the world in the conventional way we have come to believe
through the mainstream media but that they are a well-connected criminal
network with insiders and moles within the British government, and that they
follow a sinister agenda to destabilize the country and create a state of
emergency? To this question credible circumstantial evidence can be found in a
revealing documentary called 7/7 Ripple Effect which was made by the
researcher John Anthony Hill and has since been distributed freely on the
internet and on DVD. The documentary is over 56 minutes long and reveals
many fascinating pieces of information about the bombings such as: the CCTV
cameras that strangely did not work on the morning of the bomb attack; the so
called cancelled ‘ghost train’ that the terrorists sat in; and the bizarre
advertisement for a play on the side of the double-decker bus that was attacked,
and which read “Outright Terror, Bold And Brilliant.” The first of two
highlights of the documentary is that on the 16th of May 2004, which was more
than a year before the 7/7 bombings BBC panorama produced a show of a mock
exercise of a terrorist attack in the city of London. Part of this mock exercise
was a scripted BBC news segment in which a news presenter announced to the
public that, and I quote: “In the past hour there have been three major
explosions on the London underground.” A second fictional news segment has
the news presenter reading out: “We can now confirm that a tanker carrying
chlorine has exploded at the junction of Shoreditch High Street and
Commercial Street.” Please note that the real bomb attack on 7 July 2005
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mimics the format of BBC Panorama mock terrorist exercise, which is three
bomb blasts in the London underground and a 4th explosion on a large vehicle –
a bus in the real attack and a tanker in the BBC mock exercise. The second
documentary hightlight is that one of the people participating in the BBC mock
exercise was Peter Power, a crises management consultant. Over a year later
Peter Power conducted a crises management drill on behalf of a private
company. The scenario chosen for the drill was a terrorist attack involving the
London underground. The bizarre piece of information concerning this drill is
that it was conducted on 7 July 2005 the morning that the real terrorist attack
unfolded in the same London underground train system.
From a historical perspective the political landscape of England could have
changed dramatically and the world may have been vastly different if Guy
Fawkes had succeeded on the 5th of November 1605. There may not have been a
British Empire and without a British Empire the destiny of England and its
fledgling colony in North America would have been altered in so many ways.
Who would be the first permanent English settlers to North America, if King
James was not alive to grant a charter to the Virginia Company of London in
1606, which transported settlers from England to Jamestown, Virginia in the
year 1607?6 Religiously the fate of millions of American Christians also hinged
on Guy Fawkes’ failed gunpowder plot. Firstly, what would become today's
fastest selling English bible if the King James Version Bible (or the Authorized
Version as it was then called because it was authorized by King James) had not
been published in 1611, which is 6 years after the failed gunpowder plot?7
Secondly, where would the first English colony in New England be founded if
the Mayflower was not to deliver the first 101 Puritan Christian Pilgrims to
Plymouth Colony in 1620,8 which is now Provincetown in Massachusetts.
Thirdly, What bible would they have taken to the New World and would their
descendants have celebrated Thanksgiving Day if King James was blown up in
1605?9
Beyond the religious fate of America there is another picture to see that is
founded on the law of duality. It’s not a coincidence that Spain and England, the
two European nations that were foremost in shaping the religious and cultural
landscape of the New World, would be targeted by a rogue terrorist network
that would set about killing civilians on dates that are linked to Guy Fawkes
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Day by the number 40. I ask the reader to refer back to the example discussed in
chapter 4 called New World, New Empire. In the aftermath of the afflictions
suffered by Imperial Spain and Imperial Britain – the Spanish-American war
and the World War 2 respectively – the United States of America emerged first
as a fledging regional power and then a world superpower, bolstering its
imperialistic status among the nations of the world. Now too, the afflictions
suffered by Spain and Britain in the Madrid and London train bombings
respectively has widened America’s war on terror allowing the United States of
America to strengthen and broaden its military presence around the globe,
which in the eyes of some could be used as a means to bolster its imperialistic
status.
***
In May of 2009 I read an article on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, titled
Coincidence. The first part of Section 3 from the article, which has since been
removed, read as follows:
In the first Matrix film, The Matrix, Neo was arrested by the agents and was
briefly detained for an interrogation. In the interrogation room agent Smith
opened a thick file. One of the papers in the file was a copy of Neo’s passport
and you only get to see it for an instant before agent Smith turns the page over.
Pause the DVD at exactly 0:17:36 and you will see that the expiry date of Neo’s
passport is 11 September 01. The writing is small and it’s upside down but it’s a
subtle reference to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Passports are carried by people
travelling to a foreign country and the leading mode of overseas transport is the
airplane. The 9/11 terrorist attacks involved airplanes. Is this just a mere
coincidence or did someone, or a group of people, directly or indirectly
involved in the production of The Matrix film, actually know that a planned
attack on American soil would take place on 11 September 2001? In all
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likelihood I don’t think anyone involved in the making of the film knew but
people may have known that 11 September is a historically recurrent date and I
will be giving examples of its recurrence in American and European history
further on in this chapter.
Nineteen foreigners, mostly from Saudi Arabia, armed with box cutters were
labeled by the American government as the terrorists but not everyone believes
the US government’s version of events. There is a growing body of evidence
which suggest that 9/11 was a very sophisticated inside job involving hundreds,
if not thousands of other individuals, Americans included. In the months
following the 9/11 terrorist attacks a French website titled ‘Hunt the Boeing And
test your perceptions’a published photos of the damage caused to the Pentagon
building in Washington DC. They showed photographic evidence that
contradicted the official report that a hijacked commercial airplane slammed
into the Pentagon on the morning of the 11th of September 2001. This evidence
was examined by independent researchers in the United States of America and
since then more photographic and video evidence taken on the day of the attack
has surfaced showing that the explosion on the Pentagon building wall could not
have been created by a Boeing 757 passenger plane.
In February of 2002 David vonKleist, host of an American radio station
called The Power Hour, began his own investigation after viewing the French
website. Together with director William Lewis he has since produced and
presented a video documentary titled 9/11 In Plane Sight.12 This is the same
documentary that I handed to the PR officer of the Durban Metro Police on 11
September 2006 and which unfortunately led to my untimely arrest by the South
African police on Freedom Day, the 27th of April 2007 (see chapter 1 above).
911 In Plane Sight is a very thoughtful and enlightening documentary about
the 11th of September 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States of America that
focuses mainly on video evidence. It shows video and photographic evidence,
which the producers say comes from some of the largest media networks in the
United States of America such as CNN, Fox News, ABC, etc, that reveals the
terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. to be very well planned
and far more sophisticated than the official United States government’s account
about 19 foreigners wielding box cutters. In its support of the No Boeing theory
the documentary showed that there was no large airplane wreckage such as
wings, tail, turbine engines, seats and passenger luggage found on the green
lawn in front of the Pentagon building. A Boeing 757 measures 124 feet from
left wing-tip to right wing-tip. The initial hole in the Pentagon building wall
created by the explosion was only 14 to 16 feet wide. That is to say, the initial
hole in the Pentagon building wall was less that 15 percent the diameter of the
passenger airplane alleged by United States government officials to have
crashed into the Pentagon on the morning of 11 September 2001.
Another intriguing piece of evidence is a photo of the damaged Pentagon
building taken long after the flames was put out by firefighters.13 Watch the
video segment from 10:33 to 10:55 on the DVD. The photo is an aerial view of
the damage to the Pentagon building. There is a large gaping hole in the
building approximately 60 feet wide, which is still only about half the width of
a Boeing 757 and the mechanical arm of a white crane extends across the width
of the hole. The hole got so wide only when the roof collapsed while firefighters
were desperately trying to put out the fires. Logically all of this, the rescue work
of the firefighters and the roof collapse all occurred long after the initial impact
and explosion. When zooming in, this photo shows the cross-section of the
office blocks inside the Pentagon building, which is 5 storeys high.
Astonishingly, on the top floor, there is a computer monitor on a filing cabinet
and two floors below that, just below the arm of the crane, you can see an open
book placed on a wooden stool. How is it possible that a Boeing 757 travelling
at approximately 400 mph with about 8 000 gallons of jet fuel could crash into
the Pentagon building and leave an open book untouched at the place of impact?
With that amount of jet fuel the book and wooden stool would have burnt to
ashes but neither did.
9/11 In Plane Sight also shows shocking video evidence about the destruction
of the twin towers in the World Trade Center (WTC) complex in New York
City. Government backed experts and engineers have stated that when the two
Boeing 767 airplanes hit the twin towers the enormous amounts of fuel that
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these airplanes carried ignited and melted the steel framework of the towers,
which then resulted in the collapse of these very tall 110 storey buildings. By
comparison, if jet fuel can melt steel – and there are other experts that contradict
the government experts on how the twin towers collapsed – why can’t it burn a
paper book at the Pentagon?
One of the most extraordinary piece of footage shown in 9/11 In Plane Sight
is a video clip from Cable News Network’s (CNN’s) own broadcast on the day
of the attacks that shows an anomalous plume of smoke rising approximately
fifty to sixty storeys high, below the level at which the airplanes slammed into
the WTC twin towers, from the grounds immediately adjacent the WTC twin
towers while both the WTC twin towers were still erect.14 That is to say, the
plume of smoke was rising from the ground after the airplanes slammed into the
towers but before the collapse of each of the WTC twin tower buildings. This
plume of smoke is anomalous because the United States government has never
admitted that in addition to the airplanes slamming into the WTC twin towers,
that ground based bombs and explosions had gone off in the vicinity of the
WTC buildings.
In addition to this video footage of the rising plume of smoke, 9/11 In Plane
Sight shows journalists and reporters from leading American news agencies
reporting explosions in and around the WTC area in New York City on the
morning of 11th of September 2001. New York City fire fighters who went into
each of the WTC twin towers after the airplanes had crashed into the upper
floors of the towers corroborate these independent reports of bombs and
explosions. They report that while attempting to rescue people trapped inside
the WTC building they heard bombs go off. One firefighter says to his fellow
firefighters “...floor by floor, it started popping out...” and his colleague goes
on to say “...It was as if they had detonators...as if they had planned to take
down a building...”15 (as in a controlled demolition).
Another segment of this documentary draws the viewer’s attention to a
previously underreported building in the WTC complex. There were 7 buildings
in the WTC complex including the 22 storey Vista Hotel, which was WTC
building number 3 and a 47 storey, steel framed, office building erected in 1987,
which was WTC building number 7. WTC building number 7 was not hit by an
airplane yet at about 5:30 pm on the 11th of September 2001, more than 8 hours
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after the 2 airplanes slammed into the twin towers, without showing any
significant fire damage it collapsed straight down on its own footprint. Video
footage of the collapse shown on national television, shows the penthouse at the
top of this 47 storey building, even though it was not engulfed in flames, caving
into itself first and then the rest of the building went straight down with the
outer walls collapsing inwards as in a controlled demolition. Larry Silverstein,
the New York businessman who acquired the lease for the WTC Complex from
the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in July 2001, was interviewed
on PBS and he did say that a decision was made by himself with the fire
department chief to 'pull it'16 when questioned about WTC building number 7.
As far as political timing is concerned the WTC twin towers were attacked in
the first year of President Bush’s term in office. This attack on the WTC twin
towers is by no means unique and is an echo from the past. During President
Clinton’s first year in office, in year 1993, the WTC was also attacked. This
first major terrorist attack at the WTC was a truck bomb attack that went off at
about 12:17 pm on the 26th of February 1993 in the underground garage of the
WTC north tower. Six hundred and eighty kilograms of explosives blasted
through 5 sub-levels and created a 30 meter hole. Six people were killed in this
attack. The plan was to topple the WTC north tower and have it come crashing
down on the WTC south tower17 thereby destroying both twin towers and
redefining New York City's skyline. The north tower withstood the explosion
and the objectives were not achieved by the attackers.
The number 40 very closely aligns this first terrorist attack on the WTC north
tower to the second attack on the WTC twin towers on the 11th of September
2001. Both attacks are 3119 days apart. Add 1 to 3119 and it becomes 3120 and
the number 3120 = 78 x 40. Another surprising discovery was that the
construction of the Pentagon in Washington DC began on the 11th of September
194118, 60 years before it was attacked on the 11th of September 2001. The
connections don't stop there. Historically, August 2, 1990 is the infamous day
that triggered off the first gulf war. On this day the Iraqi army, under order from
its president Saddam Hussein, began its invasion of the tiny gulf state of
Kuwait. August 2, 1990 was 159 = (4 x 40) - 1 days after Saddam Hussein’s
speech at the Arab Cooperation Council Amman Summit meeting of Arab
leaders in Amman, Jordan on the 24th of February 1990. In his speech Saddam
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cautioned about the presence of the American fleet in the Persian Gulf, the
American government’s support for the modern state of Israel and its policies
toward stability and peace in the Middle East. 19
Forty days after Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait on 2 August 1990, President
George H. W. Bush gave a speech to a joint session of Congress. In this speech
he outlined his vision of a New World Order and he also announced his plans to
send American troops into Saudi Arabia20. Saudi Arabia, President Bush feared,
was at risk of being invaded by Iraq under the leadership of Saddam Hussein,
following his successful invasion of Kuwait. The date of this speech was 11
September 1990, 11 years before the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
Under the Islamic Hijri calendar, which is a lunar calendar based on the moon
and not the sun, August 2, 1990 was also the 10th day of the month of Muharram
in the year 1411 A.H. (After Hijri), an important day for Muslims all over the
world. The Islamic year 1411 A.H. also marked the 1400th anniversary of the
death of prophet Muhammad. The 10th day of Muharram is called Youmul
Ashura or the Day of Ashura. The name Ashura comes from the Arabic word
for the number ten.
Islamic tradition attributes the 10th of Muharram to many important
religious events. Here are a few examples that have filtered through the pages of
history:
1. The creation of Adam took place on the 10th of Muharram and Adam was
also forgiven after his expulsion from the garden of paradise on the 10th of
Muharram.
2. After the deluge that drowned all the sinful people the ark of Prophet Noah
came to a rest on the 10th of Muharram.
3. Prophet Abraham was saved from a pit of fire on the 10th of Muharram.
4. The exodus of the Jews from bondage in Egypt. The Jews miraculously
crossed the Red Sea on the 10th of Muharram and the Egyptian army
commandeered by their Pharaoh drowned on the same day while racing across
the basin of the red sea to kill or re-capture the Jews.
5. When the Romans came to arrest Jesus to crucify him God raised him into the
heavens and saved him from crucifixion. This day was the 10th of Muharram.
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6. Fifty years after prophet Muhammad's death, his grandson, Hussein, was
martyred on the 10th of Muharram at Karbala in Iraq.21
7. Prophet Muhammad predicted that the world would come to an end
(Doomsday) on the 10th of Muharram. The year is unknown.
From all the above examples the only event that is known to be a historically
accepted fact is the death of prophet Muhammad’s grandson (see 6 above). The
remaining events are sourced in oral traditions. The most authentic and the most
famous story from the oral traditions is the deliverance of the Jews from
bondage in Egypt(see 4 above). Bukhari recorded that Ibn Abbas, a companion
of prophet Muhammad, reported that after emigrating to Medina prophet
Muhammad observed that the Jews fasted on the 10th of Muharram. The prophet
was told that the 10th of Muharram was the great day on which God drowned
Pharoah and his army in the red sea and saved the fleeing Jews and that to show
gratitude prophet Moses fasted on the anniversary.22
Another meaningful connection to the 10th of Muharram is that the 11th of
September 2001 – the day of the 9/11 attack – equates to the 23rd day of the 6th
Hijri month, which is Jumada al Akhir in the Hijri year 1422 AH and this date is
160 = 4 x 40 days after 10th of Muharram 1422 AH which was on the 4th of
April 2001. The following timeline diagram (see next page) shows how the
number 40 links the two WTC Bombings to the 10th of Muharram:
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***
To summarize: in the 3 Matrix films and V for Vendetta all of the main
characters are portrayed as terrorists: Neo, Morpheus and Trinity are labeled as
terrorists by the government agents of the Matrix and V and Evey were also
labeled as terrorists by the British government. In the first Matrix film the
expiry date on Neo’s passport is 11 September 01, which makes this film
connect to the 9/11 terrorist attacks and in V for Vendetta V chooses the 5 th of
November to blow up Parliament using a subway train filled with explosives
and this connects to the 7/7 London subway bombings in 2005, which occurred
121 = (3 x 40) -1 days before the 400th commemoration of Guy Fawkes failed
gunpowder plot in 1605. It cannot be just a chance coincidence that in both
films the Wachowski siblings foreshadowed two of most horrifying terrorist
events in recent history.
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Together with the Wachowski siblings’ obsession with 5th of November, the
timing of the Madrid and London Bombings, as the time interval of 40 days so
closely links them to the 5th November, makes this date anomalous. Similarly
the time interval of 40 days links Saddam Hussein’s speech at the Amman
Summit and his invasion of Kuwait to the date 11th September, making this date
equally anomalous. This anomaly surrounding the date of 11 September is
further reinforced by the start of the construction of the Pentagon on 11
September 1941 and the New World Order speech of United States President
George Bush on 11 September 1990.
Apart from the 9/11 attacks occurring on the anniversary of President Bush’s
New World Order speech in the year that his son was President; the anniversary
of the construction of the Pentagon; and being aligned to the 10th of Muharram
by the number 40, the date of the 9/11 attacks, which is 11 September, echoes
from several other historical events.
American History:
The US Declaration of Independence in 1776:
The 4th of July 1776 is celebrated in the United States of America as
Independence Day to commemorate the formal adoption of the declaration of
independence by the Continental Congress. American representatives of the
then 13 British colonies, which are now represented by the 13 red and white
stripes on the American flag, voted in favor of separation from the British
crown. A document setting out their declaration and their grievances against the
British crown was prepared but it was not signed on the day that the declaration
was formally adopted. The declaration of independence was signed by most of
the delegates on the 2nd of August 1776.23 The 4th of July 1776 is Independence
Day but the actual document was signed 29 days later on the 2nd of August
1776. The 2nd of August is 40 days before the 11th of September.
European History:
Potsdam Agreement:
On the 12th of September 1990 the treaty on the final settlement of Germany
was signed between the United States of America, The Soviet Union, France,
The United Kingdom and the partitioned states of East and West Germany
respectively.26 The outcome of this treaty was that it paved the way for the
unification of Germany after it was partitioned when the country was defeated
in World War 2. The principal antagonist in World War 2 was Adolf Hitler,
leader of the Nazi political party. The last German president before Hitler came
to power, Paul von Hindenburg, died on the 2nd of August 1934, which was 40
days before the date 11 September 1934. His death paved the way for Hitler to
assume absolute power over all of Germany, by proclaiming himself Führer
und Reichskanzler (Leader and Chancellor).27 Germany surrendered on 8 May
1945, eight days after Hitler committed suicide.28 After the war Germany was
occupied by both Allied and Soviet forces, whose leaders converged on the city
of Potsdam in Germany to decide the fate of Germany. The outcome was the
Potsdam conference, which took place between the 17th of July 1945 and the 2nd
of August 1945, which was 40 days before the date 11 September 1945. In
attendance were representatives of The United States of America, The Soviet
Union and the United Kingdom. The conclusion of the conference was that
Germany would be partitioned.29
Footnote b: The first Turkish Ottoman siege of Vienna also ended in failure on the 14th of
October 1529.
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Turkish army as they were crossing the river Tisza and inflicted a crushing
defeat on the Turks at the battle of Zenta. As many as 10 000 Turkish soldiers
drowned in the panic and approximately 20 000 were killed on the battlefield.
The Austrians only lost about 500 soldiers31. Thus, a pair of defeats for the
Ottoman Empire on the 11th of September. In the aftermath of Zenta the treaty
of Karlowitz was signed between Austria and the Ottoman Empire in 1699, the
terms of which ceded Hungary, Transylvania and Slavonia to the Austrian
Habsburg Dynasty. It was the beginning of the decline of the Ottoman Empire
and emerging from the treaty the Austrians became the dominant power of
Central Europe.32 Twelve years after Zenta general Eugene of Savoy was again
victorious on the 11th of September 1709. Together with the Duke of
Marlborough he jointly commandeered an Anglo-Dutch-Austrian army against
the French at the battle of Malplaquet during the war of the Spanish
Succession.33 Thus, a pair of victories for Eugene of Savoy on the 11th of
September.
However, the Austrians have not always been lucky with the 11th of
September. In 1898 Empress Elizabeth of Austria, or Sisi as she was
nicknamed, was murdered the day before on the 10th of September in Geneva by
Italian anarchist Luigi Luccheni.34 Then 16 years later, on 28 June 1914, Francis
Ferdinand, the Archduke and crown prince of Austria was assassinated by a
Serbian nationalist while visiting the city of Sarajevo in Bosnia.35 Under the
Hijri lunar calendar the 28th of June 1914 was 40 days after 23 Jumada al Akhir
1332 AH, which is the 90 year pre-anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in
the United States of America on the 23rd of Jumada al Akhir 1422 AH (equating
to the 11th of September 2001). To make things even worse the assassination of
the archduke was the triggering event that started World War I. As fate would
have it both Austria and the Ottoman Empire fought on the same side against
the Allied forces whose members included France, Britain and the United States
of America. The Americans entered World War I by declaring war against
Germany on the 6th of April 1917,36 which so happens to be 30 839 = (771 x 40)
– 1 days before the 11th of September 2001. The end of war saw the United
States of America victorious and the both the Ottoman and Austrian Empires
came to an end.37
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planet gobbling black holes and other perils to the Earth, it is peculiar that
CERN pivoted its most important and historic events, the start up and the
inauguration of the LHC, around the date 11 September, a terrorist event date,
and around a number such as 40 which has deep religious connotations amongst
Jews, Christians and Muslims. Thus far I have failed to solve the 40 day
phenomenon but just maybe I have been preceded by a group of mathematicians
and scientists that have succeeded in solving the 40 day phenomenon and are
using its mathematical analogue in scientific experiments associated with the
LHC.
In chapter 5 I listed 4 types of 40-day events. The first was synchronistic
events, the second was paired events, the third was associative events and the
fourth was anomalous date events. In chapter 5 I set out examples of the first
three types of 40 day events and said that the 4th type of anomalous date events
will be presented in part 3 of this book which have now been presented in this
chapter, with the examples of 11 September and 5 November as the anomalous
dates.
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Part IV
Part four examines how the phenomenon of paired aspects can be applied to
future events. In chapter 3 I discussed some of my personal experiences of
paired aspects. In the case titled A frightful Friday afternoon I briefly referenced
six prophetic signs of judgment day that I had contemplated on 4 days after the
death of Ahmed Deedat. Chapter 11 is my interpretation of these six signs using
my hypothesis of paired aspects but before I discuss the signs I discuss the
source, transmission and purpose of prophecy and how these factors can affect
the interpretation of prophecy. Chapter 12 follows from the discussion started in
chapter 11 about Islamic prophecies. Other prophetic hadiths sourced to prophet
Muhammad are interpreted using the hypothesis of paired aspects. These
prophetic hadiths concern the second coming of Christ, the rise of the antichrist
and the events that will unfold in these times.
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***
For each ending there is a new beginning and for every new dawn is written its
dusk. All peoples in all the climes and latitudes of the world have beginnings
and endings. For some their civilization was egalitarian for others there was
stark inequality, with heroes and villains. The Muslims religious worldview is
of changing times of good and evil but in the end all goodness must leave this
earth and all the believers must die and their revelations they prayed from and
instructed their civilization in must be lost. For only then will come the final
violent doomsday. If only one believer breathes on this earth the last day will
not dawn until his or her demise.
Whether it was at passing of historic milestones such as the end of the
millennium, in anticipation of astronomical milestones such as the alignment of
planets or witnessing the start of great wars people turned to prophecies and the
sayings of oracles to attempt to predict future events such as the coming of
Jesus, the Muslim Mahdi, the Apocalypse, or the end of the world. Men have
even killed or organized mass suicides in hope and fear of such times. Is the end
time still far off or is it nearer than we think? Can there be a way to know more?
For centuries there is a hope and expectation for the return of Jesus in both
Christian and Islamic eschatological literature. These texts have been
interpreted by scholars to converge, on a global scale, to a set of endings and
new beginnings but whose end is it? Is it Christian or Muslim? What does the
end mean to you?
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Chapter 11
The interpreter of visions and prophecy must be careful at all times and be very
critical in analysing and interpreting. All true prophecy stems from the divine
decree of God. If a prophecy does not come true then it was not decreed in the
first place. The divine decree of God is unbreakable because God is without
deficiency and his knowledge of past, present and future is complete. God is the
all knowing and can communicate his knowing in various ways. Once a
prophecy has reached its target audience and its truthfulness is proven then it is
like the stars in the night sky: fixed, motionless and unalterable. A navigator in
his ship uses them to chart a course in the uncertain ocean of the future.
Prophecy is information about the future and this is something that is useful
Footnote a: Muhammad is the prophet of praise. Hamdun is the Arabic word for praise and is
the root of the name Muhammad. The name Muhammad means the one who praises.
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images from two external information feeds: one from the devil and another
from God.
Regardless of whether a visual prophecy is received in wakefulness or in a
dream during sleep they fall into two categories. The first is literal imagery of
future events. For example, Muhammad sees and feels the earth trembling and
the mountains rumble and the valley cracks open and the houses with the people
inside fall into the earth and after some time an earthquake occurs at precisely
the place Muhammad described and the valley cracks open at precisely where
Muhammad said it would and the people who die are exactly who Muhammad
described and their suffering happens exactly as Muhammad described it. The
second is metaphorical imagery of future events. For example, Bukhari reports
that Muhammad once had a dream of seeing his companion Abu Bakr drawing
water from a well but his strength was deficient and he could not give enough
water to the people coming to the well. Then he saw his second companion
Umar go the well and the bucket grew larger but Umar’s strength was unfailing
and he draw so much water that all the people who came to the well drank until
they and their camels were full.3 This dream came true after the death of
Muhammad. Abu Bakr succeeded Muhammad and became the Umma’s first
caliph but his rule was fraught with difficulties and internal strife. His rule
lasted approximately 2 years. Upon his death Umar succeeded him and ruled for
10 years.4 During Umar’s caliphate Syria, Jordan, Palestine, and Egypt were
captured from the Byzantine Empire and in the east the entire Sassanid Empire
was crushed and that brought Iraq and all of Persia under Muslim rule.5 Thus,
the Muslim empire, albeit mostly an Arab empire, more than doubled in ten
years and the wealth of two empires – the Byzantines and Persians – were now
flowing to the city of Medina in the Hijaz. Thus in the dream of prophet
Muhammad Umar’s growth in strength was his extended rule over a vast empire
and his feeding of all the peoples that came to him at the well was the vast sums
of wealth he distributed to his people.
Visions of the future are not always exclusively literal or metaphorical.
Sometimes a vision of the future can have both literal and metaphorical aspects
seamlessly blended together in a single uninterrupted vision and how would you
know which is which. The information feed – the visions – coming to the
prophet may be true but interpreting them can be like looking for small patch of
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green paint on an English soccer field. For example, Bukhari records that on an
occasion when prophet Muhammad fell asleep near the kaba he had a dream
and saw that the antichrist, known to Muslims as Dajjal, is blind in the right eye
and that his eye looked like a “bulging out grape”. The Kaba is the square
structure at the centre of the grand mosque in the city of Mecca. It has four
walls and a roof and is called the House of God. Muslims from all over the
world face the Kaba when praying and when they travel to Mecca for
pilgrimage they can perform tawaf. Tawaf is a ritual of circumambulating the
kaba seven times.
In the same dream the prophet saw a brown colored man with lank hair
reaching between his shoulders. The man had water dripping from his head and
while circumambulating the kaba his hands were placed on the shoulders of two
men on either side of him. In the dream the prophet asked who this man was
and was informed that it is Jesus, the son of Mary. In the same dream, behind
Jesus, another man with curly hair, and who resembled the infidel Ibn Qatan,
was also cicumambulating the Kaba with his hand placed on the shoulder of
another person. In the dream the prophet asked who he was and was informed
that it was Dajjal.6 From this vision we have a clear description of Jesus’
physical features. The dream also tells us what the antichrist’s physical
appearance is. Even more than this we now also have the knowledge of where
they will be seen on this earth. In this dream, it appears that both Jesus and the
antichrist will perform tawaf in Mecca but this is where the error creeps in.
There are several other prophetic hadiths in both the collections of Bukhari and
Muslim, sourced to prophet Muhammad, that tell us that when the antichrist
appears he will be repelled from entering Mecca because all the entrances will
be guarded by angels.7 There are two ways to resolve this apparent
contradiction. On the one hand, there will be a time when the antichrist will be
repelled by angels and another time, either prior to the angel’s repellence, or
after it, when the antichrist will come to the gates of Mecca and find it
unguarded by angels and enter the city and the central mosque of the kaba to
perform tawaf. On the other hand the tawaf is not literal but metaphorical. How
would we know which is the truth? I now reference a third prophetic hadith
from the collection of Muslim, also sourced to prophet Muhammad, wherein it
is stated that when Jesus returns back to earth he will be carried in the air by
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placing his hands on the wings of two angels, one on his right and the other on
his left and they will leave him on the white minaret of the mosque in
Damascus, in Syria. The hadith even goes further to describe that Jesus’ hair
will glitter such that when he would raise his head it would appear like pearls
being scattered.8 Now I can interpret the tawaf of Jesus to be metaphorical. The
men assisting him in the tawaf are the angels who will carry him to the minaret
of the mosque in Damascus, in Syria. The dream elements are also symmetrical.
Christ and antichrist form a connected pair. If the tawaf of Christ is
metaphorical then the tawaf of antichrist can also be metaphorical. Other parts
of the dream such as the physical description of Jesus and the antichrist are
interpreted to be literal. This time around the believers were saved from error
but it hasn’t always been so. Prophet Muhammad’s track record of interpreting
his own visions is less than perfect. For example, from the collecton of Bukhari
we are informed that while living in Mecca, Muhammad once saw in a vision
that he emigrated to a land having plenty of date trees and he interpreted it to be
the land of al Yamama or Hajar. Al Yamamah is to the east of Mecca, but in
622 CE the prophet emigrated to the north, settling in the town of Yathrib,
which was renamed Medina. He said, “I thought that it might be the land of Al-
Yamama or Hajar, but behold, it turned out to be Yathrib (i.e. Medina).”9
Years passed on and in 628 CE a similar misinterpretation occurred
concerning a dream he had about making a minor pilgrimage called umrah at
Mecca. In the morning he gathered his companions and narrated the dream to
them and thereafter announced his intention to travel from Medina to Mecca to
perform the umrah of his vision. Mecca is approximately 338 kilometres to the
south of Medina. Many saw this as a kind of divine inspiration and in a short
space of time approximately 1400 followers pledged their support.10
At the time of this dream there existed a state of war between the prophet and
the pagan Meccans since before the battle of Badr in 624 CE11 but now the
prophet and his followers travelled peacefully toward Mecca with their
sacrificial camels. They donned the pilgrim’s garb consisting of two pieces of
white cloth.12 Approximately nine miles outside of Mecca13 a Meccan search
party spotted them and halted their advance. Muhammad was in no mood to
pick a fight and sat down for a diplomatic resolution. The Meccans sent Suhail
bin Amr to forestall the prophet for as long as he could. Suhail negotiated a
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treaty that stipulated that Muhammad and his followers must go back to Medina
without entering Mecca but in the following year they will be permitted to enter
Mecca for three days to perform the umrah pilgrimage.14 It was humiliating but
the prophet sunk his head and rode back to Medina. On the trip back home the
archangel Gabriel came to Muhammad and revealed some verses which are now
part of the 48th surah of the Quran. The 1st verse of this surah informs that the
treaty was a victory and the 27th verse of this surah states that the dream of
Muhammad was true but that God knew what Muhammad had not known
beforehand. This is proof that Muhammad had initially misinterpreted the
dream.In the following year Muhammad set out again with his companions to
perform the umrah and they entered Mecca and stayed for 3 days, performed
umrah and then returned back to Medina.
I have thus far discussed the first two hurdles in interpreting prophecies:
source and transmission. There is a third hurdle to encounter and quite frankly it
is unlike the previous two hurdles. When you approach the third hurdle the rules
of the game change. The correct procedure is one of two. You either have to
leap over the hurdle or crouch under it and there isn’t a sign post to tell you
which is correct. Confused? God uses dreams to setup events and he even goes
so far as to bait his own prophet or design a dream in such a way that it draws
out a person to do something or go to place that God desires. God is the master
illusionist. This is jarring for Muslims and non-Muslims alike and it reminds me
of the verses in the Quran, corroborated in the first hadith mentioned in this
chapter, which describe how devils ascends into the heavens and eavesdrop on
the assemblies of angels. Why would God allow his angels to be infiltrated?
Aren’t they supposed to be on top of everything? Setting up from a dream is
even odder and we can find a parallel in the stories of the clandestine Khidr,
who goes about setting up events. Khidr is older than Moses and there are even
stories of him visiting prophet Muhammad when he rose up in Arabia. In all
likelihood he is still living amongst us. He could be your gardener. He could
even come into your home in the middle of the night and drown your baby in
the bath tub while you asleep. You won’t understand it but in the sight of God it
is valid. Check out verses 60 to 82 from the 18th surah of the Quran, which
narrate 3 stories of Khidr with Moses accompanying him. In the first story
Khidr and Moses took passage on a boat and afterwards Khidr damaged the
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boat, thus rendering it inoperable. Moses thought that Khidr wanted to drown
the people on the boat. In the second story he killed a youth they had just met
even though the youth did not commit any crime. Khidr just killed the boy. In
the third story he repaired a wall in a foreign town and Moses was astonished
that he did this without asking payment for it. Afterwards Khidr explained the 3
events to Moses. The ship was damaged because it belonged to poor people and
at that time a king was confiscating all boats by force. Thus if Khidr damaged
the boat then the king would not take it by force. The innocent boy was killed in
prejudgment because the boy’s parents were believers and it was foreseen that
the boy would be a disbeliever and he would burden his believing parents. Thus
Khidr relieved them of this. As for the wall that Khidr repaired, there was
buried treasure under it that was kept there in secrecy by a righteous man for his
two sons, now orphaned. It was decided that the orphaned sons would be better
off if they received their inheritance after attaining maturity. Thus Khidr
repaired the wall that it would remain erect until the orphaned sons attained
maturity at which time they could dig out the treasure their father left for them.
Thus from these stories we learn that God directs the clandestine Khidr to go
about the earth setting up things and events and this usually involves doing
things seemingly criminal or stupid.
Like the workings of Khidr dreams can also be a setup and a fitting example
of a setup dream is the one Muhammad had on the eve of the battle of Badr but
to understand it I must first explain the events that lead to Badr. Badr is that
place on the road between Mecca and Medina, where the first battle between
Islam and disbelief was fought during the rule of Muhammad. It took place after
Muhammad emigrated from his birthplace, the city of Mecca, to the city of
Yathrib – renamed Medina – in 622 CE. Yathrib lies approximately 338
kilometres to the north of Mecca. Muhammad’s flight is called the Hijra15 and
the Islamic religious calendar, which is a lunar calendar, is named the Hijri
calendar after this Hijra. Muhammad emigrated because the majority of
Mecca’s citizens, especially the ruling tribe of Quraish, which he belonged to,
were hostile toward him, toward Islam, and the revertsb to Islam. The Muslims
had to give up their belongings, their homes, businesses and flee for their safety.
Footnote b: Muslims prefer to use the word revert instead of convert because everyone is
born a Muslim. See section 4 in chapter 7: ‘Belief in God from Nature’
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When they reached Yathrib many had to start over again. The Meccans on the
other hand profited from the belongings the Muslims left behind but they also
wanted to see Muhammad and the religion of Islam buried in the sands of
Arabia. Thus, tensions between Muslims and pagan Meccans were high.
In the second year after Hijra a Meccan trade caravan was returning from
Syria with merchandise worth thousands of dinars. The route back to Mecca
passed close to Medina. When news reached the prophet that a Meccan caravan
was nearby he gathered his men and they began a search for the caravan.16
When Abu Sufyan, the leader of the caravan, had gotten word of Muhammad’s
intentions he dispatched a fast rider called Damdam to Mecca to request that an
armed guard be sent out from Mecca to protect the returning caravan. Upon
entering the city of Mecca Damdam cut open the camel’s nose, turned the
saddle over, tore open his shirt and shouted out that Muhammad planned to raid
the caravan. Hastily an army of approximately one thousand men was
assembled to counter the Muslim advance. In the meantime Abu Sufyan safely
rerouted the caravan along the sea shore.17
When word reached Muhammad that a Meccan army was approaching them
he presented a choice to his followers: Either to attack the caravan returning
from Syria in the north or to do battle with the Meccan army approaching from
the south. The Muslims left the decision to Muhammad and said they would
follow their prophet into the sea if he so directed them.18 Muhammad had no
lust for material wealth. He was more concerned about the hostile stance of the
Meccans. If force was needed he was prepared to go to battle to shield the
Muslims from being harassed and persecuted by the Meccans. He marched
south and made camp at the wells of Badr but he had no intelligence about the
size of the Meccan army.19 From the 43rd verse of the 8th surah of the Quran we
are informed that Muhammad had seen the Meccan army in a dream and that in
his dream vision he saw a small army. Confident in his dream vision, he decided
to stand his ground at Badr.
On the 17th of Ramadan, which is the ninth month in the Hijri calendar, 313
ill equipped Muslim fighters stood with Muhammad on the battlefield of Badr
ready to test for the first time their unswerving faith in God and to sacrifice their
lives for the cause of Islam. At this point both armies saw complimenting
illusions. In the 13th verse of the 3rd surah of the Quran we are informed that
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Muhammad and his men saw only twice as many Meccan fighters when in fact
the Meccans outnumbered them three to one and the 44th verse of the 8th surah
of the Quran echoes the same illusion but it goes further to say that the Meccans
also saw a lessor number of Muslim fighters. This is easily achieved by a flash
of covert hypnosis which God had carried out for two reasons. Firstly, he had
already given Muhammad a dream wherein Muhammad saw a small Meccan
army and on the battlefield that dream of a small army came true in the illusion.
In this way God manoeuvred himself out of a lie. Secondly, God was setting up
both sides to engage in mortal combat. Above the ground one thousand angels
were already awaiting orders to swoop down and slay the Meccans and in the 9th
verse of the 8th surah of the Quran we are informed of their deployment. The
48th verse of the 8th surah also informs us that Satan had also made an
appearance at Badr in the form of a man, boosting the morale of the Meccans
but when he saw the ranks of the angels he fled with the words: “Indeed, I am
disassociated from you. Indeed, I see what you do not see.” Satan had only seen
the angels at the very last minute. He too was setup by God to lure the Meccan
soldiers to their deaths. The Muslims won the battle. They killed seventy men,
including the Meccan leader Abu Jahl, and captured seventy men. Fewer than
fifteen Muslim fighters died at Badr.20
In my view the dream of the Meccan army at Badr and the aforementioned
umrah dream form a pair of setup dreams. Both lured the prophet into
compromising situations against the Meccans and each time Muhammad came
out victorious. Each of these encounters paved the way for the conquest of the
mother city, Mecca, which took place approximately 2 years after the thwarted
umrah journey, which in turn realized the Arabian dream of a nation united
under the banner of Islam. With this third hurdle now behind us I have thus
finished the lengthy introduction to this chapter.
In all my readings of the life, sayings and hadiths of prophet Muhammad the
following prophetic hadith revealing 6 signs of judgment day is the most elegant
in its structure that I have ever come across, though its content is ominous. It
may very well be the most elegantly structured hadith ever reported by any of
the great scholars of hadith. It is from the collection of Bukhari whose full name
is Muhammad Ibn Ismail Ibn Ibrahim Ibn al-Mughirah Ibn Bardizbah al-
Bukhari21 – who is undoubtedly the most renown hadith scholar and in his
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lifetime had pored over approximately six hundred thousand hadiths, 7275 of
which, including the one I am about to present here, were pronounced sahih and
selected for his renown book Al-Jami As-Sahih.22
In the year 630 CE news reached prophet Muhammad that a large Byzantine
army was gathering in Syria, he had two choices: To wait for the army to reach
Medina or to set out on a military expedition and confront the Byzantines before
they reached Medina. Muhammad chose the latter and set out with thirty
thousand Muslims fighters to counter the advancing Byzantine army. In those
days the Byzantine Empire ruled over territories in northern Arabia, southern
Jordan, Palestine and Syria.23 The Muslim army was the largest army ever
assembled under the direct command of the prophet. No fighting took place but
the expedition was named after a place called Tabuk, wherein the prophet had
encamped with his men. On one of those days during this expedition a
companion of prophet Muhammad, whose name is Auf bin Mali, approached
the prophet while he was sitting in a leather tent. Prophet Muhammad then said
to him:
"Count six signs that indicate the approach of the Hour: my death, the
conquest of Jerusalem, a plague that will afflict you (and kill you in great
numbers) as the plague that afflicts sheep, the increase of wealth to such an
extent that even if one is given one hundred Dinars, he will not be satisfied;
then an affliction which no Arab house will escape, and then a truce between
you and Bani Al-Asfar (i.e. the Byzantines) who will betray you and attack
you under eighty flags. Under each flag will be twelve thousand soldiers.”24
At first glance all six signs indicate the approach of judgment day. All six signs
are events. None are mere phenomenon. But to whom do these events apply?
Do some or all of them apply to all of the Muslims or just to Arabs? Sign 1 is
the death of the prophet. He is an Arab. Sign 2, the conquest of Jerusalem, was a
victory for the Umma – the global Muslim community – but in those early days
almost all Muslims were Arabs so sign 2 is arguably an Arab victory as well.
Signs 3, 4 are unspecific, as to whether they will affect only Arabs or all of the
Muslims. Sign 5 is specific in that it speaks of an affliction that will affect every
Arab house. The last sign is also unspecific as to whether it will affect only
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Arabs or all of the Muslims. Some or all of the signs may concern the Arab
people as a whole irrespective of religious affiliation or only Arab Muslims.
The next question to ask is whether the signs will occur chronologically in
the order that they were stated? That is, sign 1 will occur first, then signs 2, 3, 4,
5 and last to occur will be the 6th sign. They may or may not occur
chronologically in the order that they were stated. I cannot prove either
scenario. However, signs 1 and 2 have occurred chronologically in the stated
order, because the conquest of Jerusalem took place in the year 63825 CE,
following the decisive Muslim victory at the battle of Yarmuk in 636 CE26,
approximately 6 years after prophet Muhammad’s death on the 8th of June 632
CE.27
Sign 1, the death of the prophet; sign 3, the plague; and sign 5, the affliction
are all unfavorable and detrimental signs. Sign 2, the conquest of Jerusalem; and
sign 4, the increase in wealth are favorable signs. Thus, the first five signs are in
alternating order. The last sign, the 6th sign appears to break the pattern of
alternation. A truce is mentioned, which is a favorable condition, which is then
betrayed and then the Arabs or the Muslims are attacked. If the outcome of the
attack is favorable for either the Arabs or Muslims then the pattern of
alternation is maintained.
The first sign stands apart from the five signs that follow after it. Consider
this: If I said to you that I predict that on average I will eat 3 meals a day for the
rest of my life, you would say to me “that's not an unforseen prediction. That is
typical and customary.” Then if I said that I predict that one day in the future I
will die and leave this Earthly abode, you would again say “that's not an
unforseen prediction. That is expected and inevitable.” Likewise Muhammad’s
own death was not an unforeseen event. His companions and followers never
expected him to live forever. He was expected to die like everybody else. The
other five signs are unforeseen. I interpret the anomaly of the first sign as an
indication of connectivity between the signs. What I mean to say here is that
this anomaly may be a clue to tell us that all or some of the signs form a
connected set. Perhaps they connect by a law of nature.
The prophet’s death (sign 1) in the year 632 CE (Hijri year 11 A.H.) sparked
off the Ridda wars. This was the war of apostasy. Thousands of Arabs in
different parts of Arabia became renegades and apostates. Prophet
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As in verses 5 and 6 of the 94th surah of the Quran after difficulty (the death of
prophet Muhammad in sign 1) comes ease (conquest of Jerusalem in sign 2). In
my view signs 1 and 2 form an alternating set just as hardship and ease form an
alternating set in the above two consecutive quoted verses. Note here that verse
6 has the same pattern of alternation as in verse 5, which makes the two
consecutive verses a complimenting pair. These verses and the first 2 signs in
this hadith have a dualisitic pattern in conformity with the hypothesis of paired
aspects introduced in part one of this book.
The 3rd and 4th sign are unspecific events. Plagues have occurred infrequently
over centuries. There is no mention of the date or name of the plague prophet
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maintain the social order, while trying to revive the local economy, the
government introduced new laws to restrict wage increases and placed
restrictions on the relocation of workers.38
In the Middle East, I imagine the same socio-economic circumstances
prevailed in the aftermath of the Black Death mortality crisis. The overall
population shrunk by approximately one third. It is reported that four hundred
thousand died in Syria alone.39 Though I have not come across records showing
how the local economies in the Middle East were affected, I believe that with so
many people dying every day farmland owners, in similarity to their
counterparts in Western Europe, struggled to prevent crop failures. In the
aftermath of the plague there would have been great shortages of labor in all of
the heavily affected areas. Laborers would have been in great demand and
would have demanded higher wages from farmland owners in order for their
services to be retained. It is my belief that sign 4 about people not being
satisfied even when given 100 dinars (gold coins) is the prediction of the
economic conditions that prevailed in the Middle East in the years immediately
after the onset of the Black Death. If this is true then the time interval between
signs 3 and 4 would be relatively short, just as there was a relatively short time
period of just a few years between signs 1 and 2 and in conformity to the
alternating pattern in verses 5 and 6 of the 94th surah of the Quran a hardship
(the black death) is followed by ease (the increase in wealth). Therefore I regard
signs 3 and 4 as the second alternating set.
Is there a third alternating set? Signs 5 and 6 are even more elusive than the
first four signs. In the 5th sign prophet Muhammad says that that there will be an
affliction. This distress could be the consequence of religious, social, economic
or political upheaval, or a combination of crises. We must also ask how the
word Arab is interpreted? Does it mean only those that are true descendents of
Prophet Abraham from his son Ishmael or just anyone who is either physically
resident in Arabia or who has ancentral roots from Arabia?
In respect of the 6th sign, the most important aspect is the outcome. We know
that the outcome of the treaty is a betrayal and an attack, but how will that end?
How will the Arabs or the Muslims respond to this betrayal and attack? Will it
be another treaty, surrender from one group, or maybe a pitched battle and if it
is a pitched battle, how large will the Arab or Muslim army be and will the
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outcome of battle be a stalemate or will there be winners and losers? Why didn’t
prophet Muhammad inform us about the outcome of the attack? Is it because he
did not know or is this another setup?
Prophet Muhammad names the advancing army as that of Bani al Asfar and
that they will attack under eighty flags, with a contingent of 12000 soldiers
under each flag. Eighty flags multiplied by 12000 soldiers equates to an army of
960 000. The English translator of this hadith, Muhsin Khan, annotates that
Bani al Asfar are the Byzantines. Historically, there has been no recorded attack
against Arabs or Muslims by such a large Byzantine army. This great battle is
yet to occur. But how can this be? There is no Roman or Byzantine Empire
anymore in our present world. If we are to believe that this prophecy is true who
then are the Bani al Asfar of later times? In the Quran, the second verse of the
30th surah (surah Ar-Room or The Romans) reads as follows: ‘Ghulibati-roomu’
which is translated as ‘The Romans have been defeated.’ This verse delivered
the news of the victory of the Persian Empire over the Byzantine Empire in the
second decade of the 7th century. With this verse it is clear that the Arabs were
accustomed to using the names Bani al Asfar and ar-Room (The Romans)
interchangeably to refer to the same people.
The name Byzantine comes from the city of Byzantium (modern day
Istanbul, Turkey) and was originally a Greek city founded around the year 660
BC. Its governance exchanged many hands over the centuries until after the fall
of the Greek dynasties it came into the orbit of Imperial Rome.40 In the year 324
CE, Emperor Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to adopt Christianity, chose
Byzantium over Rome as his new capital and christened the city Constantinople,
taken from his name.41 Thus Byzantium and Constantinople are one the same
city. A few decades later shortly after the death of emperor Theodosius in the
year 395 CE the Roman Empire split up42 after which the Roman people were
divided into a western empire whose seat of government was at Rome and the
eastern empire whose seat of government was at Constantinople. The rulers and
the people of the eastern empire continued to refer to themselves as Romans.
Historians referred to this eastern Roman empire as the Byzantine empire. The
Byzantine Empire endured for over a thousand years until the conquest of
Constantinople in the year 1453 CE brought the empire to a cataclysmic end.43
The conquerors were the Ottoman Turks, a people from Central Asia.44 As for
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the fate of the Western Roman Empire its fate was far different from that of its
eastern counterpart. Social and economic pressures from within and barbaric
invasions from without saw the Western Roman Empire crumble and
disintegrate within 3 hundred years. By the mid 6th century most of Western
Europe was overrun by the very same barbaric peoples, namely the Visigoths,
Vandals and Ostrogoths, whom themselves were subdued and conquered by the
Romans centuries before.45 Even after disintegration of the Roman Empire in
Western Europe the name and the culture, including the Latin language, and
institutes of Rome, such as the Roman Catholic Church, endured over the
centuries, well into the middle ages and into the modern era. It could be that
prophet Muhammad meant that the ranks of this army of 80 flags would be
made up from a broader pool of romanized Europeans. The term romanized
Europeans includes descendents of the two Roman Empires and other
Romanized peoples of European ancestry living in Europe, the Americas and
elsewhere in the world such as parts of Africa, Asia and Australia.
Our present situation since the terrorist events of 11 September 2001 in the
United States of America; the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001 and
2003 respectively; the United States military activities in hot spots around the
world as part of its ongoing war against terrorists; and the Arab Spring since
December 201046, have made the Middle East a precarious hot bed of war and
civil strife. Numerous scenarios are possible for the commencement of the 5 th
and 6th signs. It is possible that the army of 80 flags would be a NATO coalition
with United Nations sanction attempting to occupy Arabia. The peoples of
several NATO member countries, particularly in Western Europe, are European
Christians who in some ways are culturally romanized. From this viewpoint a
NATO army can be regarded as a Roman army.
However, positing that the army of 960 000 is made up of Romanized
Europeans is only speculative because we don’t know how the 6 signs in this
hadith were transmitted. If it was dictation from the angel Gabriel then Romans
is interpreted from the prevailing usage of names in currency amongst angels
and Arabs in the 7th century. If, however, the six signs are from a series of
separate visions or a single vision then the scope of interpreting some or all of
the six signs expands greatly. In this broader scope of interpretation, one
possibility is that the prophet only saw the army of 960 000 to be Romans
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simply because in the 7th century the rulers of Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Asia
Minor in what is now Turkey all the way up to the Bosporus Straits and across
into the city of Constantinople and its surrounding environs was ruled by
Byzantine Romans so as to mean that the vision was metaphorically referring
only to the occupiers of these lands and not necessarily Latinized Romans or
Christians from Europe. If this be true then the army of 960 000 can
theoretically be a future Turkish Muslim army because in medieval times
Turkomans from Central Asia conquered Asia Minor and displaced and drove
out the Byzantine Romans from the capital city of Constantinople which they
renamed Istanbul. Let us also not forget that these signs don’t carry any specific
time stamp. In a 150 to 200 years from now even another people besides the
Turks could be occupiers of Constantinople, Asia Minor, Syria and even
Palestine and Israel. Then the situation will be starkly different from the Europe
and Middle East we know today. This last scenario is not unlikely given the
colossal climatological and envionmental challenges we face today, ranging
from global warming, destruction of biodiversity, runaway population growth
and depleting fresh water reserves, which can result is mass starvations and new
wars for scarce resources such as fresh water that would create unprecendented
refugee crises in multiple regions of the world.
Added to the speculative interpretations of who will be the army of 960 000
is another kind of speculation concerning the size of the army. It is possible that
the prophet only saw in a vision the army of 960 000 (80 flags with a contingent
of 12000 soldiers under each flag) but, like the previous dream before the battle
of Badr in which the prophet saw an illusory small Meccan army, the size is
here again illusory. The last speculative twist that I can think of concerning this
army of 80 flags that will attack is that the attack will not be a single combined
attack of 960 000 in one place and time but that over a lengthier time interval 80
different armies will attack Arabs or Muslims at 80 different times. This is
plausible because it will explain why the prophet did not state the outcome of
the attack. In this speculative scenario the outcome is not singular but 80
outcomes, some of which are wins, some loses and some stalemates and
ceasefires.
I now want to broaden my interpretation of not just the 5th and 6th signs but
also of the first four signs that I interpreted above as connected and paired up
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into two sets. I will also assume that all 6 signs are portentous of the Arab
people from ancient to modern times and that the Bani al Asfar army of 960 000
are romanized Europeans. If we step back for a moment and see the bigger
picture we will see how the Arab people and the Roman people and their
descendents are paired. Paired aspects can involve entire eras, ages and epochs
spanning millennia, coursing through the rise and fall of tribes and nations.
Romans have a long and ancient history stretching back more than 2700
years. The first Romans were Iron Age peoples of Indo European stock. They
were pastoral farmers that settled and built villages on the site of the city of
Rome along the river Tiber. When the villages grew and later merged Rome
became a city.47 Ancient Roman history is divided into 3 eras. First, was the era
of the Roman Kingdom which began in the 8th century BC and endured till the
6th century BC.48 In the year 510 BC the last of the Rome’s kings was expelled
in favor of a more democratic form of political administration in which 2
elected magistrates ruled together and were assisted in matters of state by an
advisory body called the Senate. This second era, called the Roman Republic
lasted for more than 480 years till the year 27 BC.49 Over the centuries the
Roman Republic evolved in step with Roman expansion and prosperity. The
latter years saw increasing powers being given to the Senate where rivalry and
political strife slowly become the norm. This was the Roman Republic of Julius
Caesar. To his people Julius Caesar was both a distinguished politician and an
outstanding military strategist proven by his conquests of Gaul in what is
presently France. He also led his people’s first military expedition to Britain. In
60 BC he formed the first Triumvirate with Pompey and Marcus Licinius
Crassus. After the death of Crassus in 53 BC the power struggle between
Pompey and Caesar intensified, culminating in Caesars’s famous crossing of the
Rubicon in 49 BC. He took control over Rome and in the following year he was
elected Consul. He succeeded over his rivals in the Senate to become dictator.
However a faction within the senate feared that Caesar was beginning to rule
like a king,50 which was abhorrent in a republic. They plotted against him and
on the 15th of March 44 BC, the ides of March, shortly after Caesar entered the
senate house, that enraged group of senators surrounded him while reading a
petition. Then the daggers came out and the frenzied mob of senators began
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stabbing him violently until his limp body fell down in a pool of blood. His
body received more than 20 stabs.51 It was savage and cruel.
Following his death the Roman Republic entered a period of transition.
During this transitory period Gaius Octavius, the great nephew of Julius Caesar,
entered into a second Triumvirate with Mark Antony and Marcus Aemilius
Lepidus. Power politics and civil war dominated the affairs of the republic for
the next few years. A power struggle over Sicily saw Octavius gain the upper
hand over Lepidus who was then forced into retirement, officially bringing the
Triuvirate to an end.51 This lead to the division of the republic between Octavius
in the west and Mark Antony in the east, who by then was sharing his bed with
Cleopatra the queen of Egypt and former mistress of Julius Caesar. Resentment
between the two power magnates poured out into a civil war which turned out to
be the final blow to the Republic. Octavius won a decisive victory against
Antony and Cleopatra in 31 BC at the battle of Actium. In the aftermath both
Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide. Octavius emerged as the victor over
the Roman people.53 In the year 27 BC he was given the title Augustus by the
senate, which means holy or consecrated. Two other titles which he took on
were Princeps, which means first citizen and Imperator.54 From Princeps comes
the word prince and from Imperator comes the word emperor.55 The republic
continued to function in name but it was not as before. Augustus’ extraordinary
powers all but ended the republic. His ascendancy marked the beginning of the
third Roman era, in which he became the empire’s first emperor.56 Under his
rule the Roman Empire continued to prosper as the regional superpower and
Roman imperialism dominated the Mediterranean world.57 All subsequent
Roman rulers were called emperors. Every Roman emperor, including Augustus
ruled for life as though they were kings, but were wise enough not to call
themselves kings.
In the 7th century CE a new regional superpower rose from the Arabian
Peninsula. Its founder, prophet Muhammad, succeeded in bringing sovereignty
to the Arab people and he became its first statesman. In a short period of just
under 22 years, from 610 CE till his death on the 8th of June 632 CE58 he
transformed Arab society uniting most of the Arab tribes under the banner of
Islam. Born in the city of Mecca in 571 CE he rose up in 610 CE claiming to be
a prophet of God. He preached the Quran to his people and gained few enough
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followers to be insulted, boycotted, and eventually driven out of the city in 622
CE and then emigrated to Yathrib59, which upon his arrival changed its name to
Medina. From Medina he led no fewer than 19 expeditions mostly against his
fellow Arab countrymen,60 suppressing pagan customs wherever he could and
spreading the religion of Islam. Thousands of Arabs reverted. In 630 CE he
returned back to Mecca with an army of ten thousand soldiers. The Meccan
chiefs surrendered without a fight and reverted to Islam. In the last two years of
his life virtually all of Arabia came under his direct command. The high point of
his religious mission was the farewell Hajj pilgrimage he lead three months
before his death.61 During his life he introduced numerous new laws to uplift
society and improve the living standards of the Arab Muslims. Alcohol was
prohibited and system of taxation called zakah was introduced which alleviated
the plight of the poor. Upon his death his closest companion, Abu Bakr,
succeeded him as the head of state and assumed the title of Caliph, and after
Abu Bakr was Umar, Uthman and Ali in succession. Historians refer to these
first 4 caliphs, namely Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman and Ali as the Rashidun or
rightly guided caliphs.62 They ruled judiciously, fairly and strictly adhered to the
commandments of the Quran and the teachings and way of life shown to them
by their master and mentor, prophet Muhammad. Politically this period was the
closest that the early Arab Muslims came to functioning as a democracy. With
its administrative capital in the city of Medina, the young Arab Muslim state, by
conquest and diplomacy, saw rapid growth and expansion. When Umar died in
644 CE Egypt in the west, Jordan, Palestine and Syria in the north and Iraq and
Persia in the east came under Arab Muslim rule.63
As with the assassination of Julius Caesar the Arab Muslims would undergo a
similar transition to dynastic rule as did the Romans before them. In the year
656 CE, approximately 24 years after the death of prophet Muhammad, Caliph
Uthman, Muhammad’s third successor, from the Umayyad clan, was brutally
murdered in his home in Medina by a mob of political malcontents. His
caliphate began in the year 644 CE and lasted 12 years.64 Unlike the stern and
exacting Umar before him Uthman was passive and at times lenient and from
his leniency problems arose. In the later part of his administration malcontent
groups from Egypt and Iraq voiced their dissatisfaction at his leadership.
Among the grievances brought against Uthman was his selection of governors
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drawn predominantly from his own Umayyad clan. In the year 655 CE,
responding to these reports of dissatisfaction, Uthman invited his critics to come
to Mecca and voice their grievances. When he addressed the gathering his
opponents lost their will to revolt and matters quietened down for a while.65 On
the surface things appeared calm but beneath the veil of public life pressures
were mounting for a change of leadership.
In the following year sedition again arose in the state’s far flung provinces.
The opposition was not centralized under one person’s leadership. Several
potentates were vying for power in different provinces and when the situation in
some of these provinces devolved into chaos political agitators started
campaigning for a change of leadership in Medina. In Egypt a group of
malcontents, having had enough of Uthman, decided they would march on
Medina and confront Uthman. The problem grew worse when malcontents from
the two other eastern towns, Basra and Kufa also marched to Medina. The
group from Egypt approached the prophet’s first cousin Ali ibn Talib to depose
Uthman but he refused.66 Then Uthman came to Ali and appointed him to speak
to the malcontents and to persuade them to return to their homes peacefully.
Initially he succeeded but afterwards someone came forward and spread a new
rumor about Uthman and the malcontents fell back to their original position. Ali
again addressed the mob but was unsuccessful. Eventually he gave up.67
With each passing day the voices of opposition grew louder and eventually
they laid siege on the house of Uthman, even denying him the right to receive
water. His supporters asked his permission to fight the rebels. He refused but
fighting did break out between his supporters and the rebels. Guards were
posted at his front door. In response to this defense, the rebels, now bent on
killing Uthman, directed some of their people to climb over the rear wall and
storm the house. They got in and murdered Uthman amidst cries and wails from
his wife who unfortunately had her finger chopped off when she tried to defend
him.68 In the immediate aftermath of this crisis Ali was persuaded to assume the
caliphate and he reluctantly accepted. The state had a new head but the crisis in
the state’s provinces still persisted and Ali was caught in the middle. One group
wanted revenge for the murder of Uthman and another group wanted Uthman’s
clansmen to be removed from senior positions. Ali chose to replace the
governors appointed by Uthman. One of them was Uthman’s cousin Muawiya.69
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At that time Muawiya was governor of Syria, which was one of the richest
provinces in the state. Over the years he tightened his grip over Syria,
commandeering a sizeable army. Muawiya refused Ali’s orders to step down
and he along with other prominent Muslims such as Talha, Zubair ibn Al Awam
and Aisha, the prophet’s widow spoke out strongly to capture and punish
Uthman’s murderers. Ali did not seek out the murderers and because of Ali’s
inaction Muawiya refused to recognize Ali as Caliph.70 The stand-off between
the men intensified until they faced off at the battle of Siffin in 657 CE. The
outcome was inconclusive and neither side gained supremacy over the other.71
The stalemate dragged on for several years dividing the state and weakening it
through civil war. Finally the stalemate ended in 661 CE when an unlucky Ali
was assassinated by a militant group called the Karjirites.72 His passing paved
the way for the first Muslim dynasty. Muawiya took the caliphate for himself
and ruled until year 680 CE.73 After his death he was succeeded by his son
Yazid who ruled until his death in 683.74 Yazid’s son Muawiyah II then took
over as Caliph but was opposed. He abdicated after a few months.75 In 684 CE
The caliphate passed to Marwan I, another Umayyad clansman and would
remain in the Umayyad clan for more than 60 years until 750 CE.76
I have thus far briefly narrated the rise and transition of two nations, namely
the Romans and the Arabs that prospered and became regional empires. The
purpose of doing this exercise is to explain the pairing between these nations
that ties up with my interpretation of the prophetic signs discussed in this
chapter and that the pairing of these nations hinges around a time period of 700
hundred years. Count the number of years from Ceasar’s murder in 44 BC to
Uthman’s murder in 656 CE. Give or take a few months and days it is almost
exactly 700 years. Prophet Muhammad’s death in 632 CE is only 24 years less
than 700 years. The Black Death reached the Middle East around the year 1347
CE which is approximately 715 years after prophet Muhammad’s death but if
you examine the origins of the Black Death, its onset in central Asia or China is
closer to 1332 CE,77 the 700th anniversary of prophet Muhammad’s death,
sometime in the year 1333 CE. In the discussion that follows I will present
dualisitic and alternating patterns revolving around Roman and Arab peoples.
Culturally and religiously the Romans and the Arabs are in some aspects
different to similar and complimenting. They don’t occupy the same level in
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their respective social evolution through the ages. Though each nation forsook
paganism, their newer religious outlook was markedly different as is apparent in
the differences between Christianity and Islam. However, the parallels that exist
in respect of their states make them a pair of imperialistic superpowers. Just as
the armies of Octavius and Mark Antony battled approximately 700 years
earlier for the control of the Roman Empire so too did the Muslim armies of Ali
and Muawiya battle for the control of the newly emerging Arab Muslim empire.
At the end of the civil wars the outcome for both these nations, the Romans and
the Arabs respectively, was a shift in government away from the democratic
rule of Republic and Rashudin respectively, but in different ways. For the
Romans the Republic ended after the death of Mark Anthony following which
Octavius took the titles Augustus, Princeps and Imperator and became the
empire’s first emperor and for the Arabs the rule of the Rashidun, the first 4
rightly guided caliphs, ended with the death of Ali and Muawiya became the
first ruler of the Umayyad dynasty. Officially the Umayyad rulers maintained
office of caliph, but the caliphate was now hereditary within a specific Arab
clan and not elective from the wider Muslim population.
The time interval from Caesar to Muhammad and Uthman is approximately
seven hundred years. During these 700 years the Roman Empire underwent
many changes, but mostly enduring, advancing and expanding. In the 4th
century the Empire split between the western empire and the eastern empire.
The western empire, whose seat of government was Rome suffered many
setbacks from barbarian invasions. The sacking of Rome in 410 CE by the
Visigoths and again in 455 CE by the Vandals weakened the empire. The last
emperor of the western empire, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by the
German chieftan Odoacer in 476 CE.78 The eastern empire, with its seat
government in Constantinople endured and expanded its territories until the
coming of prophet Muhammad in the 7th century.
For approximately seven hundred years from the death of Muhammad in the
7 century to the onset of the Black Death in the 14th century the Arab Muslim
th
empires endured, advanced and expanded westwards across north Africa and
into Spain and southern France and eastward to the Indus Valley in India and
the western borders of China. Like their Roman counterparts it hasn’t always
been smooth sailing. Arabs went through succeeding periods of expansion and
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contraction. In the 10th and 11th centuries the eastern Roman empire reclaimed
some of its lost territories in Asia Minor.79 Sicily, captured by Arab in 965 CE,
went back to Christian rule in the 1072 CE;80 Jerusalem was lost for almost one
hundred years to invading crusaders from Europe between 1099 and 1187;81 and
in Spain after the death of Abdur Rahman III in the 961 CE82 Arab rule over the
Iberian Peninsula declined slowly but steadily over the next five hundred years
of Christian Reconquesta.83 Still, the seat of the caliphate, Baghdad, endured.
The death blow to Arab empire status came at the hands of Hulagu, the
grandson of Genghis Khan, when in 1258 CE he sieged and sacked the imperial
city of Baghdad.84 The city was burned, the irrigation infrastructure was
destroyed, hundreds of thousands of residents were slaughtered, and the ruling
Abbasid family weakened and eventually unseated from power and the office of
the Caliphate.85 The city and the empire never regained its former glory. In the
decades before this catastrophe the prosperous Muslim cities of Central Asia lay
in ruins and the hundreds of thousands of citizens either butcherd or dispersed
throughout the expansive mongol empire. All of this was the now largely
forgotten Muslim holocaust. A few decades after the sacking of Baghdad the
Black Death plague inflicted the region and with it the Arab people went off to
sleep and off the world stage for several hundred years until the early 20th
century when vast oil reserves were discovered in the Arabian Peninsula and
elsewhere in the Middle East giving the region the image of centrality to the
world’s energy demands.
Again the cycle of alternation repeated and in the wake of the Black Death
plague in the 14th century Europe reemerged and a new age of learning, cultural
flowering and Renaissance brought Europe out of their dark ages. It’s spiritual
and political epicenter was Rome and to it descended the most gifted artists,
philosophers, scientists, academics and doctors both religious and medical.
Among its most loyal subjects were the Catholic monarchs of Christian Spain,
Isabella and Ferdinand, whose men at arms evicted the Muslims out of Spain in
1492, which was also the same year that Queen Isabella financed Christopher
Columbus’ voyage into the Atlantic Ocean on which he discovered the
Americas.86 A few years earlier in 1488, Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Dias
charted a course round the Cape of Good Hope87 paving the way for Vasco Da
Gama who in1498 sailed all the way to India88, opening up new trade routes to
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the East. Early in the 16th century Rome’s religious authority and political
power was challenged by the rising discontent from the laity. Martins Luther
spearheaded a religious movement against Rome that lead to the formation of
independent churches throughout Western Europe and its ripple effect into
politics reduced papal authority and political influence.
Despite Rome’s political setback its cultural imprint is deeply embedded in
Western European culture. God has given the Roman people and their
descendants a second era of ascendancy, cultural flowering and imperialism and
it is better than the first seven hundred year era of Roman ascendancy. In this
second era the barbarian invaders from without are now romanized and this new
Roman civilization is actually a wider (mostly western) European civilization
with entrenched Roman traditions. Over the next five centuries Western Europe
steadily bloomed in literature, music and art, producing the likes of
Michelangelo, Shakespeare Bach and Beethoven, and advanced in mathematics,
medicine, and numerous other scientific and academic disciplines that ushered
in European colonialism, the industrial revolution, the abolishment of slavery,
decolonization, the modern scientific era, a heart transplant in South Africa, a
manned voyage to the Moon and back, the electronic microchip, and many
more, and God willing, many more good things to come.
I believe God wants to bless the Arab people with a second sevenc hundred
year era of ascendancy, but it must be worked for and the challenge must be
taken up. The 21st century can be the Muslim century and the dawn of an Arab
reawakening. The year 2032 marks the 1400 anniversary of the death of prophet
Muhammad, and the near 700 year anniversary of the onset of the Black Death.
As the previous seven hundred years saw Roman and West European
Footnote c: Seven appears to be another design numeric used by God. The week is seven
days. Human pregnancy of nine months approximates 7 periods of 40 days.89 I have
discovered that in the lunar calendar 7 years equates to 2480 days, which is perfectly divisible
by the number 40. That means that seven lunar years is 62 periods of 40 days. In verses 47 to
49 of the 12th surah of the Quran prophet Joseph interpreted the Egyptian King’s dream to be
seven prosperous years in which the flood waters of the Nile inundated the crops fields to
produce food for the people and their livestock followed by seven years of drought in which
the crop fields did not inundate and did not yield a sufficient crop for all the people and their
livestock to feed on. Now from what was presented in this chapter it appears that seven
hundred years is an allotted time period given to nations.
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ascendancy the next seven hundred years holds the potential to be a new Arab
age and a new age for Islam, which may end with prophet Muhammad’s
prophesied pleasant breezed from heaven that will blow through the earth and
with which all the believers in God will die instantly, to the extent that even if
an ascetic believer had retreated to the inner most cavern of a mountain it will
reach him/her and he/she will die. After that will be another period of seven
hundred years till the year 3400 CE and then an unspecified period until the last
day will dawn and the world will come to an ende.
The purpose of the pleasant breeze is widely open to varying interpretations.
One possibility is to give relief to spiritual aspirants. It is an exit strategy to lift
people off this diminished earthly world. This great dying of believers is a
letting go after a fuller and richer realization of life's worth and meanings and
our belief in God. Is this great dying a free gift from God or is it something that
was worked for or asked for by someone? Who would that individual be and
why? It may be more than individual. It may be from a multinational striving
guided over many centuries – the culmination of a quest that started thousands
of years ago. Those left behind will be careless disbelievers.
The year 2032 CE, the 1400th anniversary of the prophet's death, can be a
crossover year for the hypthetical new era. The events of sign 5 and 6 may
occur in the years leading up to and/or immediately after the crossover year of
2032 CE and may culminate in the rise of Mahdi and the return of Jesus to
Earth. However, its passing does not automatically imply that the appearance of
Mahdi and Jesus will synchronize with it. A second possibility is that signs 5
and 6 will take place in a way that is unconnected to Mahdi and Jesus’ second
Footnote d: There are different hadiths on the pleasant breeze. The hadith in the collection of
Muslim from Abdullah bin Amr states the pleasant breeze will spread from Syria in the
north.90 Another hadith in the collection of Muslim from An Nawwas mentions the pleasant
breeze at the end of the hadith as though it would spread while the believers are enjoying the
blessings of God with no mention of where it would spread from.91 A third hadith in the
collection of Muslim from Abu Huraira states that the breeze will spread from Yemen in the
south.92
Footnote e: The Quran’s descriptions of doomsday does not explicitly state that the earth will
be completely destroyed inside out until what is left is nothing but dust and rubble floating in
space but the destruction will cover the entire face of the earth killing every human being
living on it. In that is the prophecied ‘end of the world’.
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coming.f Then after several decades or perhaps 1 to 2 centuries after the 2032
CE crossover year Mahdi and Jesus will appear as a new Muslim crisis
develops. Then, after the events of Mahdi and Jesus will come a golden era
spanning 5 to 6 centuries at the end of which will occur the pleasant breeze
sometime around 2732 CE taking away the lives of all Muslims. This
interpretation is one of many. It is a golden parachute at the end of a glorious
Islamic era whose heart and soul is a celebrated Arab core.
A third possibility can place the pleasant breeze far sooner than 700 years
after 2032 CE. In place of a golden parachute ending it can very well be a quick
exit strategy, within 50-100 years after the advent of Mahdi and Jesus, escaping
from a spreading hypocrite society lacking honesty, honour and integrity and
the unstoppable tide of gimcrack consumerism and irresponsible and
unsustainable capitalism that since the rise of Western Europe in the 18th
century has seen empire evolve away from conquest to enterprise. In this
scenario Arabian ascendency may still be retained for up to 3 to 4 centuries but
it will be a predatory, hegemonic society bereft of the honourable Islamic value
system that flowed from the lifestyle of Prophet Muhammad and other Muslim
leaders of past times. A dystopia. There may not even be any substantial ethnic
Arab population in such a dystopic scenario.
A fourth possibility is neither a golden parachute ending nor a quick exit
strategy, within say, 50-100 years after advent of Mahdi and Jesus. The time
frame would revert back to 700 years after 2032 CE, but the purity, potency,
spirit and successes of a new Islamic ascendency, which began with a strong
Arab core, slowly withers from wastings, prodded by satanic substitutions until
the pleasant breeze is awaited as a last resort bailout of all believers the world
over. Beyond these four scenarios numerous variant scenarios can be
permutated with the different inputs factored in.
The Roman people and their descendants and the Arab people appear to
follow the pattern of alternation, just as the first four of the above mentioned six
signs of judgment day spoken by prophet Muhammad followed the pattern of
Footnote f: In previous chapters I briefly mentioned two future Muslim leaders. In chapter 8 I
mentioned Mahdi and in chapter 9 I mentioned an Islamized Jesus. In the next chapter,
chapter 12, I will be referencing more hadith which prophesy that both Mahdi and Jesus will
live amongst and lead the Muslims in succession.
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alternation in two sets. Signs 5 and 6 can also be a third alternating set if the
sixth sign is favourable for Arabs. Historically, not counting the formative years
when Rome was beginning to emerge as a thriving and sustainable city, Romans
and their European descendants have been given two seven hundred year eras of
ascendancy – from the 1st century BC to the 7th century CE and from the 14th to
the 21st century – and they suffered one seven hundred year period of decline –
their dark ages from the 7th to the 14th century. As for Arabs, also not counting
their formative years when the mother city Mecca was not even a city, the Arab
people’s seven hundred year era of ascendancy was from the 7th century till the
14th century and their seven hundred year era of decline was from the 14th
century till the 21st century. In counting up the years roughly 3 consecutive
periods of 700 years have passed us. Now in the 21st century we are
approaching the start of the 4th 700 year period and wait in anticipation upon the
Arab people’s hopes and desires.
Periods of ascendency and decline must not be viewed as isolated or
discontinuous. After European decolonisation and the discovery of vast oil
reserves in the Middle East in the 20th century many Arabs have luxuriated
themselves from this recent regional economic boom. A crossover year of 2032
CE does not automatically mean that present successes must all come crashing
down or that present Arab regimes are evil, corrupt Western puppets. It is true
that the material and physical dimensions of the holy cities of Mecca and
Medina (situated in the Arabian Peninsula) are unparalleled in their respective
histories. These cities have never been grander that they are now. I see no
reason why these achievements should not be continuous with my hypothetical
700 year era of a second Arab ascendency but tall buildings, beautiful
architecture and modern infrstructure such as electricity, telecoms, cars,
airplanes and orbital satelites can mean little under a system of enslavement and
subjugation to foreign powers. The belligerant state of Israel; the interestg based
banking and monetary system – which is a financial instrument that serves for
hierarchical and hegemonic economic control, which in turn serves to
manipulate and control governments; to control and enslave the people under
those governments; and, from an environmental perspective, accelerates human
Footnote g: Quranic injunction in verse 275 of the 2nd surah forbids the consumption of
interest.
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consumption of natural resources such as fresh water, flora and fauna and
accelerates destruction of the environment dangerously over and beyond the
Earth’s recovery rate that in turn leads to catastrophic climate change and
unsustainable or depreciating economic development –; European and
American military aggression in the Middle East; sectarian divisions and
violence such as between Sunnis and Shias; and traditional verses progressive
and modern Islamic society hangs like a dark cloud over the Arab and Muslim
world. These are the challenges that present and future generations of Arabs
must step up to in the coming hypothetical 700 year era. I also look forward to
seeing Arabs: firstly, reinvigorating leadership in science and technology
instead of being served with science and technology from the rest of the world
simply because some Arabs have vast oil reserves to trade and secondly,
advancing social and economic upliftment and diversification and that the
influence and participation is felt and recognized throughout the world and
perhaps in future times spread across colonies beyond the earth.
Muhammad’s six prophetic signs are profound but it is unclear how he
received the signs from on high. Was it just dictated to him by the angel Gabriel
in the order that he spoke it or did he put it together from a collection of past
prophetic visions and if they were visions were they literal or metaphorical?
God knows best. Why are Romans and Arabs paired off? The answer lies in
their respective cultural and materialistic heritage. Romans and Arabs have
made great contributions to mathematics and science that gave us many new
inventions, cures and technologies. The sphere of striving for Romans and
Arabs is greatly externalized in the form of city and empire building, expansion
of trade and shipping, engineering feats, improved sanitation and medical care,
and much more but they also made great contributions to metaphysical thought,
philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and the other sciences. But to do all these
amazing things they had to learn from earlier peoples that made many
foundational and intrinsic contributions to the greater human civilization. In
Europe the Romans learnt from the Greeks. Roman and modern Western
thought is largely founded on the teachings of Greek philosophers, such as
Socrates, Plato and Aristotle during there classical era.93 In governmnet Greek
experimentation with democracy ran parallel with the type of Roman
democratic government called republic. In religion the Romans assimilated
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some of the deities that originated from Greek mythology.94 Further to the east
two nations arose from the progeny of prophet Abraham. From the first born
son Ismail came the Arabs and from his second son Isaac came Jacob, Joseph,
Moses and the 12 Jewish tribes. Both Arab and Jew lived side by side,
sometimes supporting and sometimes quarelling with each other. The impetus
behind Jewish and Arab civilizations is markedly different from Greeks and
Romans. With Greeks and Romans there is a greater degree of separation
between civil organisation and religion but between Jews and Arabs almost
everything in their respective civilzations came from prophets and the
instructional books they conveyed from their singular God. Because they
worshipped the same God the religion of Islam that prophet Muhammed
preached to his fellow Arab recognises all the Jewish prophets and their sacred
books such as the Torah, Psalms and Gospel in their true form. The Quran
informs us in the 61st verse of the second surah of the Quran that the Jews
disbelieved in God’s signs and unjustly slew their own prophets and corrupted
and altered the sacred books. Since 1958 CE a dedicated group of researchers at
Hebrew University in Jerusalem have been poring over the text of the Torah and
have found alterations and interpolations in the ancient text.95 Verse 3 of the 3rd
surah of the Quran also informs us that Jesus was given the Gospel but Muslims
interpret the Gospel to be different from the New Testament books such as the
Gospel according to Mark, according to Matthew, according to Luke and
according to John, which Muslims regard as reported histories penned by men
and not the true descended revelation from God, which, in religious vernacular,
can be regarded as the Gospel of Jesus, without implying that Jesus himself
penned its text.
Greeks and Romans form a European cultural and religious pair as do Jews
and Arabs form a Middle Eastern cultural and religious pair. Before the Romans
and Arabs alternated with each in theire respective imperial and expansive
civilizations it was the turn of the Greek and Jewish nations respectively that
alternated in their respective formative and golden eras. First was the very
ancient Greek palace civilizations.96 When that was in its twilight the Jews rose
up from prophet Moses’ deliverance and the kingly prophets King David and
his son King Soloman. This first Jewish era of prosperity lasted for
approximately 600 to 700 years ending in the conquests Nebuchadnezzar II and
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first Jewish diaspora and exile to Babylonia.97 Then the Greeks began to rise up
again in their second expansive era which included their classical era.98 At the
height of their civilization their greatest military leader Alexander the Great
expanded Greek cilvization from Athens to the Indus Valley in India.99 After his
death his generals cut up his empire and a few centuries later the second era of
Greek prosperity and also of imperialism ended with the rise of Rome neatly
personified in the personal rise of Julius Caesar in Cleopatra’s bed. At about this
time it was also due for the Jews to have their second era of prosperity. For this
second era God sent to the Jews a pair of prophets: John the Baptist and the
special word of God made into Jesus the son of Mary but things went awfully
wrong. John the Baptist was beheaded by the Jewish King Herod100 and Jesus
escaped crucifixion by Romans that was instigated by the Jewish religious
council.101 Thus the second Jewish era of prosperity was squashed at inception
by Satan. By dualisitic law every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Thus to thwart the counter balancing good that must materialize after dashing
the Jews’ second era of prosperity Satan substituted a new religious movement
which had a definite Jewish foundation but was theologically different and
whose members became increasingly gentile as time passed on. Thus was born
Trinitarian Christianity, named after the Jew Jesus Christ but it was a departure
from Jewish monotheism and did not even propagate the true gospel that was
given to Jesus.
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Chapter 12
End of Days
It is well known that prophet Muhammad warned the people of the coming of
the antichrist, known to Muslims as Dajjal and when he spoke of Dajjal he
spoke with varying intensity. On one occasion, which is recorded in the
collections of Muslim and Bukhari, he told his companions that Dajjal will
carry with him a garden and a fire, each resembling paradise and hell-fire
respectively but that Dajjal will be deceitful and what will be shown as the
garden will be the fire and what will be shown as the fire will be the garden.1
On another occasion, recorded in the collection of Bukhari, he also told them
that throughout the ages every prophet warned his people about the coming of
Dajjal but that God destined Dajjal to descend on the umma (nation) of prophet
Muhammad.2 At other times, as is recorded in the collection of Muslim, he
would speak of Dajjal lightly as if he were insignificant3 and this is also true
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because in the sight of God and with the armory of belief Dajjal will never
overcome the people of God. Yet the people were still very apprehensive about
these prophecies and wanted to clarify the matter. So one day a group of
Muslims approached prophet Muhammad in the evening and when they entered
he saw the apprehension in their faces and asked what the matter was that
changed their appearances. They explained that in the morning he had spoken of
Dajjal very lightly as if he was insignificant and then after he spoke of Dajjal
very alarmingly that it made the people feel as if Dajjal was in their midst
hiding behind some date trees. Then prophet Muhammad described Dajjal and
the numerous events of the time when Dajjal would appear. The prophecy was
remembered by prophet Muhammad’s companions and was subsequently
recorded by Muslim in his voluminous collection of hadiths. The following was
recorded:4 Dajjal will be a young man with twisted hair and a blind eye.
Muhammad compared his features to Abdul Uzza Bin Qatan, a notorious
disbeliever of the time. Dajjal will appear on the road between Syria and Iraq
and will spread mischief throughout the land, in the east and in the west. The
men asked him how long Dajjal will remain on the earth and Muhammad said
that Dajjal would remain for forty days. The first day will be the length of a
year. The second day will be the length of month and the third day will be the
length of a week. The remaining 37 days will be normal days. The men then
asked Muhammad if one day’s prayers would be sufficient for a day that was
one year long. To this question about how to pray Muhammad replied that an
estimate must be made of time and then to pray accordingly. They asked how
quickly Dajjal will move about and Muhammad said that Dajjal would travel
like a cloud driven by the wind. Dajjal will enter a town and ask its people to
believe in him and they will do that and then he will command the sky to pour
down rain on their farmlands and in the evening their livestock will return home
fattened. The people will be pleased by him and affirm their faith in him and his
religion. Then Dajjal will enter another town and the people will reject him. He
will leave that place and leave behind him a drought to inflict the rejecting
people so much so that there will be nothing left in the form of wealth. In this
fashion Dajjal will travel about the eartha bringing forth treasures magically and
Footnote a: Other hadiths from the collection of Bukhari and Muslim inform us that Dajjal
would travel anywhere in the world and enter into any town or city, except for the two …
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he will even kill a young man by cutting his body in half with a sword and then
command the corpse to reassemble and the young man will come back to life.
Dajjal will continue to gather followers until Jesus will descend from the
heavens. He will appear on the white Minaret of the mosque in Damascusb, in
Syria, being flown there by two angels, wearing a two piece garment that will
be dyed with saffron. It is said that Jesus' physical appearance will be like
someone who had just taken a bath with droplets of water glittering on his face.
After the early morning prayer Jesus will open the mosque door and stand at the
entrance. Before him will be Dajjal and his followers. The followers of Dajjal
will begin to die instantly by the breath of Jesus and his breathe will reach as far
as the eye can see. At this point Dajjal will flee from that place and Jesus will
pursue him and kill him at the gate of Ludd in Israel, the site of which is
presently an airport.
According to this prophetic hadith Dajjal would remain on the Earth for only
40 days but the first day will be the length of a full year. We know that this
description is not a metaphor of any kind because the men asked how to pray on
such an anomalous day and prophet Muhammad explicitly commanded his
followers to make estimates of a normal 24-hour day and to pray accordingly.
Thus the Muslims are not to follow the progression of the sun across the zodiac
because that will take many months. Muslims pray at 5 specific times during the
day: In the morning twilight, after the crack of dawn but before sunrise; in the
early afternoon after the sun crosses the meridian; in the late afternoon; in the
evening twilight after sunset; and the fifth prayer is at night after twilight has
ended. The interval between the early morning twilight prayer and the early
afternoon prayer ranges between 6 to 8 hours depending on the season. If the
day was one year in duration it means to perform the first early morning twilight
prayer in the 1st month and the second early afternoon prayer would be
… cities of Mecca and Medina whose entrances will be guarded by angels and because of this
the people will flock to these cities to take refuge from the evil of Dajjal.5
Footnote b: Another hadith in the collection of Muslim states that a group of Muslims will be
besieged in the mosque in Damascus. After descending from the minaret Jesus will lead the
Muslims in a prayer and after the prayer he will confront Dajjal. When Dajjal sees Jesus he
will begin to tremble and his body will dissolve like salt in water and even if Jesus does not
pursue him he will die from melting.6
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earth’s rotation so that the earth stands still. Why would they do this? Is it to
prolong the stay of Dajjal so that he would have more time to spread his
mischief and lies across the world? Jesus is destined to kill Dajjal on the first
day that he descends back to earth and we already know that Dajjal will prevail
for 40 days. Is the prolonged day a delay to kill millions of people in a state of
disbelief before Jesus returns to herald a new era in which Islam would spread
throughout the world and enter every home or perhaps an outlandish plot to
prevent Jesus from coming back to earth altogether? The latter would be an
attempt to break the decree of God – an attempt to tie the hand of God. Then
what? To control the course of the future? It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
It can be both with separate groups working together. For the satanic group the
delay is for mass murder and for the ungodly control group it is to tie the hand
of God. Beyond engineering a super gigantic satanic net to take millions of
souls to hell forever as disbelievers before Jesus descends it may also be the
best option to reposition for the future, to perpetuate satanic operations by
preemptively thwarting a bigger and more resolute opposition arising from
millions of new reverts to Islam. Besides attempting to tie the hand of God
which I believe will never happen can Satan guarantee the other conjectural
murderous and evil objectives? Let’s hope not.
The title of Jesus is Christ. Christ comes from the Greek word christos which
means to anoint. Dajjal is called the antichrist because he is the dualistic
opposite of Jesus with extraordinary powers similar to Jesus but Jesus is more
powerful. No one else but Jesus has the power to kill Dajjal. His purified state
allows him to overpower Dajjal. One power that they both have is to raise the
dead. In the 49th verse of the 3rd surah of the Quran we are informed that Jesus,
by leave of God, was able to bring the dead back to life and a hadith in the
collection of Muslim (referenced above) informs us that Dajjal too will bring a
dead man back to life. The duration of their respective missions will revolve
around the number 40. In the previous narration from the collection of Muslim
we learnt that Dajjal will be given forty days to roam the world and spread his
mischief. The hadith from the collection of Abu Da’ud that I quoted at the end
of chapter 9 informed that Jesus will live amongst us for forty years.
Dajjal is expected be an ideologist and will want to be accepted and believed
in as a spiritual master but in truth he will be inviting people to disbelief. In the
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past there were some persons, born into Muslim homes, who deviated in their
pursuit of religious knowledge until what they believed in was in fact disbelief.
Amongst the earliest of these deviants was the 10th century Sufi initiate Mansur
al-Hallaj who proclaimed ‘anal haq’, which was interpreted to mean “I am
God”.8 The true belief of a Muslim is the monotheistic belief of one God
without association or partner in divinity. This concept is known to Muslims as
tawhid. Errant Sufis such as Mansur al Hallaj, the earlier 9th century Bayazid
Bastami and al Ghazzali in the 12th century pursued a communion with God,
which in Sufi terminology is called fana. The quality of this communion is that
the self is negated until the initiate passes into the divinity of God. Out of this
merging of man with God tawhid is reinterpreted to mean that the oneness of
God is universal divinity of everything in existence, which is pantheism in
substance and no longer non- associative monotheism. Thus they became
disbelievers.
My speculation that Dajjal may be a practicing Sufi or will appear as a Sufi
master is based on three hadiths of prophet Muhammad. The first hadith is
sourced to the collection of Muslim and the second and third hadith are sourced
to the collection of Bukhari. These three hadith are discussed hereunder as
follows: The first of the three hadiths from the prophet informs us that a Muslim
from Medina will emerge from that city and confront Dajjal and his followers.
The followers of Dajjal will question him on his approach: “Don't you believe
in our Lord?” He will then be taken to Dajjal who will himself ask him: “Don’t
you believe in me?” And to this question the Muslim from Medina will reply:
“You are a false Masih (false messiah)”. Thereafter Dajjal will order him to be
tortured and killed by cutting up his body in two pieces. The body pieces will be
set apart and Dajjal will walk between them and then by his workings he will
bring that Muslim back to life and even then the Muslim will be more
convinced of Dajjal’s falsehood.9
I believe that it is from this prophecy that prophet Muhammad warned the
people as follows (second of the three hadiths):
‘Allah is not one eyed while Messiah, Ad-Dajjal is blind in the right eye and
his eye looks like a bulging out grape.’10
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For Dajjal to possess the power of restoring life to a body cut in two is expected
to place people in doubt about his greatness. Muhammad realized this and
thereby warned his followers that despite having such great powers to know that
such a man cannot be divine because the only divine is God and God does not
have a defective blind eye as Dajjal has. Thus by telling people that Dajjal has a
blind eye they can be assured that he is not divine. In the third hadith the
prophecy of the Muslim from Medina confronting Dajjal is mentioned in
different words:
‘Ad-Dajjal will say to the people, “If I kill this man and bring him back to life
again, will you doubt my claim?” They will say, “No.” Then Ad-Dajjal will
kill that man and bring him back to life. That man will say, “Now I know your
reality better than before.”Ad-Dajjal will say, “I want to kill him but I
cannot.”’11
This hadith mentions that Dajjal will ask his followers if they doubt his claim.
What claim is this? Together with the first two hadith I interpret the claim of
Dajjal in this hadith to mean that Dajjal will claim to be Lord and God. My
speculation is that Dajjal may emerge in the world as a Sufi master and like al
Hallaj and other Sufi masters he will, and in fulfillment of the prediction of
prophet Muhammad, if it is interpreted correctly, proclaim to be God, and God
forbid it, that he will travel the world attracting Sufi followers to his cause and
they will follow him in his missions all the while thinking that they are
following a true Muslim sage, but in reality they would be following Dajjal.
In concluding this discussion on the religiosity of Dajjal I now introduce
another hadith which concerns a Christian revert to Islam whose name was
Tamim Dari. Tamim Dari and thirty other men were on an ocean voyage. Their
ship was caught in a storm and thrown off-course. After a month, when the
storm subsided they sailed toward an unknown island. There they prepared a
small boat and investigated that place. A strange man or creature called al
Jassasa came forward and lead them to a monastery. In the monastery was a
well built man in chains who introduced himself as Dajjal and spoke to them of
his future emergence. This happened during the prophet’s lifetime in the 7th
century12. An important bit of information in this hadith is the mention of the
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Pharaoh’s Egypt. Dajjal is the trial of the Muslims during a period of transition
just as over 3000 years ago the wayworn Jews were tried with the calf idol13 at
the object called Tur during a period of transition after they fled from bondage
in Egypt and before settling in the holy land. To understand why I say that
future Muslims will be tried during a period of transition I now reference a
hadith reported in Sunan Abu Da’ud which reports prophet Muhammad to
prophesy that ‘the greatest war, the conquest of Constaninople (Istanbul) and
the coming forth of the Dajjal (antichrist) will take place within a period of
seven months’.14 c To understand what the great war will be another hadith in
Sunan Abu Da’ud states that it will occur when Medina is in ruins and
Jerusalem will be flourishing.15 Medina will be in ruins because of an
earthquake occurring in its environs.
The information contained in two separate hadith, one in Sahih Muslim and
another in Sunan Abu Da’ud, is here interpreted that when a group of faithful
Muslims pledge allegiance to Mahdi in the central mosque in Mecca an
expeditionary force will be assembled to kill him. This army will gather in
Medina, which is approximately 338 km north of Mecca. However, they will
perish in the plains of Medina because of the above mentioned earthquake
which will cause the earth to swallow them up.17 A different hadith in sunan
Abu Da’ud reports that this earthquake will be a key event in the ascendency of
Mahdi as leader of the Muslims. When it occurs, the Abdals of Syria and Iraq
will swear allegiance to him.18 The Abdals are a secret order of Muslims. They
are revered as saints in the greater Muslim world. Their number is fixed to 40.
The name Abdal means substitutes. Thus when an Abdal dies another replaces
him in the order.
One possible interpretation I put forward is that the prophesized great war
will break out when Mahdi defeats the 960 000 strong Roman army, which was
discussed in the previous chapter as the sixth sign. If this victory happens Mahdi
Footnote c: The hadith journalized after this one appears to contradict it. It reports prophet
Muhammad to having said that the time interval between the great war and the conquest of
Constantinople will be six years and then Dajjal will emerge in the seventh year.16
In general you will find that information about Mahdi and his times is scanty and dotted
across numerous hadiths. Some of the hadith appear to contradict each other or at the very
least they appear confusing because either the witnesses heard wrong or misunderstood when
the prophet spoke varyingly about Mahdi at different times.
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may be the new master of the Middle East and even Israel may be subservient to
him and Jerusalem may be flourishing because it will be reclaimed by Arab
Muslims. In all of this commotion the Arab Muslims of the Middle East will be
in a state of transition. Behind them will be a broken world order and ahead of
them will be the emergence of Dajjal and the descent of Jesus to assist them and
fight on their side as the hadith referenced at the end of chapter 9 states. A
hadith in Sahih Muslim does predict that a Roman army will be defeated after
which the Muslims will march north into Asia Minor and conquer
Constantinople (Istanbul). When distributing the war booty in Istanbul a devil
will shout out that Dajjal has appeared amongst the families of the Muslims.
The Muslims will then retreat back to the Middle East and make preparations to
confront Dajjal.19 The hadith does not explicitly state that the Muslim army
conquering Istanbul will be lead by Mahdi but I interpret it thus and I speculate
that the defeated Romans will be the same army of 960 000 soldiers that was
discussed in the previous chapter as the sixth sign.
The deceptive trials ended for the Jews when Prophet Moses returned to his
people after his appointment with God which lasted 40 nights. Several surahs of
the Quran mention the incident of the calf idol that the Jews worshipped but
here I will reference verses 85 to 97 of the 20th surah which is the longest
narration in the Quran in this regard. In the foregoing paragraphs you read that
the deceptive trial of Dajjal will end when Jesus descends back to earth and
confronts and kills Dajjal. The paired aspect is that for each people, Jews and
Arabs, a prophet descends in their midst and ends the deceptive trials. In the
case of the Jews the deceptive trials was the false deity, the calf idol they made
from their own ornaments. In the case of the Arabs there is no idol but the
deceptive trial is Dajjal whom I interpret will proclaim divinity and that he is
God but in fact he will be a false deity like the calf idol.
Toward the end of the Bronze Age, from about the late 13th century BC the
mysterious and numerous sea peoples devastated parts of the Middle East
including Palestine and Asia Minor20 which paved the way for the Jews to enter
Palestine as its new occupants. So too when Jesus returns parts of Asia, the
Middle East, and possibly Africa will be overrun and devastated when Gog and
Magog are released from behind the iron wall that separates them from the rest
of mankind. The erection of the iron wall, which the Quran narrates from verses
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92 to 99 of the 18th surah of the Quran, was accomplished by Zul Qarnain. The
identity of Zul Qarnain and the location of the iron wall remains a mystery. The
99th verse of the 18th surah of the Quran describes the advances of Gog and
Magog as surging over one another and a hadith reported by Muslim states that
Gog and Magog will emerge during the time of Jesus’ second coming
and that they will drink up all of Lake Tiberiasd in Israel such that when the last
of them approaches it he will say: “there was once water here”. God will then
convey these words to Jesus: “I have brought forth from amongst my servants
such people against whom none would be able to fight; you take these people
safely to Tur”.21 Tur refers to the object where God spoke to Moses.
Again there is another pairing when the Muslims led by Jesus will take refuge
at Tur from the impending onslaught of Gog and Magog, just as Moses and his
people assembled at Tur where God received their covenant and provided them
with Manna and quails. Tur marked the end of their flight from Egypt, where
God received them as refugees, and it was also the beginning of a new era.
Likewise the new era for Islam will advance from Tur where Gog and Magog
will be destroyed and Jesus and his followers will return from. The destruction
of Gog and Magog will commence when insects will bite their necks with such
severity and consistency that in the morning they will all perish like one body.22
This mass killing in one aspect pairs up with the Black Death plague, one form
of which was called bubonic plague in which the symptom was the swelling of
the lymph nodes on the neck, groin or armpit region of the body.23
In the person of Mahdi there is a convergence of paired aspects because he is
also the pair of John the Baptist. As John the Baptist paved the way for the
coming of Jesus approximately 2000 years ago Mahdi will be moving about
winning battles and evading enemies to prepare for Jesus' descent. Jesus will
descend and then be flown by angels to Damascus where the Muslims will be
besieged by Dajjal26 in a mosque which is believed to be the 8th century Great
Ommayad Mosque of Damascus wherein is buried the head of John the Baptist.
The long hadith from Muslim, storied at the start of this chapter, does not
mention that the Muslims besieged in the mosque in Damascus will be lead by
Footnote d: Lake Tiberias currenly holds approximately four cubic kilometers of water.24 One
cubic kilometer of water equates to one trillion litres of water.25 Thus, Lake Tiberias has four
trillion (4000 000 000 000) litres of water.
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Mahdi but I interpret it thus. John the Baptist is given his appellation because it
was he that baptized Jesus into the Jewish faith. Now when Jesus comes he will
enter into the Muslim faith and he will become a follower of prophet
Muhammad. After Jesus descends the angels will fly Jesus to Damascus and
place him on the white minarat of the mosque at the time of the early morning
twilight prayer called Fajr. Jesus will enter into the mosque and he will be
beckoned to take up the position of Imam and lead the Fajr prayer congregation.
A short hadith in Sahih Muslim informs that he will refuse27 and will then pray
behind the Muslim commander who I interpret to be Mahdi.e Jesus following
the prayer led by Mahdi accomplishes, for the sake of dualistic completion, the
initiation of Jesus into the Muslim faith just as he was initiated previously by
John the Baptist into the Jewish faith.
A hadith in Sunan Abu Da’ud, which I mentioned at the beginning of chapter
8 above, stated that Mahdi “will fill the earth with equity and justice as it was
filled with oppression and tyranny". I interpret this hadith to mean that the times
of Mahdi will be anomalous. Religious, social, political and economic
anomalies will materialize in the world because of imbalances internationally,
nationally and locally in society, in economy, in politics and religion that will
be founded on oppression, unfairness, hatred and racism, widespread theft and
fraud both illegal and legalised resulting in systemic large scale corruption
involving large amounts of wealth and hundreds or thousands of corruptors and
supporters whose corruption will be stayed and remain unchecked in justice by
the dualistic substitutive delaying tactics of Satan and his associate devils.
These delaying tactics are paid for by ransoms, which can range from
institutionalized and individual charities, philanthropy of various kinds,
offerings of new technologies to society, etc. Mahdi then, when the prophet
predicted that he would fill the world with equity and justice just as it was filled
with oppression and tyranny before, in my interpretation, is the agent of
retribution. His actions will shift the focus to redress and retributive justice. He
will also be helped by Jesus to overpower Dajjal and Jesus, as reported in Sunan
Abu Da’ud (see hadith quoted in chapter 9), will fight for the cause of Islam.
Footnote e: Sahih Muslim hadith number 6924 referenced in footnote b above states that
Jesus will lead the Muslims in prayer but it won’t be a contradiction if the prayer lead by
Jesus is different from the one lead by Imam Mahdi and either before or after.
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Mahdi is reported in Sunan Abu Da’ud to rule for 7 years28 after which Jesus
will take up the leadership of the Muslims. A hadith in Sahih al Bukhari states
that Jesus will be a just ruler.29 Mahdi and Jesus combined is the sign of the
coming of judgment day and judgment day is from God. Thus Mahdi and Jesus
are the sign of God or in Arabic the ayat (sign) of Allah: Ayatollah (from ayat-
Allah) is another fitting title for Mahdi and Jesus respectively.
A hadith in Sahih Muslim states that after the crisis of Gog and Magog will
be a period of great blessings, in which the produce from the earth will be
exceedingly prodigious than anything seen by man in recent times. The fruits
and growth will be over sized. The size of a single pomegranate will be large
enough for a group of people to eat from it. The milk from a sheep will feed an
entire family and a larger group of people will be able to drink from a single
milch cow.f Jesus will even give the people the glad tidings of paradise.30 There
is a pattern in these predictions. First comes the sternness of retributive justice
with Mahdi and then the good news of paradise and the bounteous provisions of
the Muslims. The events of these predicted times are the preview of the coming
of retribution on judgment day and the delights of paradise respectively.
Theoretically if only a portion of the earth, say Arabia and the Middle East,
becomes a mild fragance of paradise there may be another place elsewhere on
the earth that will become the shadow of hell where the multitudes of
hypocrites, sinners and corrupters will descend on.
When viewed dualistically it is clear now why prophet Muhammad stated the
words ‘If only one day of this world remained. Allah would lengthen that day’
(see hadith in chapter 8). The lives and future actions of Mahdi and his
successor Jesus are connected to the chain of events that culminates in the
actual last day. It is as if their future accomplishents are part and parcel of the
process whereby judgment day actualises. I conjecture that attached to the
Footnote f: The natural means of creating a human being begins with the seed of the father.
The first human being, Adam, had no father. Thus, Adam was created without the means. In
the creation of Jesus we see a pairing with Adam because like Adam Jesus had no father and
was created without the natural means. The 59th verse of the 3rd surah of the Quran says that
Jesus is like Adam. The extraordinary growth and nourishment during the second advent of
Jesus is a restoration of at least one region on the earth to similar conditions thousands of
years ago when Adam was placed on this lush green earth that was teeming with life. This
renewed lushness and abundance is part of the pairing of Jesus with Adam.
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 293
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accomplishments of Mahdi and Jesus is the killing of the Jews and the trees and
stones that will expose them (see hadith in chapter 9 along with footnote a of
the same chapter).
If the Jews that will be exposed by trees and stones carry the errant belief of
the ancient Jews who said that the hand of God is chained then they might even
go so far as to postulate that stopping Mahdi and supporting Dajjal the antichrist
might prevent Jesus from returning back to earth and might prevent their
exposition and killing and since Mahdi is connected to judgment day stopping
him may suspend judgment day from occurring. If these exposed Jews are
Israeli and Zionists Jews such an accomplishment would seem to eternalise
Israel’s existence.
Since the Israeli Knesset’s passing of the Basic Law of Jerusalem in 1980
whose opening clause states ‘Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of
Israel.’31 there has been a growing support base among Jews and Zionists both
in Israel and elsewhere in the world proclaiming Jerusalem the eternal capital of
Israel. Both Encarta32 and Wikipedia33 encyclopedias have articles stating
Jerusalem to be the eternal capital of Israel. There is even a facebook account
with over 6800 likes called ‘Jerusalem – Israel’s Eternal Capital’.34 On the 3rd
of November 2014 a pro Israeli online journal called Bridges for Peace
(bridgesforpeace.com) quoted Ron Prossor, ‘Israel’s permanent representative
to the UN’ (United Nations), to have called Jerusalem the eternal capital twice
during an emergency meeting of the United Nations security council:
“I am here to convey one simple truth. The people of Israel are not occupiers
and we are not settlers. Israel is our home and Jerusalem is the eternal capital
of our sovereign state.
…
“It is time for the Palestinians to realize that the children of Abraham—all the
children of Abraham—Jews, Christians and Muslims alike—are not doomed to
live together in war, but rather destined to live together in peace.
“And so today I issue this promise from the people of the Promised Land—
under our watchg, Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people, will
Footnote g: Of course the brutalized Palestinians who have seen their sons and
daughters killed, their homes demolished, their farms confiscated and entire …
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remain a free and open city for all people and for all time.”35
It was not sufficient to declare Jerusalem just the capital of the Jewish people
but he qualified it to be their ‘eternal capital’. This can’t be the Kingdom of
David – David that is the submissive prophet of God who will himself be called
to account for his deeds on judgment day. Judgement day begins when all
human settlements, including Jerusalem, are destroyed and when all human life
on earth is destroyed. Then the souls of the dead will be placed into new bodies
and resurrected to face judgement. Belief in judgment day is a tenet of faith. It
implies to believe in accountability of actions to a higher authority and not
living recklessly and lawlessly. All individuals and all peoples will assemble
before God on judgment day. Thus, all peoples the world over must perish and
not live on eternally in this world, Jews included. In my view some Jews and
Zionists are not submissive to the belief of an end to all human life on earth
after which is judgment day and a new immortal life in either paradise or hell.
The last paired aspect discussed in this chapter is of Israel. The first set of
events in the pairing of Israel is the striving that their ancestors refused when
they were led by Moses. In verses 21 to 26 of the 5th surah of the Quran the
Jews were told to enter the holy land but they refused to enter the land until the
existing people, whom they regarded to be tyrannical, had vacated it. They were
then advised that if they entered through the gate they would be predominant
over the people therein. Here too they refused and said to Moses that he and
God must fight and drive the people out while they remained back doing
nothing. Then God commanded that they remain wandering in the wilderness
for 40 years. After the 40 years they entered the holy land. Thus these Jewish
people received their land freely without striving or fighting for it. Besides the
land the Jews were freely endowed with two more resources. The Torah was a
great book of knowledge that was given to Moses for the guidance of his
people. It was a free endowment. Thirdly, the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, we
are told in verse 14 of the 34th surah of the Quran, was built by the fettered Jinn
under the command of King Solomon with such zeal and fear that when
Solomon died his body remained erect on the building site holding his staff in
… villages wiped off the map will doubt and question the ‘peace’ and the ‘the watch’ offered
by Israel.
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 295
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his hand until a tiny worm unseen by the masonic jinn bit and gnawed into the
staff causing it to fall to the ground. When the masonic jinn saw this they
realized that Solomon was dead and fled from the building site, to be free, but
by then the building of the temple was finished. These freed masonic jinn are
the ancient Free Masons.
Thus the Jews got their book knowledge, their land and their temple built on
that same land substantially for free. But the wisdom of Abraham, which I
discussed in chapter 7, prevails in the end. This wisdom, to repeat here, is from
the 39th verse of the 53rd surah of the Quran which states that there is nothing for
man but striving. The ancient Jews lost their free endowments. They lost their
temple, lost their Torah and lost their land. To complete the pair some Jews
have started the Zionist movement to reclaim their once lost civilization. Today
Zionists build universities and fund scientific research to seek new knowledge
and wisdom. Zionists, unlike their ancient forebears who got their free
encyclopedia, the Torah, are striving for their new encyclopedias and libraries
and they are successful. Zionists are also striving and in fact making war with
Palestinians to reclaim their lost land and they believe they will be successful to
drive out the Palestinians. As of the year 2000 CE less than 20 percent of the
West Bank is under Palestinian Authority. The rest is under the sway of Israel.36
Israel continues to expand settlements into Palestinian lands 37 in the West Bank
and the small enclave of Gaza suffocates and bleeds from Israeli Defense Force
bombings. Beyond this they may also want to rebuild their temple with their
own hands in Jerusalem.
By the rule of God most gracious as stated in his Quran he may permit their
strivings to be accomplished. However, it must not be forgotten that their
leadership is not unanimous. Already the most important Jewish leader of the
last 2000 years, born of a Jewish mother, whom they thought the Romans killed
for them, is expected to dissent. His name is Jesus, the son of Mary. Verses 157
and 158 of the 4th surah of the Quran clearly states that Jesus was not killed and
not even crucified but that it was made to look as though he was crucified. The
leading theory is that Judas, who was sent in to fetch Jesus to hand him over to
the Roman authorities was given the appearance of Jesus. The Roman soldiers
then seized Judas and crucified him on the cross, while Jesus secretly ascended
into the heavens and remains there until he is commanded to return to earth. If
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 296
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the Zionists dare say that Jesus is not a Jewish leader, I will have you know that
Palestine and Jerusalem is the home of Jesus and he has all the rights to have his
say in this matter. He has all the rights to say whose strivings are most pious
and worthy in the sight of God. Whatever the circumstances the Muslims are to
strive in truth, justice and fairness toward peace, security and retaining our
submission to God, and we wait for Jesus’ timely return. Insha-Allah (by God’s
permission) may it be under his watchful eye, his leadership and his legacy that
Jerusalem is a free and open city.
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 297
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References:
English translations of the Quran in this book are from the publication of
Saheeh International, The Qur'an: English Meanings and Notes, Riyadh: Al-
Muntada Al-Islami Trust, 2001-2011; Jeddah: Dar Abul-Qasim 1997-2001.
Hadith quoted or referenced from the collection of Sahih al Bukhari are from
the 9 volume English translations of Muhammad Muhsin Khan. Hadith quoted
or referenced from the collection Sahih Muslim are from the 4 volume English
translations of Abdul Hamid Siddiqi. Hadith quoted or referenced from the
collection of Sunan Abu Da’ud are from the 3 volume English translations of
Ahmad Hasan. Every hadith quoted from these collections is uniquely identified
by its book and entry number. (Pages references pertaining to hadith are only
relevant to the printed volumes).
9 Why Beauty is Truth, p. 110, Ian Stewart (New York: Basic Books, 2007)
10 The Matrix (franchise), Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix_(franchise) (as
of 18 December 2011)
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 299
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3. Queens of Empire:
26 Isabella I, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
27 Isabella of Castile, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabella_of_Castile (as of 14
September 2007)
28 Boabdil, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
29 Spanish Inquisition, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition (as of 14
September 2007)
30 Alhambra Decree, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alhambra_Decree (as of 1
September 2007)
31 Christopher Columbus, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005); Christopher
Columbus, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus (as of 22 May
2008)
32 Catherine of Aragon, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Aragon (as of
30 August 2011)
33 Henry VIII of England, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Henry_VIII_of_England
(as of 11 September 2011)
34 Catherine of Aragon, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Aragon (as of
30 August 2011)
35 Elizabeth I, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
36 Henry VIII, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
37 Catholic Monarchs, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 301
Ziad Cassim
4 The Secret, Executive Producer: Rhonda Byrne, Producer: Paul Harrington, Director: Drew
Herriot, released on 26 March 2006 and distributed by Prime Time Productions
5 ibid.; Law of Attraction, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Attraction (as of 5
October 2009)
Chapter 7: Worldview
2. The Universe is Not God:
1 Olber’s Paradox, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
5. Slave of Causality:
7 Sahih Muslim, vol. 4, p. 1396-1397 (book 31, hadith no. 6416)
8 Uncertainty Principle, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
9 Sahih Al-Bukhari, vol. 4, p. 290-291 (book 54, hadith no. 430)
7. Hidden Metrics:
14 Sahih Al-Bukhari, vol. 4, p. 290 (book 54, hadith no. 430); Sahih Al-Bukhari, vol. 9, p.
411-412 (book 93, hadith no. 546)
23 The Canon, p. 187, Natalie Angier (Houghton Mifflin Company: New York, 2007)
24 DNA, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA (as of 11 July 2012)
25 Sahih Al-Bukhari, vol. 4, p. 342-343 (book 55, hadith no. 543)
26 Cubit, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubit (as of 13 April 2012)
27 ibid.
28 Cubit Measure,
http://www.discoverislamicart.org/database_item.php?id=object;ISL;dz;Mus01;20;en (as of 8
May 2012)
29 Anatomically modern humans, Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomically_modern_humans (as of 13 June 2012)
45 ibid. p. 299
46 ibid. p. 302
47 ibid. p. 299
48 ibid.
49 ibid. p. 301
50 Abu Simbel, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
51 Ramesseum, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
52 The Amarna period and the later New Kingdom, Jacubus van Dijk. In: The Oxford History
of Ancient Egypt, p. 300, Ed.: Ian Shaw (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
53 Muhammad, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
17 V for Vendetta, Producers: Joel Silver, Andy Wachowski, Larry (Lana) Wachowski,
Director: James McTeigue, U.S. Release Date: 17 March 2006. Cloud Atlas; Producers:
Grant Hill, Stefan Arndt, Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski; Directors: Lana
Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, Tom Tykwer; US release date: 26 October 2012)
Pair B:
18
The Matrix, Time: 0:05:31
19 ibid., Time: 1:49:28
Pair C:
20 ibid., Time: 1:08:34
21 ibid., Time: 1:12:40
Pair D:
26 The Matrix, Time: 1:45:19
27 ibid., Time: 1:46:32
28 The Matrix Revolutions, Time: 1:25:50
29 ibid., Time: 1:28:40
Pair E:
30 The Matrix Reloaded, Time: 1:01:17
31 ibid., Time: 1:12:25
32 ibid., Time: 1:07:07
Pair F:
33 ibid., Time: 1:17:07
34 ibid., Time: 1:18:59
Pair G:
35 The Matrix, Time: 1:53:50
36 The Matrix Reloaded, Time: 1:58:08
Pair H:
37 The Matrix Revolutions, Time: 0:40:19
38 ibid., Time: 1:13:25
Pair I:
39 The Matrix Reloaded, Time: 1:01:22
40 The Matrix Revolutions, Time: 0:18:55
41 ibid., Time: 0:20:50
Pair J:
42 ibid., Time: 0:24:55
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 310
Ziad Cassim
Pair K:
45 The Matrix, Time: 1:57:18
46 The Matrix Revolutions, Time: 1:47:25
V for Vendetta:
47 V for Vendetta (film), Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V_for_Vendetta_(film) (as
of 12 December 2011)
1st Pair:
57 Ibid., Time: 0:28:55
58 Ibid., Time: 0:58:02
2nd Pair:
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 311
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3rd Pair:
61 Ibid., Time: 0:50:06
62 Ibid., Time: 0:51:57
4th Pair:
63 Ibid., Time: 0:41:30
64 Ibid., Time: 0:54:07
5th Pair:
65 Ibid., Time: 1:02:20
66 Ibid., Time: 1:47:29
Cloud Atlas:
67 Cloud Atlas (film), Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Atlas_film (as of 2 June
2013)
68 Cloud Atlas, Time: 1:55:55 – 1:56:03
Star Wars:
69 Star Wars, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_wars (as of 9 January 2012)
70 Star Wars Episode one, Time: 1:21:34
71 ibid., Time: 2:02:48
39 ibid.
40 Byzantium, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
41 Istanbul, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
42 Roman Republic and Empire, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
43 Byzantine Empire, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
44 Ottoman Empire, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
45 Roman Empire, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
46 Arab Spring, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Spring (as of 25 December
2011)
47 Rome, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
48 Kings of Rome, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
49 Roman Republic, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
50 Gaius Julius Caesar, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
51 Julius Caesar, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Caesar (as of 4 May 2012)
52 Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005); Roman
republic and Empire, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
53 Roman Republic, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005); Augustus, Encyclopedia
Britannica (version 2009)
54 Roman Republic, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
55 Roman Republic, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Republic (as of 4 May
2008)
56 List of Roman Emperors, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_roman_emperors
(as of 25 April 2012); Roman Empire, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
57 Augustus, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustus (as of 25 April 2012)
58 Islam, p. 23, Paul Lunde (London: Dorling Kindersley, 2002)
59 Hegira, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
60 List of expeditions of Muhammad, Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_expeditions_of_Muhammad (as of 8 April 2012)
61 Muhammad, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad (as of 4 May 2012)
62 Rashidun, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
63 Spread of Islam, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
64 Uthman ibn Affan, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uthman_ibn_Affan (as of 14
March 2012)
65 ibid.
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 317
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66 ibid.
67 Seige of Uthman, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seige_of_Uthman (as of 13
March 2012)
68 Uthman ibn Affan, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uthman_ibn_Affan (as of 14
March 2012)
69 Ali as Caliph, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_as_Caliph (as of 5 April 2012)
70 Muawiyah I, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muawiyah_I (as of 25 April 2012)
71 Battle of Siffin, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Siffin (as of 5 May
2012)
72 Ali as Caliph, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_as_Caliph (as of 5 April 2012)
73 Muawiyah I, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
74 Yazid I, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
75 Muawiyah II, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu’awiya_II (as of 1 June 2012)
76 Umayyad Dynasty, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
77 Black Death, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
78 Decline of the Roman Empire,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Roman_Empire (as of 22 June 2012); Roman
Republic and Empire, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
79 Byzantine Empire, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005); Byzantine Empire,
Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
80 Emirate of Sicily, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Sicily (As of 28
May 2012)
81 Crusades, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
82 Abd al-Rahman III, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
83 Reconquista, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
84 Hulagu Khan, wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulagu_Khan (as of 14 June 2012)
85 Baghdad, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baghdad (as of 1 July 2012)
86 Spain, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
87 Cape of Good Hope, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
88 Gama, Vasco da, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
89 Pregnancy and childbirth, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
90 Sahih Muslim, vol. 4, p. 1520-1521 (book 39, hadith no. 7023)
91 Sahih Muslim, vol. 4, p. 1518 (book 39, hadith no. 7015)
92 Sahih Muslim, vol. 1, p. 67 (book 1, hadith no. 212)
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 318
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17 Sahih Muslim, vol. 4, p. 1494 (book 39, hadith no. 6886); Sunan Abu Da’ud, vol. 3, p.
1195 (book 32, hadith no. 4281).
18 Sunan Abu Da’ud, vol. 3, p. 1191 (book 31, hadith no. 4273)
19 Sahih Muslim, vol. 4, p. 1501 (book 39, hadith no. 6924)
20 Sea Peoples, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
21 Sahih Muslim, vol. 4, p. 1518 (book 39, hadith no. 7015)
22 ibid.
23 Plague, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
24 See of Galilee, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/see_of_galilee (as of 6 April 2012)
25 Cubic metre, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cubic_metre (as of 20 March 2012)
26 Sahih Muslim, vol. 4, p. 1518 (book 39, hadith no. 7015)
27 Sahih Muslim, vol. 1, p. 94 (book 1, hadith no. 293)
28 Sunan Abu Da’ud, vol. 3, p. 1191 (book 31, hadith no. 4272)
29 Sahih Al-Bukhari, vol. 3, p. 395 (book 43, hadith no. 656)
30 Sahih Muslim, vol. 4, p. 1518 (book 39, hadith no. 7015)
31 Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel.,
http://www.knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/basic10_eng.htm (as of 2 June 2015)
32 Israel (country), Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (version 2005)
33 Positions on Jerusalem, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positions_on_Jerusalem
(as of 28 May 2015)
34 Jerusalem – Israel’s Eternal Capital, Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/jerusalemis (as
of 2 June 2015)
35 Israel at the UN: ‘Jerusalem, the Eternal Capital of the Jewish People,
http://www.bridgesforpeace.com/il/news/article/israel-at-the-un-jerusalem-the-eternal-
capital-of-the-jewish-people (as of 3 November 2014)
36 West Bank, Encyclopedia Britannica (version 2009)
37 Israeli Settlement, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_settlement (as of 17
September 2014)
End of Text
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 320
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On page 133, par. 4, in the sentence: ‘Reason and logic are the only tools that one needs to
discover that the universe, the great expanse that contains all the stars, planets and other
heavenly bodies, did have a beginning and that it is not infinite.’ I removed the word ‘only’.
On page 138, par. 3, in the sentence: ‘Our knowledge of God is only defined in the language
of mathematics.’ I removed the word ‘only’.
On page 165, par. 2, in the sentence: ‘Pharaoh and Abu Talib were the father figures in the
lives of Moses and Muhammad and both of them broke away from the religion of their step-
fathers.’ The phrase ‘step fathers’ was replaced with ‘father figures’.
On page 165, par. 2, the sentence: ‘This breaking away from the father figure is a family echo
resonating from their patriarchal father Abraham.’ was replaced with ‘This breaking away
from the religion of the father figure is a family echo resonating from their patriarchal father
Abraham.’
On page 167, par. 3, the sentence: ‘Iblees … asked for long life and he vowed to mislead the
progeny of Adam.’ was changed to ‘Iblees … asked for respite from punishment until
judgment day and he vowed to mislead the progeny of Adam.’
On page 167, par. 3, in the sentence: ‘God granted his prayer for long life until judgment
day…’ the phrase ‘long life’ was replaced by ‘respite’.
On page 173, par. 4, the sentence: ‘Iblees will live till the last day of this world because his
prayer of long life was granted by God.’ was changed to ‘Iblees is expected to live till the last
day of this world because his prayer for respite until judgment day was granted by God.’
On page 110, par. 3, in the sentence: ‘Applied and conductive electricity was invented from
the study of structures in nature and structure comes from the fundamental forces of nature
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 321
Ziad Cassim
such as electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces.' I removed the word
‘gravity’.
On page 124, the second paragraph: ‘There are numerous verses in the Quran that discuss
God’s creative powers. Six verses in particular mention a specific creative command. In
Arabic it is Kun-fa-ya-kun, translated into English as ‘Be, and it is’. These 6 instances of the
creative command can be grouped into 3 pairs.’ was replaced with: ‘There are eight verses
that each mention a specific creative command, which in Arabic is ‘Kun-fa-ya-kun’,
translated into English as ‘Be, and it is’. From these eight verses six instances of the creative
command can be grouped into 3 pairs.’
On page 125, the second Quran verse and the paragraph after:
‘40:68 He it is who gives life and causes death; and when He decrees a matter, He but says
to it, "Be," and it is.
The paired aspect in this 3rd set is that both verses begin with a mention of two related
aspects of creation. In the first verse the heavens and earth form a pair from the natural
world. In the second verse life and death form a pair of opposites. Again, as in the first two
sets both end with kun-fa-ya-kun (Be, and it is).’
was replaced with another Quran verse and another explanatory paragraph after:
‘6:73 And it is He who created the heavens and earth in truth. And the day He says, "Be,"
and it is, His word is the truth. And His is the dominion [on] the Day the Horn is blown. [He
is] Knower of the unseen and the witnessed; and He is the Wise, the Acquainted.
In this third pair the verses begin with a statement that the heavens and the earth are
originated and created by God respectively followed by the creative command kun-fa-ya-
kun.’
On page 141, par. 2, in the sentence: 'Further reductionism to the atomic scale forces of
nature, such as gravity, the electromagnetic force and the strong and weak nuclear force also
cannot, in my opinion, create the pairing found in large scale group events such as the
formation of countries and empires because these are unintelligent agents of change and
evolution.' I removed the word ‘gravity’.
Intelligent Design Symmetries & The Future of Islam 322
Ziad Cassim
On page 141, par. 2, in the sentence ‘The universe and any fanciful multiverse that some
theoretical physicists have conjectured are all under the kursi (footstool) of God.’ the word
‘(footstool)’ was replaced with ‘(throne)’.
On page 147, par. 2, the phrase: ‘After 40 days he descended the mount with
commandments…’ was changed to: ‘After 40 days he returned with the commandments…’
On page 149, par. 3, the word: ‘Dualistically,’ was replaced with the phrase ‘As far as Quran
dictates…’
On page 289, par. 2, the sentence: ‘The deceptive trials ended for the Jews when Prophet
Moses descended from Mount Sinai after spending 40 days and nights on the mountain.’ Was
changed to: ‘The deceptive trials ended for the Jews when Prophet Moses returned to his
people after his appointment with God which lasted 40 nights.’
On 5 pages (123, 127, 147, 288, and 290) 6 references to Mount Sinai where replaced with
alternate text referring to an object called Tur.
On page 290, the first 5 sentences of the second paragraph: ‘Again there is another pairing
when the Muslims led by Jesus will take refuge upon Mount Sinai from the impending
onslaught of Gog and Magog, just as Moses ascended up Mount Sinai with the leaders of the
Jewish people. Verses 55 and 56 of the 2nd surah of the Quran mentions how the Jews
insisted that they will not believe until they see God with their own eyes. So Moses led them
up Mount Sinai but they were struck by a lightning bolt. They were killed and then God
revived them. The destruction of Gog and Magog will commence when insects will bite their
necks with such severity and consistency that in the morning they (Gog and Magog) will all
perish like one body.’ was replaced with: ‘Again there is another pairing when the Muslims
led by Jesus will take refuge at Tur from the impending onslaught of Gog and Magog, just as
Moses and his people assembled at Tur where God received their covenant and provided
them with Manna and quails. Tur marked the end of their flight from Egypt, where God
received them as refugees, and it was also the beginning of a new era. Likewise a new era for
Islam will advance from Tur where Gog and Magog will be destroyed and Jesus and his
followers will return from. The destruction of Gog and Magog will commence when insects
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will bite their necks with such severity and consistency that in the morning they will all perish
like one body.’
in the destruction of the Earth. Both ways, he is expected to live till the last day of this world.
Religious teachings go as far as warning mankind about the evils of Satan and implore us to
take refuge in God from him but I know of no advises in the Quran to physically make war
with Satan and to imprison or kill him. That can be the future of Islam - to rise above Satan
and into the heavens by our own striving and to make our own paradise.’